https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5053319-trump-greenland-purchase/?tbref=hp
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump said in the Truth Social post.
On Monday, Greenland’s prime minister said the island isn’t up for purchase.
https://collive.com/over-30-injured-in-chabad-seminary-fire-in-jerusalem/
A large fire broke out on the top floor of a dorm of a Chabad girls’ school on Rechov Dovid Yellin in Jerusalem early Monday morning, injuring more than 30 people and requiring rescue forces to extricate dozens of girls from the burning building.
------------------- comments
A parent
December 23, 2024 9:40 am
Thankfully the girls are safe.
My daughter and her friends attempted to run out of building but they were locked inside with a padlock with no one to be found with a key.
Only with the help of neighbors on outside who used a chain saw to get through the door were they saved. A special mention also to an Arab worker who endlessly helped save girls at risk to his own life.
Parents: please make sure your seminaries are not locking the girls in at night.
Google triangle shirtwaist factory fire. Hashem yishmor
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/23/politics/biden-federal-death-row-trump/index.html
Notably, the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a White nationalist who massacred nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
We have been discussing Rav Moshe's view that medical tests could be a violation of Devarim (18:13)
Others seem to limit that to avoiding astrologers or diviners. The Netziv and others say it only applies when there are prophets that are available. The Shulchan Aruch says the problem it means searching for indications of the future such as asking an astrologer but there is no problem utilizing the information if you overhear it
Aside from medical tests there is the question of insurance which Rav Moshe permits as a business deal. What about Social Security or eating healthy food? |Should smoking cigarettes be a concern or vaping? Some say using a doctor at all is also a problem.
Rav Noach Weinberg told me that utilizing sear belts and vaccinations show lack of bitachon. Others say being concerned with air raid sirens is a lack of bitachon. or even following elementary rules such as stopping for a red light or wear a reflector when walking down a dark road or signaling when turning
Interestingly the biggest concern we have with the future is what we call chinuch. Nobody I know would send their child to public school or a coed school or college or medical school saying "Whatever G-d wants will happen. Similarly everyone is concerned with who are your child's friends and who he/she associates with
Similarly with shidduchim no one says my child will marry the first person proposed and I will not check out who they are. Rav Moshe does caution about too much instigation. No one forms a business deal or invests money or buys a house without doing investigation regarding the future.
In sum, there are those who say that everything that happens is because G-d makes it happen and you simply must view everything as a direct consequence of G-d's Will. Others say that man is a required participant and must do whatever hishtadus he can and G-d does the rest
https://baishavaad.org/the-foreseeable-future-may-we-try-to-find-out-what-lies-ahead/
One brief but important attempt at a delineation of the contours of the injunction of tamim tihyeh is by R’ Moshe Feinstein, in the context of the propriety of screening for the gene that causes Tay-Sachs:
According to this understanding of R’ Moshe, preventive MRIs would presumably not violate tamim tihyeh, because they, too, do not predict the future, but rather reveal what already exists. While this does not seem to be the straightforward understanding of R’ Moshe’s intent, we shall iy”H see in the follow-up article that some do indeed posit such a distinction with respect to the applicability of the mitzvah of tamim tihyeh.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matt-gaetz-ethics-report-released/
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who briefly stood to become President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general, was found by congressional ethics investigators to have paid numerous women — including a 17-year-old girl — for sex, and to have purchased and used illegal drugs, including from his Capitol Hill office, according to a final draft of a comprehensive investigative report obtained by CBS News.
Those were among the findings of the long-running investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Gaetz, which concluded the former Florida congressman violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office.
