Q:
We believe that shidduchim are made in heaven; so what’s the principle in the gemara that you have to hurry up to find something good because שמא יקדמנו אחר – maybe somebody else might snatch the opportunity away from you (Mo’ed Katan 18b). If it’s ordained, it’s ordained; what’s there to worry about?
A:
This is an old question that is asked here constantly. And the answer is that when it comes to marriage, to a bashert, it’s ordained that you should have the opportunity. But you could lose the opportunity – in a couple of ways.

ANKARA (AP) – Turkey has captured a wife of the slain leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. Erdogan made the announcement while delivering a speech in the capital of Ankara but gave no other details. He did not say when or how the woman was […]

As the New York City Police Department announced on Tuesday that its hate crimes unit was investigating a series of attacks last Friday night against Orthodox Jews in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, a prominent leader of the community warned that the ongoing threat of antisemitic violence meant that “people in some neighborhoods are scared to leave their houses.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Rabbi Yaacov Behrman — the founder of the Brooklyn-based Jewish Future Alliance — said that the spate of attacks over the last two years against Orthodox Jews in the Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Borough Park neighborhoods were overwhelmingly perceived within the community as being spurred by antisemitic malice.

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Nita Lowey, who is retiring after 32 years in Congress, fields a question about her legacy as a Jewish lawmaker. No trouble there — she talks about Israel and her Jewish pride all the time. Then there’s one about her legacy as one of the pioneering women in Congress. That one goes […]

JERSEY CITY, NJ (AP) – Airbnb was dealt another setback in one of its most important markets Tuesday as voters in a New Jersey city just a few minutes by train from the tourist sights of Manhattan approved restrictions on short-term rental companies in a hard-fought referendum. The vote in Jersey City was lopsided in […]

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said on Monday that conditioning U.S. assistance to Israel is “wrong.”
“We have a $38 billion commitment over 10 years for military aid to Israel,” Nadler, who is the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, told Jewish Insider. “The Israelis need it for defense.”
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, said last week that such a contingency would be “absolutely outrageous.”
Nadler and Biden’s comments came as some 2020 Democrats have called for conditioning U.S. assistance to Israel on the Jewish state not fulfilling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign promise to annex parts of the West Bank.

Justice Department officials are trying to release in the coming weeks a potentially explosive inspector general report about the FBI’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.
One person involved in the discussions said the target date for the report’s release has been Nov. 20, but another indicated that the Justice Department is unlikely to deliver it by then, and that it is more likely to come after Thanksgiving because of the complicated and contentious mix of legal, classification and political issues at play.

A Minnesota elementary school was vandalized over the weekend with a swastika and other offensive graffiti.
Police in the town of Edina arrested an unnamed suspect on Monday who is not believed to have any direct affiliation with Concord Elementary School. The suspect was caught on security cameras.
“When an act of hatred occurs anywhere in Edina, it affects our entire community,” Edina Public Schools superintendent John Schultz wrote in an e-mail to district families. “We in Edina Public Schools are committed to creating a school culture where all feel welcome and respected.”

In the last few days, major American Jewish organizations sent President Donald Trump a plea to commute the parole of former spy Jonathan Pollard, so he can fully devote his time and care for his cancer-stricken wife, Esther.
Israel National News (INN) reported that each of Agudas Israel of America, the Orthodox Union, and the Coalition for Jewish Values sent their own petition to the president.
“We now plead on humanitarian grounds for the commutation of [Pollard’s] sentence and the termination of his parole,” Agudath Israel Executive Vice President Rabbi David Zwiebel wrote on behalf of his organization.

AMMAN – Israeli authorities have released two Jordanian citizens who’d been detained for two months and returned them to Jordan. Heba al-Labadi and Abdul Rahman Miri crossed the King Hussein Bridge back into Jordan on Wednesday. Israel arrested Labadi on Aug. 20 and Miri on Sep. 2. They were held in administrative detention, which allows […]