A Christian family, including a father and son posing as Rabbanim in the frum community in Phoenix, Arizona, were recently outed by the Beyneynu anti-missionary organization. The Isaacson family (previously Dawson), who is is in the process of making aliyah to Israel, have infiltrated several frum communities across the US, including Dallas and Houston in Texas, Portland, Oregon and Wisconsin, Milwaukee before settling in Phoenix. The father and son, Michael and Calev, have served on Batei Din and performed giyur, marriages and divorces, carried out multiple taharos of niftarim and wrote mezuzahs and Megilllahs and at least one Sefer Torah. They have led tefillos, blown the Shofar and hosted frum guests for Shabbos meals.

The Polish witnesses of the German crime in Wojslawice lived for decades with the memories of their Jewish neighbors executed in 1942. They remembered a meadow that flowed with blood, a child who cried out for water from underneath a pile of bodies, arms and legs that still moved days after the execution. In the years that followed, those who had seen the crime shared their knowledge with their children, warning them to stay away from the spot behind the Orthodox church where some 60 Jews, among them 20 children, were murdered on that October day.

A watercolor by Vincent van Gogh that was seized by the Nazis during World War II will be sold next month at auction in New York, where it is expected to fetch a price of $20 million or more, the auction house Christie’s announced. Christie’s is auctioning the 1888 work, “Wheatstacks,” after facilitating negotiations between the Texas oilman’s heirs who own it now and the heirs of two Jewish art collectors who owned it at different times before it was looted by the Nazis. Details of the settlement are confidential, a Christie’s spokesperson said. “Wheatstacks” will be auctioned Nov. 11 along with other artworks from the collection of Edwin L. Cox, a Texas oilman who died last year at age 99. The work depicts three haystacks towering over harvest workers on a bright summer day.

Hungarian Ambassador to Belgium Tamás Iván Kovács inaugurated a new consulate in Antwerp on Thursday and appointed a Charedi man as the Honorary Consul. Ari Epstein, who serves as the CEO of the Antwerp World Diamond Center, will serve as the Consul in the Flanders region, advancing economic and cultural ties between Hungary and Belgium. There is a large population of chassidic Jews in Antwerp and over 50% of them have Hungarian roots. One of the first steps that Mr. Epstein took was to launch the World Institute for Hungarian Jews inside the new consulate. The institute will advance ties between the Jewish communities in Antwerp and Hungary. A new book written by Rav Aryeh Tessler on the connection between the Jewish communities in the two countries was introduced at the ceremony.

The contestants on a Jeopardy episode that aired this week were stumped by a photo of cholent, JTA reported. The photo was a clue in the “Sabbath” category for $400: “Exodus 35:3 bans doing this on the Sabbath, hence the Jewish dish ‘cholent,’ which can go on the stove Friday and cook until Saturday lunch.” Contestants offered guesses of “What’s cooking?” and “What’s work?” but failed to come up with the specific prohibition the photo was illustrating. In the end, Mayim Bialik, an Orthodox Jew who is serving as the show’s temporary host, explained the answer: “What is ‘lighting a fire?’ And the word ‘cholent’ is from the French ‘chaud lent,’ [meaning] ‘cooks a long time.’” The contestants obviously did not brush up on the Lamed Tes Melachos in preparation for the show.

Pittsburgh police officers who responded to the synagogue building during a shooting three years ago that killed 11 people told a judge Tuesday that defendant Robert Bowers made several references to killing Jews. Officer Stephen Mescan was the first to testify in what is expected to be a two-day hearing into whether prosecutors will be allowed to use at trial certain statements made by Bowers the day of the October 2018 massacre. Federal prosecutors played dozens of snippets from police radio transmissions from the scene, including one in which Mescan said: “Suspect is talking about ‘all these Jews need to die.’” Mescan told U.S. District Judge Donetta W. Ambrose that Bowers made other similar statements that day.

A one-day conference on the receding memory of the Holocaust was held Wednesday in Sweden with participants focusing on how social media is contributing to a rise in antisemitism around the world. “There is a dangerous rise of antisemitism all over the world, mainly because of the new social media,” said Nachman Shai, Israel’s diaspora affairs minister, upon arrival at the International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance in Malmo, southern Sweden. Social media are “inciting and increasing the level of hate, and they have to take responsibility for that not to remain so-called neutral or objective,” Shai said. European Council President Charles Michel said the 27-nation European Union “must lead the fight against antisemitism.” “Remembering is not enough.

The burial of a Holocaust denier in the gravesite of a Jewish music professor has caused an uproar in Germany. The top German government official tasked with combating antisemitism, Commissioner for Jewish Life Felix Klein, criticized the action Wednesday, joining expressions of disbelief from some of the country’s leading Jews. “This is obviously a very unfortunate mistake that happened here,” Klein told German news agency dpa. Several German news outlets have reported that known Holocaust denier Henry Hafenmayer was buried Friday at the Stahnsdorf cemetery just outside of Berlin. His ashes were interred in the plot where Max Friedlaender, a German-Jewish musicologist who lived from 1852 to 1934, was buried.

Israelis with relatives in the Lev Tahor cult, who are currently trying to reach Iran, are terrified of the possible consequences of hundreds of Jews congregated in an area frequented by ISIS terrorists, close to the Iranian border. As YWN reported, hundreds of Lev Tahor members are attempting to leave Guatemala and move to Iran. Their Israeli relatives have urgently appealed to Israel’s Foreign Ministry to intervene and US relatives of cult members are appealing to the US State Department. “If they reach the Iranian-Kurdistan border, it can lead to a mega political-security incident,” the relatives warned.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and United Nations Gilad Erdan responded on Monday to the Axios interview with the founders of Ben and Jerry’s aired on Sunday on HBO. “The ignorance and hypocrisy of Ben and his partner Jerry cries out to the heavens,” Erdan said. “Part of the definition of anti-Semitism is precisely to demand from Israel what isn’t demanded of any other country in the world, and Misters Ben and Jerry have no problem with their ice cream being sold to supporters of terrorism but they are boycotting Israel.” “So I will continue to work that as many states as possible put Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever on their blacklist until this despicable boycott is stopped,” Erdan said firmly.