Rabbi Marcus Solomon, who earlier this month was the first Orthodox rabbi in Australia to be selected as a Supreme Court justice, was sworn in on Wednesday to the Supreme Court of Western Australia. Rabbi Solomon, a resident of Perth, also serves as the Rav of the Dinaella shul and is active in the broader Jewish community. “I wish to conclude with an old Jewish custom,” Rabbi Solomon said at the end of the ceremony.

Seven UK Jews died of the coronavirus in the past three weeks, according to the Board of Deputies, The Jewish Chronicle reported. The total number of Jewish COVID fatalities in the UK is now 915. The Board compiles the Jewish COVID death toll from data gleaned from Chevrei Kadisha throughout the country. Starting in mid-April when the death toll stood at 903, the British Jewish community had a reprieve of two months with no COVID fatalities. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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Posters went up in the more Chareidi sections of Beit Shemesh accusing United Hatzalah of transgressing the prohibition of yichud by training female EMTs to respond to medical emergencies. Extremist elements in the Chareidi community of Ramat Beit Shemesh posted the pashkvillim that declared that having women respond to emergencies, causes issues of Yichud (seclusion). The posters went on further to claim that female EMTs are committing a double sin both by being involved in Sherut Leumi (national service) and also by transgressing “Abizrahu D’Giluy Arayos”. United Hatzalah refutes these claims as they utilize volunteers over the age of 21 and does not have national service volunteers responding to emergencies as EMTs.

As the world watched the searing images of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, some people were concerned about the fate of Zebulon Simantov, 62, the last Jew remaining in the country. As YWN reported in April, Simantov had been planning on moving to Israel after Sukkos due to his fear of the Taliban’s return but apparently has changed his mind, saying on Tuesday that despite having the opportunity to flee to the US or Israel, he is not interested. Simantov was a successful businessman in the past, selling carpets and jewelry, but when the Taliban first came into power in 1996, they stole all his goods, beat him up, threw him into prison and pressured him to convert to Islam.

An appellate court in Poland on Monday rejected a lawsuit brought against two Holocaust scholars in a case that has been closely watched because it was expected to serve as a precedent for research into the highly sensitive area of Polish behavior toward Jews during World War II. Poland is governed by a nationalist conservative party that has sought to promote remembrance of Polish heroism and suffering during the wartime German occupation of the country. The party also believes that discussions of Polish wrongdoing distort the historical picture and are unfair to Poles. The Appellate Court of Warsaw argued in its explanation that it believed it’s not the responsibility of the courts to judge scholarly research.

The Chinese state-owned news agency Xinhua published a caricature of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with appalling anti-Semitic imagery. The caricature, which accompanied a report about a meeting between Blinken and WHO head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Kuwait last month, depicts Blinken with a grossly enlarged nose, devil horns and an American flag cape symbolizing his “power over the world” holding a “COVID origin” report. “This anti-Semitic tweet from Chinese state media is despicable,” the American Jewish Committee (AJC) stated. “Xinhua’s depiction of [Blinken], a Jew and stepson of a Holocaust survivor, utilizes overt tropes of anti-Semitism, including a large nose, devil horns, and accusations of global control.

A British radio host who made numerous vile anti-Semitic statements over four years of broadcasts was sentenced to 32 months of jail last week and banned from broadcasting for ten years, Jewish News reported. Graham Hart, 69, of Penponds, Camborne, pleaded guilty to eight counts of inciting racial hatred in June. His comments included comparing Jewish people to rats, calling Hitler “the greatest man of the twentieth century,” and denying the Holocaust. He also labeled Jews who “run everything” as “filth, evil, and not of this world,” and said “it isn’t just the white people who hate the Jews … everyone hates the Jews.” His comments also incited murder as he said: “The Jews have got to go down, they’ve just got to go down. Let’s get rid of the Jews.

Eighteen frum girls from New York were forced to spend Shabbos in Europe after they were kicked off flights twice from Amsterdam to New York for unclear reasons. Hamodia reported on the incident after speaking to askanim in New York, relatives of the girls, and other passengers on the plane. The girls were part of a larger group of 56 girls who were on a tour of Jewish sites in Europe with Rebbetzin Shulamis Sternbuch of Israel. When the girls arrived in Amsterdam at the start of their trip on July 20, a KLM/Delta security official at the airport accused the girls of violating mask guidelines on the plane and threatened they would be blacklisted. The girls denied the claims, saying they wore masks at all times, removing them only for eating.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected the Fixsler family’s appeal to save Alta’s life. The ECHR sent a letter to the Fixlers on Monday evening stating that it agrees with the decision of the UK court mandating the withdrawal of life support from 2-year-old Alta. The decision was made despite the fact that Israeli and US hospitals have expressed willingness to take responsibility for Alta’s care and the parents are willing to transfer her at no cost to the UK. Last week, the US State Department granted a non-immigrant visa for Alta to be assessed and possibly treated in the US. Alta’s parents are Israeli citizens and her father is a US citizen.

Russian police in the Krasnodar region of Russia near the Black Sea formulated an elaborate ruse to arrest members of an anti-Semitic criminal gang by faking the murder of a rabbi, the UK’s Times reported. In order to monitor the activities of the Citizens of the USSR group, a pro-communist group that believes that the Soviet Union still exists and still hasn’t accepted the demise of the communist Russian regime, undercover policemen infiltrated the group. One of the undercover policemen, who presented himself in the gang as a hitman, was asked by two members to murder a local rabbi, Rabbi Yury Tkach. The undercover cop agreed on the condition that he would be appointed as the head of the group’s “KGB” directorate for Krasnodar.