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A Second Look into An evening in Manhattan graced by Gedolim & philanthropists  to kickoff support for Rav Aharon Asayag’s lifesaving work.

An OP-ED by Yisroel Besser
At a time of year in which reminders are so important and everybody’s looking for messages, Klal Yisroel got such a heartening, refreshing reminder on Wednesday night. 
Earlier this week Torah Umesorah started their annual campaign, a campaign with an ambitious goal of $10 million dollars needed to fund an umbrella organization that carries 400,000 kinderlach, in over 800 schools. 
An organization that inspires, encourages, motivates, trains, and bolsters the efforts of our most precious national resource – our mechanchim and mechanchos. Not just them, but school personnel at every rung of the ladder. From Hanhallah, to lay leaders, to the staff, to the support staff, everybody benefits from the efforts and endeavors of Torah Umesorah. 

The Twenty third dinner of Yeshiva K’tana of Waterbury took place on Sunday, January 8th and was a smashing success! Close to 400 people came to celebrate “an evening of expansion”. The dinner highlighted a purchase of a second campus to accommodate much growth in the community along with the expansion of services and programming within the school.
 

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It is the dirty secret that everyone knows but few are ready to discuss publicly. The secret is the exponential increase of antisemitism in America today. While overt antisemitism was once reduced to fringes of discourse, today it has become almost acceptable in quarters of the far right and sadly even more so on the progressive left. 
It has become acceptable in universities to marginalize Jews and discriminate against them, using Israel is a convenient scapegoat by claiming to be anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish.  
Even worse, prominent entertainers and sports figures feel comfortable spewing the most vile, antisemitic tropes without being ostracized from civilized company.  

We can only imagine the difficulties people in Ukraine are facing.
“Whatever the news network is telling you, it’s only a fraction of what’s going on. People are left with nothing. The devastation is rampant,” shared Rabbi Zushe Abelsky, director of Chabad of Moldova. “We must bring every ounce of light that we can to these people. They are depending on us!”
As the situation in Ukraine kept escalating, more and more Jews from the cities of Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, and other areas in Ukraine arrived in Moldova as a stop in order to continue their destination in Europe or Israel.

Although the words “historic” and “unprecedented” lost their credibility, thrown into news items like the wind-swept snow in the frigid streets of Vilna, I am confident that on this occasion, those words are true. The Dirshu Mission to Vilna and Siyum celebration of the second cycle of Daf HaYomi B’Halacha, was truly historic and unprecedented.
The mission began as the Gedolei Torah and Lomdei Torah from all sects of klal Yisrael stepped off the buses in downtown Vilna, and inhaled the air, saturated with Torah for six centuries. 
The American and European groups then set out to the kever of the Gr”a, and the group from Eretz Yisrael traveled across the Belarus border to Radin.

“You don’t have to wait for the siyum to come aboard Dirshu’s Daf HaYomi B’Halacha program! You can experience how learning daily halacha transforms your life by jumping into hilchos megillah and Purim and completing all the halachos of Purim before Purim this year! What a way to get started, by being engaged in a dovor b’ito, learning halachos in their right time!” These were the words of Rabbi Avigdor Bernstein, a senior member of Hanhalas Dirshu, advocating that new Daf HaYomi B’Halacha learners start right now!

Recently, after a revelation of horrific events involving Chaim Walder, frum Jewry is faced with many shailohs regarding the proper way to handle it. In this episode of Headlines, Dovid Lichtenstein delves deeply into the topic with leading psychologists and Poskim, answering questions such as:
-Do the rules change when a public figure and role model is involved in a scandal?
-How much evidence do you need before you publish accusations, especially when there is a danger to the community?
-Does the community owe a responsibility to hold the perpetrator responsible to ensure that the victims have justice and to deter such conduct by others?

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The first of the ten monthly tests in the Dirshu Kinyan Sheviis program during this shemitta year was held this past Cheshvan… and the turnout was nothing short of awe-inspiring! The program is being run in conjunction with the Siach Emunah organization headed by Rav Chaim Kanievsky. Thousands of people, from Yeshiva bachurim to elderly septuagenarians and even octogenarians flocked to Dirshu testing sites throughout Eretz Yisrael to take the test. Dirshu had been prepared for a significant turnout, but the sheer volume took them by surprise.