As Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro visited Iran over the weekend, a Venezuelan-owned cargo plane was detained by Argentine authorities at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires for alleged ties with Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, the London-based opposition website Iran International reported on Sunday morning. “The government detained in Ezeiza [Airport in Buenos Aires] a Venezuelan plane sanctioned by the United States and withheld the passport of five Iranian crew members,” Aníbal Fernández, Argentina’s security minister, tweeted on Saturday. Fernández’s tweet followed a leak from a local news website about the incident. The Emtrasur Cargo Boeing 747 was previously operated by Iran’s Mahan Airlines and has been sanctioned by the US since 2008 for its links to Iran’s Quds Force.

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com A woman who is in the process of a divorce had explained to her husband that her lawyer had told her that she should lie and say that her husband had physically abused her in order to gain an advantage in terms of custody and child support. The lawyer is ostensibly an observant Jew who is well-regarded in the community in which he resides. This example begs a number of questions:  How often do people lie?  Why do they lie? To whom do they lie? And most importantly, what can we do to make sure we and our children don’t fall victim to it as well?

Yediot Achranot on Tuesday revealed the drama behind the departure of the Chief Rabbi of Moscow HaRav Pinchas Goldschmidt from Moscow shortly after the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When HaRav Goldschmidt, who also serves as the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, arrived in Israel three months ago, there were already rumors flying that he fled Moscow due to the war. However, at the time, HaRav Goldschmidt issued an official statement saying that he was in Israel in order to tend to his ailing father. But at the same time, he said that he doesn’t know when he’ll be returning to Russia.

“The Jewish community in Russia as we knew it at the beginning of 2022 will never be the same,” one of the leaders of the Russian Jewish community recently told The Jerusalem Post. “It is so fragile, it’s literally crumbling apart.” According to the report, this leader is literally afraid for his life, speaking to the Post reporter from a secret apartment in central Israel. Although there was no one else in the room, he continued his comments in a whisper: “In the past two months, Putin has closed access to all independent press outlets. He’s tried to turn Russia into North Korea.” “All of the young professionals have left Russia, there’s a huge migration of hi-tech employees to other countries in enormous numbers.

Every Saturday, in secluded beach villas, hotel banquet halls and luxury apartment towers across Dubai, Jews arrive to worship at some of the world’s most hidden synagogues even as the United Arab Emirates encourages the dramatic growth and openness of its Jewish community. Plans to build a permanent sanctuary for Dubai’s fast-expanding congregation have sputtered to a standstill, Jewish leaders say. The new community is running up against hurdles that religious groups long have grappled with in this federation, where the state’s official religion of Islam is closely monitored, non-Muslim practice is controlled and religious buildings are limited.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr apologized to the Rav of Berlin Rabbi Yehudah Teichtal for the anti-Semitic incident last week in which all visibly Jewish passengers were banned from their connecting flight due to several Jews who refused to wear a mask. All the Jews in that specific group were banned but even worse was that even Jews traveling independently of that group were banned – over 130 Jews. “We apologize for what happened,” Spohr told Rabbi Teichtal via a 30-minute zoom conversation on Wednesday night. “This is not in line with our rules of communication and behavior.” “Antisemitism has no place in Lufthansa. What happened should not have happened. Our company represents a connection between people, cultures, and nations.

A group of chassidic tourists from Israel was astounded when they visited a beis kevaros in the Netherlands on Friday and discovered the kever of a Jew who lost his life in the Titanic disaster – on that very day 110 years ago. The group visited the cemetery this past Friday, the 28th of Nissan. The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, which coincided with the 28th of Nissan that year, the yahrzeit of Yaakov [Jakob] Birnbaum, z’l. Birnbaum, who was aboard the Titanic after spending Pesach with his family in Antwerp, was one of the 1,517 people who died in the disaster.  After his body was found in the sea 12 days later, his body was transferred to his family in Antwerp and he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Putte, Netherlands.

The daring rescue operations carried out by Chabad shlichim to evacuate Jews from the besieged city of Mariupol, which the Russians almost completely destroyed and is now under a renewed attack, were recently revealed in the Chabad weekly Kfar Chabad. In the lengthy article, Mariupol’s Chabad shaliach Rav Mendel Cohen and several survivors describe how Jews were extricated from the ruthless battlefield on the streets and brought to safety. The descriptions are appalling. Quite a few of the city’s Jews did not survive the inferno. Some died in horrible ways and some were buried hastily. But hundreds of them were miraculously saved via risky roundabout routes. The situation in Mariupol deteriorated so quickly that most people didn’t have a chance to flee before it was too late.

The caretakers of the Tree of Life synagogue intend to transform the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history and expand its mission. Newly released design plans show a revitalized complex housing a sanctuary, museum, memorial and center for fighting antisemitism — unified symbolically and physically with a dramatic skylight running the length of the structure. Organizers are also announcing plans Tuesday for a new Tree of Life nonprofit organization that would work with the similarly named congregation, oversee the building complex and offer education, museum exhibits and programming to counter hatred aimed at Jews and other groups. The synagogue building —- located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Pittsburgh — has been vacant since Oct. 27, 2018.

Jews began flocking to the kever of Reb Shayele in Krestiner, Hungary on the yahrtzeit seven years ago but this year’s yahrtzeit on Tuesday night and Wednesday, gimmel Iyar, is expected to break all records, with thousands already arriving in Hungary in the past week. Most Jews couldn’t travel to Hungary in the past two years due to COVID, and some say that this year, over 20,000 Jews are traveling to Hungary on dozens of charter flights from Israel, the US, and Europe. Travel agents told B’Chadrei Chareidim that there has never been such a high demand for tickets. The fact that no one can visit Ukraine at this point is also a factor in the large number of Jews traveling this year.