President Trump likes to cite the stock market when it’s rising as a sign of his policy success, so what does he think about Monday’s plunge? The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a 650-point header after he announced that he’ll hit Mexico and Canada on Tuesday with 25% tariffs.
Mr. Trump said at the White House there was “no room left” to negotiate with the two American trade treaty partners. Some of his smarter advisers have been hoping he’d start renegotiating the USMCA and delay the tariffs. But Mr. Trump wants tariffs for their own sake, which he says will usher in a new golden age.
U.S. stocks plummeted Monday afternoon after President Donald Trump confirmed that blanket tariffs on Canada and Mexico would begin Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower by 650 points, or about 1.5 percent, after being down as much as 800 points after the president's remarks. The S&P 500 lost 1.75 percent for its biggest loss since December. The tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 500 points, or more than 2.5 percent.
President Donald Trump has ordered a pause on all military aid to Ukraine following a disastrous and remarkable meeting last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, Bloomberg and the Associated Press reported.
A senior Defense Department official, who spoke anonymously about internal discussions, told Bloomberg that the aid freeze will remain in place until Trump determines that Ukrainian leaders are making a genuine effort toward peace.
A White House official confirmed the pause in aid, telling PBS in a statement: "President Trump has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution."
IDF soldiers left so many markers on social media that Hamas invaders on October 7 had a complete breakdown of nearly every unit, sub-unit, and building within the Nahal Oz IDF base when they overwhelmed it, killed 53 soldiers, and took 10 hostage on October 7, 2023.
“There’s this whole generation of people who did use it in a more neutral way in the beginning, especially when we were younger,” Wright said. Now, “it’s like, ‘Oh, this other person who I identify with is using it.’ It gives people permission.” Cut to inauguration weekend, when the tech right and Maga youth descended on DC, throwing around the slur as they celebrated their win over the left. Just this week, Musk responded to a critical post on X: “I’m tempted to call this guy a retard, but I won’t because I’ve used that word too many times.” (Ironically enough, X’s own AI chatbot outlined the slur’s offensive history in the replies.)
In trying to make the case that Ukraine and Russia are historically “one people,” Putin (or his scribes) did not go back to the Soviet version of history; instead, they reached for the most reactionary tsarist one. That’s because the Soviets did recognize Ukrainians as a separate ethnic nation with their own language and the (theoretical) right to self-determination, which in practice meant they were granted a Ukrainian republic within the Soviet Union. Unlike the Soviets, the Russian tsars saw Ukrainians as part of the Russian nation, representing no more than its “Little Russian tribe,” and their language a mere regional dialect. They also believed that over the centuries the West had attempted time and again to undermine Russo-Ukrainian unity. Putin borrowed this point, adding NATO and the EU to the list of Western offenders.
Putin declared that Russians and Ukrainians “are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus’ is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” Since then, Putin has repeated similar claims on many occasions. As recently as February 2020, he once again stated in an interview that Ukrainians and Russians “are one and the same people”, and he insinuated that Ukrainian national identity had emerged as a product of foreign interference. Similarly, Russia’s then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a perplexed apparatchik in April 2016 that there has been “no state” in Ukraine, neither before nor after the 2014 crisis.
Such slogans and insinuations might be little more than a rhetorical smokescreen concealing a pursuit of sober, hard-nosed realpolitik. But there is much to suggest that these beliefs are in fact informing policymaking at the highest levels of power. What’s more, they appear to have rubbed off on other world leaders as well. In an autumn 2017 briefing, US President Donald Trump reportedly exclaimed that Ukraine “wasn’t a ‘real country,’ that it had always been a part of Russia”.
I have posted a number of articles by R' Avraham Broide in the last two weeks. For those who are interested in more, he now has his own website http://www.amazingjewishfacts.com/ based on his long running column in Yated Neeman (USA), "The Strange Side of History." In conjunction with the site, a weekly e.mail will contain an abbreviated strange event from Jewish history. Additional features are being added to the webstie at present.
Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know) From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)
by Avraham Broide (Jerusalem based translator and journalist. phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)
What happens when you cannot flee your jailors? Take them along with you!
Dr. Nunez was in a crisis. Would he ever escape the eagle eye of his guards?
Dr. Samuel Nunez of Lisbon, Portugal, was born to a Marrano family that was still passing along the torch of Judaism two centuries after Spain expelled all its practicing Jews in 1492. Nunez lived a double life. Publicly, he was a distinguished doctor serving high dignitaries of the Catholic Church; privately, he and his family were committing religious crimes that could earn them death at the stake.
All went well until the spring of 5486/1726 when Inquisition spies caught him, his wife Rebecca, and his three children red-handed in the middle of a Passover Seder. For most Marranos, the crime of "seeking the L-rd according to their prohibited faith" would have signified torture and death. Fortunately, Dr. Nunez was the private physician and close friend of the Grand Inquisitor who was suffering from an enlarged prostrate gland and reluctant to lose the good doctor's services.