Igros Moshe (YD IV #57.11) The reason for not establishing a day of fasting and prayers to commemorate the murdered of the Holocaust
Question In the matter of the Decree due to our many sins which resulted in the murder of 10 times 600,000 through Hitler and his associates their memory should be erased. It would seem appropriate that there is a need to establish a particular day for fasting and prayer. You are astonished that nothing has yet to be done. Answer In the Kinos which are said by all Jews on Tisha B’Av, it is explained there that a special day was not established for fasting and and mourning for the decrees of the Crusades, which were the decrees in all European countries where most of the Jews lived, and several towns and villages were destroyed, and it was named Tach v’Tat after the years it happened. Also in Israel they killed many during the Crusades. The reason is they didn’t is because we are not to establish another day for fasting and mourning. Instead the tragedies of the Crusades are to be mentioned in the Kinos of Tisha B‘Av For this reason we are slso not to establish a special day to commemorate the decrees that happened in our time. Rather it is to be included in all the tragedies that have happened during this long Galus. It is thus not like the Chemelniki Massacres that were done by Cosacks in the Ukraine and Poland for which a day of fasting and Selichos was established on the 10th of Sivan since that wasn’t a general decree like the Churban and Galus but it occurred only in a part of one country. In addition tragedies of Tach v’Tat were not committed by the government and therefore are not the result of Galus and the Churban but rather those who rebelled against the government. It is not considered a government action and thus an aspect of Galus since the government attempted to defend the Jews. The only connection to Galus is that the Jews received punishment for their sins which deserved Galus. Thus it was only relevant to make a decree of fasting and Selichos for only those places. In contrast the decrees of Hitler applied to all Jews since he conquered the main places where Jews lived and in these places he murdered all the Jews who were there and he intended to conquer the whole world. It was impossible to stop him untl G-d hasd mercy on us. Therefore it was a decree against all Jews and thus it is to be viewed as an extension of the Churban and Galus for which we are not to establish another day of mourning as is stated in the Kinos.
https://www.koltorah.org/halachah/the-proper-time-to-kindle-chanukah-lights-by-rabbi-chaim-jachter
One should try to light Nerot Chanukah at the optimal time. However, defining the precise time has been an elusive task. It appears that common practice is simply to light when the men return from Maariv. Shalom Bayit and male communal Torah study might permit one to light after the optimal time.
Igros Moshe (OH. IV #101.6 p189) The best time to light a Hanukkah candle is about ten minutes after the beginning of sunset and it should have enough oil to burn for an hour or so in order that it will burn about half an hour after the stars come out.,
Igros Moshe (OH IV 62 page 95) Also we light the chunukah lights everyday at a later time so that there is parsumei nissa for fanily members
https://www.5tjt.com/halachic-musings-lev-tahor-and-pidyon-shvuyim/
It is this author’s conclusion that there is no mitzvah or even inyan to help the leaders of Lev Tahor evade jail charges. This is also the opinion of one of the leading poskim in the New York area. May Hashem bring yeshuos and nechamos to Klal Yisrael.
https://mishpacha.com/aching-hearts/
During the four-and-a half-years since Mishpacha’s probing report on the mysterious Lev Tahor, the setting has changed and shocking accounts of mind control and abuse are emerging. Can an unlikely coalition of Guatemalan geirim and chassidish activists tip the balance and bring change to Lev Tahor?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/21/trump-musk-shutdown-demands-defeat/
After that, the accounts diverge. Multiple House Republican lawmakers said the president-elect mentioned eliminating the debt ceiling casually and in passing, and that he understood Johnson’s explanation that the proposal didn’t have the votes to pass. Hill Republicans broadly agreed that no one got the impression Trump was repeatedly and clearly demanding that they raise the debt ceiling before Christmas. His sudden red line Wednesday reverberated across the Capitol, shocking House and Senate Republicans
https://medicalhalacha.org/2021/01/21/preventive-medicine-and-disease-screening/
Predictive or presymptomatic diagnosis, whether for the purposes of assessing the risk of diseases or for early intervention, can play a critically important role in a patient’s chances of recovery or of avoiding disease entirely. Screening tests, such as mammograms or colonoscopies, tests that assess or predict the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, or genetic testing that can identify a predisposition to an ever-growing wide range of diseases, are all essential diagnostic tools. Does the Mitzva of “v’Nishmartem” obligate a person to undergo such testing or to follow the precepts of preventive medication in general?
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/21/politics/trump-mandate-washington-challenges/index.html
Trump has asserted his decisive November victory should clear any roadblocks standing in the way of his agenda. He has demanded fealty from fellow Republicans while often overstating the breadth of his win. Though he is the first Republican in a generation to win the popular vote, Trump ended up with less than 50% of the country behind him and his Electoral College margin was sizable but hardly historic.
Mike Johnson is still Speaker of the House, but this week Republicans have behaved as if the Speaker is another Johnson—as in Woody of the New York Jets. He’s the impulsive owner who, reports The Athletic, overrules his football people on a whim, consults his teenage sons for football insights, and looks for guidance from the internet. Result: perennial losing seasons.
