LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PazCast-159-Simcha-Tzedaka-12.mp3

For more info, email pazgold87@gmail.com.

The woman in 14A was settled into her window seat, buckled in for the flight home. Moments later, with a sudden burst of violence at 32,000 feet, the window was gone.
Fan blade No. 13 had broken off inside the left engine, hurling shrapnel against the side of the plane. Her window disappeared out over the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, and Jennifer Riordan’s upper body was sucked halfway through the opening left behind.

Rep. Duncan Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of misusing campaign funds after denying for more than a year that he and his wife had tapped a quarter of a million dollars in campaign money to pay for personal expenses.
Hunter, R-Calif., entered the plea on conspiring to misuse the funds – one of the four charges – in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. He will be sentenced March 17 and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
“I failed to monitor and account for my campaign spending. I made mistakes,” he said. He declined to answer reporters’ questions.

A key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has been indicted with seven others on charges of conspiring to funnel more than $3 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions for that year’s elections, the Justice Department announced.
George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates who acted as an intermediary for members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seeking to forge contacts in the Middle East, was charged with conspiring to make conduit campaign contributions and related offenses, prosecutors said. The charges were handed down in a 53-count indictment unsealed Tuesday in Washington.

By Rabbi Berach Steinfeld
In Bereishis (28:22) the posuk tells us that Yaakov promised Hashem if he will come home peacefully, he will give “aser aasrenu” (will give maaser.)
The gemara in Kesubos (50a) says that a person should not spend more than a chomesh, a fifth, for a mitzvah, hence the double lashon of aser aasrenu. This is brought down lehalacha in Rema, Yoreh Deah (249:1).
Why does the Torah use a double lashon of maaser and not straight out use the language of chomesh? The Shita Mekubetzes in Kesubos (50a) answers that it is better to give the money in a staggered way rather than giving it all at once. It is preferable to give a dollar one thousand times to different poor people than give one poor person the sum of one thousand dollars.

PYONGYANG (AP) — North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un has taken a second ride on a white horse to a sacred mountain in less than two months. The Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday released photos showing Kim riding a white horse to snow-covered Mount Paektu along with his wife and other officials, also […]

Sen. Kamala Harris swiped back at President Trump on Tuesday after he sent a tweet remarking on her decision to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary race.
“Don’t worry, Mr. President. I’ll see you at your trial,” Harris tweeted, referencing the House’s impeachment investigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Her tweet came in response to Trump’s own message saying it was “too bad” the California Democrat was forced to withdraw from the 2020 White House race.
“Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!” Trump tweeted.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

President Trump trolled Sen. Kamala Harris on Tuesday after she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary race.
“Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!” Trump tweeted.
The president was responding to a tweet from Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign aide, who mocked Harris’s departure from the primary field.
“Another one bites the dust. Guess it’s not as easy as everyone thought,” said Lewandowski.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

A naturalized U.S. citizen who was a member of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison Tuesday for gathering intelligence on potential sites for terrorist attacks in New York City.
Ali Kourani, a 35-year-old native of Lebanon, was the first member of the Islamic Jihad Organization, an arm of Hezbollah, to be convicted and sentenced in the United States, prosecutors said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Kourani was already under investigation when he sought out the FBI in 2017 and offered to work as an informant in support of the bureau’s counterterrorism efforts, but prosecutors said he misled investigators.

Phone-call records disclosed in the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry report released Tuesday show extensive contact between President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and the White House during key moments of the Ukraine saga.
The call records provide powerful circumstantial evidence that Giuliani was coordinating with the White House on his Ukraine gambit, something Giuliani has previously acknowledged. The records also show contact between a Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas, and one of Trump’s key defenders in Congress, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.