In a first for a frum Jew in Switzerland, Jehuda Spielman is running in the upcoming elections for the municipal council in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, home to about 6,000 Jews. Speilman, only 26-years-old and an accountant by profession, grew up with 12 siblings in Zurich’s Wiedikon district. Now married and a father of a two-year-old, he still lives in the same district he hopes to represent. His campaign for office which he has called “Live and Let Live,” has garnered much attention from the press and Spielman has been running from interview to interview.

A 22-year-old white supremacist was sentenced Tuesday to life in federal prison for killing a woman and injuring three others when he burst into a Southern California synagogue in 2019, adding to a life sentence he received three months earlier in state court. John T. Earnest declined to speak in a courtroom full of victims, families and congregants. In state court, his attorney said he wanted to speak but a judge refused, saying he didn’t want to give a platform for his hate-filled speech. Earnest’s attorney, Ellis Johnston III, said his client acknowledged his actions were “inappropriate,” a statement that was greeted with skepticism by prosecutors. Peter Ko, a federal prosecutor, said Earnest’s expression of regret came shortly after the shooting in a phone call to someone else.

A staff member at a school in Washington D.C. was suspended on Friday after forcing third-grade children to reenact scenes from the Holocaust, including shooting victims and digging mass graves, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The report said that a staff member at Wakins Elementary School instructed children in library class to “dig their classmates’ mass graves and simulate shooting the victims,” an email from the school’s principal, MScott Berkowitz, to the third-graders’ parents said. She also assigned roles to students, including casting a Jewish student as Adolf Hitler and telling her to feign suicide at the end of the skit. One parent said that her son was told to pretend to be on a train to the concentration camp and then feign dying in a gas chamber.

Thirteen years after a horrifying terror attack at the Beis Chabad in Mumbai during which six Jews were brutally murdered, telephone wiretaps of the terrorists have been revealed in which they are heard specifically planning the attack on the Chabad house, The Jewish Chronicle reported. According to the recordings, the terrorists specifically sought a Jewish site to attack as part of their plan to hit a number of different sectors in order to receive as much media attention as possible. Israeli filmmaker Oren Rosenfeld was informed by Indian government sources about the recordings while shooting a documentary about the Jewish community in Mumbai. “They’ve got recordings from the terrorists where they specifically mention the Chabad House as a target,” Rosenfeld told the JC.

The Jewish community in Buenos Aires is reeling following the discovery of the murder of a member of the community Shaul Chilo, 77, z’l, on Friday, B’Chadrei Chareidim reported. Chilo’s housekeeper and daughter found him lifeless in the bathroom of his home with his legs bound together and alerted the police. Following an initial police investigation, the police believe that he died of strangulation. Footage from the home’s security cameras shows thieves entering the home without breaking down the front door, instead seamlessly opening the door with a magnetic card. Chilo’s friends and acquaintances say he was a beloved member of the community. He was the father-in-law of Yehoshua Ahurdai, the director of the local Chevra Kadisha.

Police are asking for the public’s help after releasing a video of a suspect in the killing of Canadian drug company billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife four years ago. Toronto Det. Sgt. Brandon Price said Tuesday the suspect spends “a very suspicious amount of time” in the immediate area of the Sherman home around the time the Sherman’s were murdered. Price provided the public with security camera footage of a man or woman walking down a sidewalk with a hat who seems to kick up his or her right boot as they takes each step. The video does not show the suspect’s face. Price estimated the person is 5-6 to 5 foot-9 tall. Police are asking for the public’s help to identify the suspect.

A Nobel laureate in literature, Jewish students and other prominent figures in Austria want the country’s new interior minister removed from office because of allegedly antisemitic comments he made during a regional election campaign more than a decade ago. Gerhard Karner, who became interior minister a week ago when predecessor Karl Nehammer became Austria’s new chancellor, said Monday that he regrets what he said and wouldn’t say it now, but he rejected allegations of antisemitism.

Two rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit last week support the efforts of Chabad to recover seforim and manuscripts stolen by the Soviet Union and the Nazis, Collive reported on Wednesday. The Russian government has continuously refused to return the Jewish items despite multiple court orders. The seforim and manuscripts belonged to the Friediker Rebbe who was forced to escape from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution after he was condemned to death for spreading Yiddishkeit. During World War II, the Nazis seized the items and they were subsequently seized by the Soviet army after the Nazi defeat. The Soviets brought the stolen items to Moscow where they are holding them until today. Years ago, Chabad won a lawsuit in the U.S.

American journalist Danny Fenster, who was freed after nearly six months in jail in military-ruled Myanmar, arrived Tuesday in the United States for an emotional reunion with his family. Fenster, who was sentenced last week to 11 years of hard labor, was handed over Monday to former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, who helped negotiate the release. He is one of more than 100 journalists, media officials or publishers who have been detained since the military ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February. It’s been a “long time coming, a moment I had been imagining so intensely for so long,” a bearded and shaggy-haired Fenster said after landing in New York.

Reb Yosef Ben-Gaon, z’l, the head of the tiny Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt passed away recently at the age of 69, Kan News reported. Ben-Gaon davened at the Eliyahu Hanavi shul which was renovated in recent years by the Egyptian government. The magnificent Eliyahu Hanavi shul was closed in 2016 after the roof in the women’s section collapsed. In 2017, the Egyptian Antiquities Authority Ministry approved a $4 million renovation plan which was completed in 2020. It now has enough seats for 700 mispallelim, which of course remain empty, and is considered one of the largest shuls in the Middle East.