In the center of the world sits one city, the foundation of the earth. In the center of that city sits one institution, developing, educating, training, and BUILDING LEADERS WHO CARE. Eighteen years ago, the Rosh HaKollel, Rabbi Yitzchok Berkovitz שליט”אrecognized that the Yeshiva world is an army filled with talent. His vision was clear. Tap into this potential, provide real bnei Torah with the tools to become leaders, and you can change the world. The Jerusalem Kollel was born. To this day, The Jerusalem Kollel has been building leaders of the highest caliber, dedicated to leading, teaching and strengthening Klal Yisrael. The Kollel offers its talmidim an intensive three-year s’micha program, with relevant training in many years of communal leadership.

The desperate race to corral the coronavirus pandemic took on even greater urgency Monday as a burgeoning economic crisis collided with political turmoil. Even as the latest experimental vaccine appeared to show promise, politicians in Washington seemed far apart in finding a way to bring financial relief to Americans. As the first federal relief package was poised to end, Congress was trying to come to agreement on another package to ease the financial burden Americans have dealt with as businesses have endured repeated shutterings or pauses since the virus first appeared on the continent.

Recent reports in Yemenite media outlets and an Egyptian newspaper that the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen has rounded up the country’s few remaining Jews as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign may be completely false, The Jerusalem Post reported. Israel’s Foreign Ministry told The Post that they have been asked by many sources about the report but it appears to be false. Another international organization with connections to the Jewish community in Yemen also told The Post that it investigated the reports and found them to be false. Despite the claims that the allegations are false, the Yemenite embassy in Washington quoted the reports, apparently in order to slander the Iranian-backed Houthis, but did not mention whether they investigated or verified the reports.

New Jersey parents will be allowed to opt-out of in-person education and choose all remote learning for their children when schools reopen this fall, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday. The Democratic governor said state education officials will be releasing guidance this week on how the process will work. He said he would further comment on the matter once the guidelines are released. Murphy also announced that drills and practices for sports considered high-risk for the spread of the coronavirus can resume as long as they are held at outdoor venues. Sports considered high-risk include football and rugby, boxing, martial arts, wrestling, and cheerleading. Murphy reported nine new deaths from the virus, giving the state a total of 13,741 confirmed COVID-19 deaths.

A reporter for a CBS affiliate in New York has died in a moped crash, the station announced. CBS2 New York reporter Nina Kapur was riding as a passenger on a moped that crashed in Brooklyn on Saturday, police said. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she died. The driver of the moped suffered minor injuries. “We are heartbroken here at CBS2 as a member of our news family has passed away,” the station said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Nina’s family. She will be missed.” Police said Kapur was riding on a Revel scooter, part of a fleet of electric mopeds operated by a ride-sharing startup, when the driver swerved and both riders were thrown from the vehicle. The accident is under investigation. The 26-year-old Kapur was a graduate of Syracuse University.

Scientists at Oxford University say their experimental coronavirus vaccine has been shown in an early trial to prompt a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got the shot. British researchers first began testing the vaccine in April in about 1,000 people, half of whom got the experimental vaccine. Such early trials are designed to evaluate safety and see what kind of immune response was provoked, but can’t tell if the vaccine truly protects. In research published Monday in the journal Lancet, scientists said that they found their experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced a dual immune response in people aged 18 to 55 that lasted at least two months after they were immunized. “We are seeing good immune response in almost everybody,” said Dr.

The Bahamas is banning travelers from the United States starting Wednesday after a surge in coronavirus infections followed the islands’ reopening to international tourism. Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said Sunday that the country had seen 49 new coronavirus infections since it opened on July 1, nearly a third of the total of 153 cases seen on the island since the start of the pandemic. Most of the islands’ visitors come from the United States, many from Florida, which has high and climbing rates of infection from the novel coronavirus. “Regrettably, the situation here at home has already deteriorated since we began the reopening of our domestic economy,” Minnis said.

The Beit Shemesh community was shocked by the sad news of the sudden passing of Mordechi Heineman z”l, beloved husband and father of 9. R’ Mordechai was only 46 years old when he suddenly collapsed from a stroke. He lay unconscious for two harrowing weeks, until he returned his Neshama to its Creator on Erev Shabbos. He leaves behind a wife and 8 unmarried children, the youngest just two years old, who are left with no means of support. CLICK HERE TO DONATE R’ Mordechai loved Torah and those who toil in it, and every day he returned home from a long day of work and sat down to learn with the little energy he had left. He was an incredible ba’al chesed, always giving to others from the meager earnings he had.

A gunman posing as a FedEx delivery person shot and killed the 20-year-old son of a federal judge and wounded her husband at their New Jersey home before fleeing, authorities said. The shooting happened Sunday evening at the North Brunswick home of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, and killed her son, Daniel, Chief District Judge Freda Wolfson told The Associated Press. Her husband, defense lawyer Mark Anderl, was injured in the attack, Wolfson said. Investigators are examining a possible connection between the shooting and the body of a man found dead Monday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Sullivan County, New York, a law enforcement official said.

With unrest continuing, the federal government is coming under increasing scrutiny for the activities of agents trying to clamp down on protests in Oregon’s largest city — demonstrations that President Donald Trump says are led by “anarchists and agitators.” Protesters outside Portland’s U.S. courthouse set a fire in the building’s entryway early Monday, part of yet another night of conflict with federal agents who repeatedly tear-gassed the demonstrators to drive them away, officials said. The latest unrest happened as local and state leaders expressed anger with the presence of the federal agents, saying the city’s protests had started to ease just as the federal agents started taking action on the streets of Portland.