Israel’s inoculation campaign has received a significant boost in the charedi sector, with Rav Chaim Kanievsky declaring that unvaccinated teachers aren’t welcome in his community.
Rav Chaim has now unequivocally thrown his weight behind the government’s vaccination push, telling coronavirus czar Salman Zarka late Tuesday that he wants principals to suspend teachers who aren’t vaccinated.
“A teacher or an educator who hasn’t been vaccinated won’t come to teach,” said Rav Chaim, suggesting that vaccines fulfill the Jewish value of safeguarding life.

The Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt at the U.S. House Chamber during the events taking place at the Capitol on Jan. 6 will reveal his identity publicly in an interview Thursday.
The exclusive interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt will be the first time the police officer, whose identity has not been revealed since the shooting, has spoken out publicly about shooting Babbitt while she and other protesters were outside the glass doors to the Speaker’s Lobby at the Capitol, the network said in a statement Wednesday.

COVID-19 cases are falling in many of the original delta-variant hot spots in the U.S. That means the rest of the country could soon follow, dodging the mass hospitalizations and surging deaths seen recently in Florida and the Deep South.
Maybe.
The U.S. is recording more than 1,000 deaths a day, a count that has more than tripled in a month. But in Arkansas and Missouri, where the delta surge began, the seven-day average of cases is down 12% from the peak, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Florida and Louisiana — the second phase of the U.S. delta wave — are starting to see similar declines. Cases are climbing in other states, but the pace has slowed.

A chumash belonging to a Jewish family in Nazi GrandchGermany has made its way back to its descendants after decades of being passed from collector to collector.
The chumash originally belonged to Eduard and Ernestine Leiter, who had to leave their home due to the growing persecution in Nazi Germany and later died in a concentration camp in Poland. Now, over 80 years later, researchers and historians have traced the couple’s lineage and returned the book to the family, according to the Washington Post.

Earlier this month, Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten wrote a column headlined, “You can’t make me eat these foods,” about his distaste for various cuisines, products, and spices — Old Bay, balsamic vinegar, anchovies, sweet pickles, and so on. (Listen, when you have weekly deadlines, you do what you must.) Weingarten wrote his column, as humorists often do, in a self-deprecating tone, casting himself as a troglodytic contrarian.
One of the cuisines Weingarten mocked was Indian food — praising the subcontinent for its glorious contributions to the world but joking about his distaste for curry.

The “T” stands for tasteless.
Some online bottom feeders are being blasted for hawking a T-shirt that mocks Afghans who died after falling from a plane in an attempt to flee the Taliban this week.
The offensive tee, which is emblazoned with “Kabul Skydiving Club Est. 2021,” surfaced on several off-brand online clothing stores, including Tee4Sport and TShirtAtLowPrice. The appalling top also depicts silhouettes of two people plummeting from a military aircraft.
It was an insensitive shot at multiple individuals — including a 17-year-old boy — who died after falling from a US Air Force jet in Kabul while desperately attempting to flee Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan even as a Taliban takeover appears imminent, arguing that the current offensive would have occurred even if the U.S. had stayed.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Blinken acknowledged that Afghan security forces have been unable to defend the nation and that the Taliban offensive has progressed more quickly than expected.
Host Jake Tapper pressed Blinken on whether the U.S. withdrawal was rushed and not well planned, pointing to the quickly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

The current visit by the Gerer Rebbe to America is laced with history in so many ways, and chassidim are lapping up every precious and holy moment in his presence—all before the two historic Shabbosim, and the first-ever simcha in the Gerer court to take place on American shores.