An agreement was struck. The doctor was spared on condition that two Inquisition officials reside at his home day and night, keeping a sharp eye on his activities. Now, severed from his spiritual roots, the doctor felt that life in Portugal was unbearable and plotted a brilliant escape.
Years later, a descendant of one of the Marranos who fled with the doctor recorded how he fooled his jailors:
"The doctor had a large and elegant mansion on the banks of the Tagus and being a man of large fortune he was in the habit of entertaining the principal families of Lisbon. On a pleasant summer day, he invited a party to dinner, and among the guests was a captain of an English brigantine anchored at some distance in the river. While the company were amusing themselves on the lawn, the captain invited the family and part of the company to accompany him on board the brigantine and partake of a lunch prepared for the occasion.
"All the family, together with the spies of the Inquisition and a portion of the guests repaired on board the vessel, and while they were below in the cabin enjoying the hospitality of the captain, the anchor was weighed, the sails unfurled, and the weather being fair, the brigantine shot out of the Tagus, was soon at sea, and carried the whole party to England.
"It had been previously arranged between the doctor and the captain, who had agreed for a thousand moidores in gold to convey the family to England, and who were in the painful necessity of adopting this plan of escape to avoid detection. The ladies had secreted all their diamonds and jewels, which were quilted in their dresses, and the doctor having previously changed all his securities into gold, it was distributed among the gentlemen of the family and carried around them in leathern belts. His house, plate, furniture, servants, equipage, and even the dinner cooked for the occasion were all left, and were subsequently seized by the Inquisition and confiscated to the state."
Soon after his arrival in England, the doctor heard that a group of about forty Jews was sailing overseas to the newly founded English colony of Georgia and sailed off with them to become the second Jewish doctor in North America.
Mr. Benjamin Sheftall, one of the Jewish passengers, described the group’s arrival in his journal:
"The names of the Jews who arrived in Savannah, Georgia on the 11th day of July, 1733. Doctor Nunis, Mrs. Nunis his mother, Daniel Nunis, Moses Nunez, Sipra Nunez, Shem Noah their servant ….These Jews were the first of our nation who came to this country [Georgia]. They brought with them a Safer Torah with two cloaks, and a circumcision box, which were given to them by Mr. Lindo, a merchant in London, for the use of the congregation they intended to establish."
Yet, even in the relative freedom of America, it took the doctor's family years to shake off the last vestiges of their Catholicism.
"For years after their arrival in this country," a contemporary record reports, "the female members of the family were unable to repeat their [Jewish] prayers without the assistance of the Catholic rosary, by reason of the habit acquired in Portugal for the purpose of lending the appearance of Catholic form should they be surprised at their devotions."
Dr. Nunez left many descendants, the best known his great-grandson Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, the first Jew ever appointed Commodore in the US Navy. True to his great-grandfather’s Jewish principles, Levy was instrumental in abolishing the navy’s vicious punishment of flogging men before the mast.
For quite a few years, rabbis and kashrus organizations are involved in gargantuan efforts to ensure that Orthodox Jews too can participate in the battle of the bulge. An early instance of this trend was back in 5695/1935 and involved the most ubiquitous drink of all time, except water, Coca Cola.
Coca Cola, invented in May 5646/1886 by the Atlanta ex-Confederate soldier and druggist, Dr. John Styth Pemberton, was named after two of its exotic ingredients, coca leaves and kola nuts. For a few months, Coke struggled without any bubbles until a drugstore attendant thought of adding soda water to the concoction. Then people started realizing that "Things Go Better With Coke" and Coke's liquidity became a tsunami.
60 years passed before Rav Tuvia Geffen of Shearis Yisrael Shul in Atlanta began having qualms about Coke's kashrus. Prior to then, the prevailing attitude was - "Nu! What can be treif in a soft drink?"
Since Coca Cola's headquarters were right in Atlanta, Rav Tuvia had been receiving anxious queries about its kashrus for years. It was time to investigate. Although Coca Cola's recipe was among the best guarded industrial secrets of the USA, company directors realized that soothing the religious public's conscience meant increased revenues. So they agreed to provide Rav Tuvia with a list of ingredients under a strict oath to never reveal anything to a living soul. Thus, the teshuva (responsa) Rav Tuvia wrote, refers to the problematical ingredients by code.
After thorough inquiry and investigation at the factory, it became apparent that Coca Cola contained a liquid product made from meat and fat tallow of non-kosher animals.
Although the chief chemist of Georgia assured Rabbi Geffen that the glycerin constituted only a 1000thof the beverage, and non-kosher ingredients are usually nullified in a volume only sixty times greater, Rav Geffen proved from the Rashba and other authorities that ingredients deliberately mixed into a product to enhance it are not nullified even in a thousand.A similar problem applied to the grain alcohol, even though their proportion was only a thousandth, since even the tiniest amount of leaven in a mixture is forbidden on Passover.
