A new jokes page has just been added to our website, check it out on the right side of the page.

On Thursday night, the Rebbe’s instruction to hold Simchas Beis Hashoeivah celebrations in the public domain was more than fulfilled when over 50,000 people from all backgrounds and communities attended the largest such event in Israel. Despite certain attempts to ban the celebration due to worries over tznius, the evening went ahead, with much effort to ensure that people would stay within the boundaries of a mechitza that was put up to separate men and women. pThe director of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Aharonov, was in charge of the organization of the event. The celebration also received the backing of Beis Din Rabbanei Chabad, who stated this week that these events should go ahead, just like every year.
(more…)

A sukkah may have saved a baby’s life.

A 14-month-old baby from Bnei Brak was lightly injured Thursday when he fell from a third floor apartment window onto a sukkah, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
(more…)

Rabbi Binyamin Wolf, the head of the Jewish community in Sebastopol, Ukraine, was hospitalized with a broken nose and concussion after four thugs taunted him with anti-Semitic slurs and then severely beat him on his way to synagogue Friday night. The police have yet to arrest the perpetrators despite the fact that they know who they are.
(more…)

The daughter-in-law of the city’s public advocate was found dead in a police holding cell in Arizona, where she had been taken in handcuffs after being arrested at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, authorities and relatives said.
(more…)

A two-story house in Spring Valley was damaged after a fire broke out in the rear of the home yesterday afternoon. Firefighters were called to 11 Westside Ave., near the Monsey border, at 4:20 p.m. They found flames shooting out of the roof and kitchen and deck area at the back of the house. It took 45 minutes to an hour to bring the fire under control, Monsey Fire Chief Douglas Perry said. Tallman, Spring Valley and South Spring Valley fire companies responded. No one was injured. Esther Feldman, her husband and 10 children were home when the fire began but ran to safety. Fire inspectors are investigating the cause. (more…)

For the first time this Yom Tov, Simchas Beis Hashouva was celebrated with live music performed by Yossi and Avi Piamenta, who was later joined by Avraham Fried.
(more…)

Two British groups have launched a petition to secure the release of three kidnapped Israeli soldiers.
(more…)

Rabbi Avraham Shapira, an Israeli spiritual leader most famous for urging soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate the Gaza Strip, has died at the age of 94.
(more…)

Click here to watch video

President Bush reaffirmed his commitment to seeing a peaceful Palestinian state established.

Bush met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Monday, ahead of the United Nations summit.

(more…)

Hundreds of security men from President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement held a rally in Gaza on Wednesday to demand the government he set up in the occupied West Bank pay their salaries. (more…)

In a move that threatens to split the Chief Rabbinate, a group of religious Zionist rabbis rebelled against the state’s supreme rabbinic authority and announced Tuesday that they would set up an alternative kosher supervision apparatus during the shmita (sabbatical) year.
(more…)

A Japanese-funded bridge under construction in southern Vietnam collapsed on Wednesday, killing up to 60 workers and injuring around 150 in the country’s worst such disaster.
(more…)

The Chabad movement has come under fire in posters in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox areas for its intention to hold the “water-drawing festival” after the first day of the Sukkot holiday ends tomorrow night. The festival, recalling an ancient custom, is held every year with thousands of participants during the interim days of Sukkot. However this year, extremely strict non-Hasidic rabbis have warned against what they call the danger of “lewdness” during the festivities. They have banned all celebrations except those taking place indoors, to insure the strict separation of men and women.
(more…)

A number of people carrying placards of “I’m a Jew, not a Zionist” have met President Ahmadinejad at his residence in New York.

(more…)

Plans are well underway to build five new outpost communities in Judea and Samaria - though police have arrested three of the alleged planners.
(more…)

Vandals painted swastikas and other anti-Semitic messages on the streets of Brooklyn Heights on Monday, defacing two synagogues and shaking up many residents of the typically quiet neighborhood.
(more…)

What do you get when you cross an 18 wheeler truck and a Sukkah Mobile?

(more…)

The Jerusalem municipality will erect a sukkah made of candy.
(more…)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country would not launch an attack on Israel or any other country.
(more…)

Two members of an influential family in Brooklyn’s Chabad-Lubavitch community were arrested this week after being indicted by a federal grand jury.
(more…)

While in tzefas, global ethnic progressive pop experimenter Daniel Fries found himself spending a lot of time with Rabbi Shalom Pasternak, a Chabadnik with a special love for niggun - the hypnotic, wordless melodies of the Chassidim. Together they have created a strong suite of niggunim set to unconventional arrangements that employ electronic beats and trippy sound effects. According to the Kabbalah Dream Orchestra’s bio blurb on its official myspace page, this album could fall under any number of genres: “Sitar Shofar Chillout? Yiddish R&B? Jewish Flamenco Dub House? Electronic Bossa-Niggun?”

(more…)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants peace and is a friendly leader, Neturei Karta International spokesman Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss said in a statement issued ahead of a meeting between the Jewish organization leaders and the Islamic republic’s hardline president.
(more…)

Several thousand demonstrators turned out for the start of a rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad across from the United Nations.
(more…)

World famous singer-songwriter Bob Dylan showed up for Yom Kippur Davening at Chabad of Georgia headquarters in Atlanta.
(more…)

A Spring Valley man suffered minor head injuries yesterday afternoon when he passed through a stop sign and crashed into a school bus in Monsey, police said. The 53-year-old man was on Decatur Avenue turning onto Maple Avenue, and the driver of the school bus, a 32-year-old Spring Valley man, was heading eastbound on Maple Avenue, Ramapo police said. Also on the school bus were one adult passenger and three children, none of whom was injured, police said. (more…)

Australia’s oldest Jewish soldier and one of the country’s most decorated military men has died.
(more…)