By Chaim Gold “I did not know what learning just a half hour of Mishnah Berurah could do to my life! At the beginning of the machzor a friend of mine told me that a chaburah was forming in our shul and asked if I could join. After a bit of cajoling, I agreed. What can I say? Now, from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to sleep, every action is done through the prism of the halachos that I have learned in Daf HaYomi B’Halacha! I started with the halachos of waking up in the morning and then I learned so much about tzitzis and tefillin, kriyas shema – halachos that I had never known.” Those were the words of R’ Yosef P of Lakewood, a Daf HaYomi B’Halacha learner who has been learning as part of the Daf HaYomi B’Halacha ever since the start of Chelek Aleph.

Mala, a Burmese worker in the Chabad house in Bangkok, Thailand, recently sang Vehi Sheamda together with dozens of Chabad bochurim. The amusing video was published on the Hebrew-language Chabad COL website. The bochurim are in Thailand to assist in the preparation of the huge public sedarim offered at Chabad houses throughout the country on Pesach. Chabad shliach in Bangkok Rav Nechemia Wilhelm spoke to Artuz Sheva last month about the new Chabad Center in Bangkok. “After so many years in Thailand, finally we have our own place, a place for the Jewish people where everybody can come here and make himself at home,” he said. “Every year in Thailand we used to have about 5,000 guests. Now after COVID, we have much more.

Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested on Thursday morning and charged with espionage by the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), the successor to the KGB, the first time Russia has accused a foreign journalist of espionage since the Cold War. According to a Wall Street Journal report published on Friday, Gershkovich, 31, is the American son of Soviet-born Jews who emigrated to the US in the late seventies. His mother, Ella, fled the Soviet Union when she was 22 via Israeli documents [there was no further explanation of this fact], and his father, Mikhail, left the Soviet Union in the same Jewish migration wave. The two met in Detroit and later moved to New Jersey, where they raised Evan and his older sister.

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Gedolim Urge the Daily Learning of Mussar in Dirshu’s Kinyan Chochma Program
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Chaim Topol, z’l, a leading Israeli actor who charmed generations of theatergoers and movie-watchers with his portrayal of Tevye, the long-suffering and charismatic milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof,” passed away on Thursday morning in Tel Aviv at the age of 87. A recipient of two Golden Globe awards and nominee for both an Academy Award and a Tony Award, Topol long has ranked among Israel’s most decorated actors. Up until a few years ago, he remained involved in theater and said he still fielded requests to play Tevye. Topol got his start in acting in a theatrical troupe in the Israeli army in the 1950s.

Chief Rabbi of Tehran Rav Yehudah Gerami organized a festive Purim party for dozens of Jewish children. During the party, Rav Gerami asked the children questions about the Megillah and gave out prizes. As seen in the videos below, the party was packed with excited children and some exhausted-looking parents. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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Jews throughout the world celebrated Purim on Monday evening, including the Jews in modern-day Persia, otherwise known as the Islamic Republic. Like every year, Chief Rabbi of Tehran Rav Yehudah Gerami davened at the kevarim of Mordechai and Esther in the city of Hamadan before Purim. In the video below, Jews in Tehran can be seen in shul after Kriyas HaMegillah reciting Shoshanas Yaakov in the Persian nusach. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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Jews from the Jewish kehilla in Djerba, Tunisia on Monday, Taanis Esther, carried out its minhag of hanging an effigy of Haman and his ten sons from a tree and burning it. Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia, which some call “the island of Kohanim,” has housed a Jewish kehilla with an unusually high percentage of descendants of Kohanim for over 2,500 years. There were approximately 100,000 Jews, or 15% of the entire population of Tunisia, living in Djerba in 1940, but currently, there are only about 1,000 Jews living on the island. It is the largest Jewish community in Tunisia and the second largest in the Arab world, after the Jewish kehilla in Casablanca, Morocco, which has between 1,500 to 2,000 members. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

A terrible tragedy occurred when a fire broke out overnight Wednesday in a home in Monroe, near Kiryat Yoel. A large number of fire and rescue services arrived at the scene. Sadly, after they managed to extinguish the fire, they discovered that a frum couple and their seven-year-old daughter had perished in the fire. The cause of the fire is not yet known. This is a developing story. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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