"Because Coca Cola has already been accepted by the general public in this country and in Canada," Rabbi Geffen wrote, "and because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink. I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution according to which there would be no question nor any doubt concerning the ingredients of Coca Cola."
Hitler and his Nazi henchmen were great believers in astrology. Such as when U.S.A. President, Franklin Roosevelt, passed away towards the end of WW2, on April 5705/1945. Upon hearing the news, Nazi Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, yelled out, “Bring out the best champagne! ...It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday, April the 13th. It is the turning point!” Needless to say, he was wrong.
Early in the Nazi career, the Nazi craze for fortune-telling brought about one of the strangest symbiotic relationships in human history. During the 20's, Herschman-Chaim Steinschneider, had built up a career as a skilled magician and clairvoyant, covering his Jewish tracks by naming himself Hanussen. Suddenly, he reached the climax of his career by becoming one of Hitler's closest confidants.
This happened during March 5692/1932, when Hitler’s political future seemed doomed. The Nazis had lost seats in the Reichstag and their coffers were drained. Then Hanussen predicted that Nazi victory was just around the corner. Hitler would become Reichschancellor within the year. When Hanussen printed his startling “prophecy” in his weekly newspaper, the “Berliner Woshenschau,” Hitler became so excited that he invited the famous clairvoyant to meet privately with him at his headquarters in the Kaiserhof Hotel.
Hanussen met Hitler about a dozen times that year and became his favorite “hellseher” (clairvoyant). Hanussen used the Nazi power to raise his prestige and fame, while Nazi leaders used him as an endless source of private loans. He informed a fellow clairvoyant that his aim was to eventually convince Hitler that not all Jews were that bad.
On February 26, 5693/1933, Hanussen was displaying his fortune telling skills in front of a crowd including Nazi officials and VIPs, when he suddenly leapt to his feet and began screaming that he “saw a great house burning.” Not long afterwards, the Reichstag (German parliament) went up on in smoke. It is highly suspected that the Nazis had started the fire in order to declare a state of emergency and seize extraordinary powers.
Perhaps the Nazis resented Hanussen’s leaking of their secret plans. For one reason or another he was doomed, penning a note in invisible ink to a colleague, “"I always thought that business about the Jews was just an election trick of theirs. It wasn't." On the morning of March 25, 5693/1933, a car stopped next to him and he was ordered to get in. That was the last time anyone saw Hanussen alive. The Nazis seized his assets, IOUs recording debts of over 150,000 marks mysteriously disappeared, and Hanussen is remembered as one of Nazi Germany's first Jewish victims.
by Avraham Broide (Jerusalem based translator and journalist. phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)
When is a corpse not a corpse? When it's still alive of course!
Determining the moment of death is a subject that has many doctors and rabbis at loggerheads. Doctors are anxious to push forward the moment of death in order to save lives with transplants, while rabbis argue that there is no point killing Peter in order to save Paul.
There was once a time when the rabbis fought a very different battle. During the 18th Century, many people thought it barbaric to bury a person too soon, as who knows, perhaps he was still alive. They preferred to wait for only certain determinant of death, physical decomposition, which generally begins after three days.
Rabbis, on the other hand, wanted to bury people before nightfall, due to the Torah's command regarding a criminal whose body was hanged up as a warning (Devarim 21:23), "Do not leave his body overnight on the gallows, for you shall certainly bury him on that day." As the Shulchan Aruch" (Yoreh Dei'ah 357:1) rules, "It is forbidden to leave the dead [unburied] overnight unless it was for his honor, to bring him a coffin and shrouds."
During 5532/1772 things came to a head when the Mecklenburg Province of Germany outlawed prompt burial and legislated that three days must pass beforehand. When German rabbis raised a protest, Moses Mendelssohn was called on to intercede and he promptly found sources that seemed to support the government measure.
For example, a mishnah in Masseches Semachos relates how someone recovered from a death like coma and lived for another 25 years. Because of this, the mishnah says, people buried their dead in catacombs, instead of burying them underground, so that they could visit them for several days afterwards and ascertain their death status. If the corpse yelled or tapped on the walls of his stone coffin, there was still a chance to yank him out. Practically speaking, Mendelssohn had a point, as it is not unheard of for people to suddenly wake up and find themselves in a morgue.
One example of such pseudo-death may be Alexander's passing in 3439/323 BCE, when his body reportedly remained fresh several days afterwards. Some medical men theorize that he may have been suffering from a paralyzing disease.
