Rabbi Moshe Margaretten of Brooklyn, the head of the non-profit Tzedek Association, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenzsky in Kyiv on Wednesday evening. The meeting was arranged by the president’s father, Oleksandr Zelensky, who has been impressed by Margaretten’s humanitarian work, including assisting Ukrainian refugees and sending dozens of ambulances to Ukraine. During the meeting, Rabbi Margaretten conveyed warm regards from several US senators who promised that they would support the transfer of additional aid to Ukraine. Margaretten also gave a gift to Zelensky – a silver mezuzah engraved with his name.

A British man last week was sentenced to prison for 16 years after being found guilty for killing two Israelis and injuring three others in a hit-and-run in Ramsgate, Kent in August. Nitesh Bissendary, 30, initially fled the scene of the accident but later returned to the scene in order to retrieve the cocaine from his car. He was found to have been driving under the influence of cocaine. The jury, who was informed that Bissendary had been previously convicted of driving under the influence of cocaine, unanimously found him guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and causing injury by dangerous driving. Noga Hirschfeld, 37, a’h, who lived in Cambridge with her family and was five weeks pregnant at the time of the crash, was killed along with her father, Prof.

Vladislav Shein, z’l, a 21-year-old member of the Jewish kehilla in Dnipro, Ukraine was killed last month at the war front. “The Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine mourns the death of a hero,” a statement from the federation said. “He was sent to the front and there he sacrificed his life for the independence and freedom of Ukraine.” The news of his death reached the Jewish kehilla only in the past few days, and since then, the limmud Torah and the recital of Kaddish in several shuls have been dedicated l’illui nishmaso. His friends said that Vladislav registered as a volunteer already in the first days of the war. From time to time, when he went on leave, he would come to shul, put on tefillin and daven.

The Chabad house in Abuja, Nigeria, led by Rabbi Israel and Haya Ozan, held an event celebrating its tenth anniversary, dedicating a new wing of its Beis Chabad modeled on 770. A Hachnasas Sefer Torah l’illui nishmas HaGaon HaRav Chaim Kanievsky, z’tl was celebrated as part of the event. The Sefer Torah was donated by the philanthropist Reb Dov Ziskin of New York. The event was attended by shluchei Chabad throughout Africa, including the Ivory Coast and Ghana, as well as shluchim from the US, members of the local Jewish kehilla, and even local non-Jews. The singers Amir Dadon and Micha Shitrit were brought in especially from Israel to sing for the crowd during the celebration and seudas mitzvah. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

Australia on Monday announced a $1 million reward for information on the 40-year-old unsolved cases of the bombings of two Jewish targets, The Guardian reported. On December 23, 1982, a bomb exploded in front of the Israeli consulate in Sydney, injuring two people. Later on the same day, a bomb planted in a car in the parking lot of the Jewish Hakoah Club exploded but fortunately, it did not detonate properly and no one was injured. The bomb was believed to have been intended to destroy the entire building, which at the time was full of hundreds of people for a Maccabiah event. Investigators believe that the attacks, the first international terrorist attacks in Australia, were carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

In the course of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim in New York, HaRav Shmuel Kaminetsky, the Chief Rabbi of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, revealed that thanks to the intervention of HaRav Berel Lazar, Russian forces avoided attacking his city throughout the war. According to the report in the newspaper Merkaz HaInyanim, HaRav Lazar, the Chief Rabbi of Russia, made a personal request to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Dnipro be spared from attacks due to the presence of a large Jewish kehilla there.

Many Jews from Ukrainian cities now in Russian-occupied areas are worried about their relatives who remained behind, JTA reported. Many left behind elderly parents who could not or would not leave when their children did. “We can’t talk about the war,” said Moshe, whose elderly mother is in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine that has been occupied by the Russians since early in the war. “I don’t want to make things difficult for her. I think that people are listening in.” Moshe is currently in Vinnytsia, a town in western Ukraine. “She doesn’t want to leave,” he adds. “It is not because the Russians are there now that she wants to stay.

Iran’s former ambassador to Mexico and Australia Mohammad-Hassan Ghadiri-Abyaneh said in an interview that Jewish women are forbidden from marrying non-Jewish men unless they’re wealthy so they can transfer the money to the Jews. The interview, rife with classic anti-Semitic themes of Jews controlling world banks, politics, and the media, was aired on Iran’s Ofogh TV a day after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. It was translated for the Western public by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Ghadiri-Abyaneh claimed that the Jews use the same tactics with the royal family in England – asserting that Prince William’s wife, Kate Middleton, is Jewish.

CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an interview with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday in which he refused to acknowledge the truth of the Holocaust, saying it needs “to be investigated and researched” whether it actually happened. He also denied Israel’s right to exist, calling it a “false regime,” and said that the Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel are “accomplices to their crimes.” CBS journalist Lesley Stahl interviewed Raisi last Tuesday at the presidential compound in Tehran – his first interview with a Western interviewer. Stahl wrote afterward: “I was told how to dress, not to sit before he did, and not to interrupt him. We were given one hour for the interview.

Israel’s Ambassador in Moscow Alexander Ben-Tzvi held a meeting last week with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov on the issue of Jews gathering in Uman for Rosh Hashanah. Ben-Tzvi informed Bogdanov that although Israel issued travel warnings to Ukraine and Ukrainian officials warned Israeli not to come, there are already several thousand Israelis in Uman. Israel’s Channel 12 News reported that Bogdanov told Ben-Tzvi that Russia won’t guarantee the welfare of the Jews in Uman. “This is a real danger,” Bogdanov said. “Russia cannot guarantee the Israelis’ safety.” Nevertheless, Bogdanov asked for further information about the Israeli presence in Uman so that he could pass it on to the relevant authorities in the Russian army.