The Yaavetz rejected Mendelssohn's proofs. Regarding the fear that Jews who determine death as the moment a person ceases breathing might determine someone as dead when he is really alive, the Yaavetz insisted that Moshe Rabeinu received this criteria of death at Sinai or that it is revealed in the verse, Kol asher ruach chayim be'apo (Whatever has the breath of life in its nose), from where the rabbis derive that before digging someone out of a ruin on Shabbos, we check whether he is breathing or not.
As for Mendelssohn's proof from masseches Semachos, the Yaavetz writes that such things happen so rarely that we need not be concerned about them on a practical basis. It is as rare, he says, as the case of Choni Ha'eme'agel who slept for seventy years!
This controversy led to one of the first formal move of Jews away from Jewish custom and law.
When the Berlin Chevra Kaddisha refused to succumb to the Maskilim's demands, some Maskilim, including Mendolssohn's son, Josef, opened up their own burial organization called the "Gesellschaft der Freunde" ("Society of Friends") in Berlin, with branches in Breslau and Konigsberg, which delayed burying the dead and eventually adopted many other non-Jewish funeral customs as well.
Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know) From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)
by Avraham Broide (Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)
The Chelm people laugh at was a parallel universe of a real Chelm where Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews everywhere else.
You want to know the truth? Chelm was really a perfectly normal town, practically indistinguishable from hundreds of similar shtetls peppered over Poland and Russia. So how did that vibrant little community become buried beneath a mountain of jokes? The Chelm Memorial Book published after World War II devotes some pages analyzing this weighty question.
According one opinion, the Chelm humor tradition, like so much Jewish humor, was rooted in tragedy.
The story began with an Easter Church procession in 1580 that degenerated into an anti-Semitic riot. Ruffians attacked the Jewsin the middle of their Passover prayers and a number of them barricaded themselves with shutters on the shul's roof. Afterwards, people joked that the Chelm Jews had installed shutters on their roofs instead of in their windows and, for better or worse, the town's reputation was sealed.
According to another theory, people picked on Chelm because in Slavic cholem means a fool.
Most likely, however, people picked on Chelm for the same reason other nations picked on particular towns as the butt of their jokes. The ancient Greeks picked on Abdera, the Syrians picked on Sidon, the English picked on the village of Gotham, the Dutch picked on Compen, the Arabs picked on Chevron, and Germany picked on number of towns including Shilburg. In fact, the 1597 publication of a Yiddish book titled, “Shilberg, a Short History,” provided much of the raw material later utilized for Chelm jokes.
For a while, Chelm jokes were an oral tradition. They first appeared in print after a small booklet printed in Vilna in 1867 included a chapter titled “the Wisdom and Witticism of a Certain Town Ch.,” and from then on Chelm jokes were fruitful and multiplied.
In the fullness of time, the real Chelm morphed into a full-fledged parallel universe.
Chelm was once a regular town, it was said, until one day when the angel that dishes out men's souls winged over the place hauling a sack of foolish souls on his back. Now, as everyone knows, Chelm lies adjacent to a sharp peaked mountain. This ripped open the sack, the souls plunged downwards, and ever since the town was never quite the same.
Despite their intellectual shortcomings, the Chelm Jews were of a different stamp than run-of-the-mill fools. Their idiocy stemmed not from lack of intelligence but from their insistence on being over clever, a trait known in Yiddish as being an uber chacham.
For example, the town's charity box was hung high beneath the shul's ceiling as a precaution against theft. When people complained that they could not reach there to drop in their donations, the town's wise men hit on the solution of propping up a ladder beneath to enable people to climb there. Chelmites always knew how to leap between the horns of dilemma.
When the town sexton complained that he was getting too old to make his early morning rounds rapping on people's shutters to wake them for prayers, the city elders collected the populace's shutters and piled them up in his house. Now he could rap them without having to stir outdoors. In his earlier years, when he complained that his shoes got filthy trudging through the town's muddy alleyways in execution of his duties, the town had appointed four strapping youngsters to carry him around the streets on a door.
The real Chelm was a different place altogether where perfectly regular Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews in other towns.
Jews first arrived in this small Polish town that lies 40 miles south-east of Lublin in about 1300, in order to wheel and deal with traders passing through on international trading routes between the Black and Baltic seas. Come to think of it, Chelm wasn't such a miserable place after all. By the middle of the 16th Century it boasted a population of 371 at a time when even the capital of Cracow only had 1,800 Jews. It also had its own yeshiva and a cadre of prominent rabbis and sages.
By the outbreak of World War II, Chelm had a population of about 15,000 Jews, including refugees. Most of them perished. Although the Chelm district lies right on the Eastern border of Poland next to Russia, and was the first Polish district liberated from the Nazis in 5704/1944, by then it was too late; most of Chelm's Jews had perished in the nearby Sobidor Extermination Camp and those who struggled back were greeted with hatred.
But the legacy of Chelm humor lives on, helping to soften the hard bumps of life's road.
