A transformative endowment from the Heller family has established the new Heller Center for Academic Excellence and Torah Values, providing scholarships to high-achieving incoming college students at Yeshiva University, as well as future educators and rabbis in the Azrieli school and RIETS. The Center plans to award one hundred $10,000 scholarships annually, supporting students who exemplify rigorous academic excellence and embody the Torah values at the core of Yeshiva University’s mission.

New York News

 Nearly 100 protesters were arrested after storming Trump Tower in New York City to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist detained by ICE. The group, led by Jewish Voice for Peace, entered the Midtown Manhattan building around noon, with about 150 participants chanting “Free Mahmoud” and displaying banners like “Fight Nazis, not students.”

Recap: Daniel and his father are staying on campus for the year, as his father has a research grant. Daniel walks around campus and meets a boy named Yisroel Meir, who is putting up flyers about a Friday night Shabbos program.  Yisroel Meir gives him a tour of the campus and Daniel helps put up the flyers. Yisroel Meir invites Daniel to come to his house for the Friday night program. Daniel wants to go and hopes his father will agree. They walk past the college library and see that someone has scrawled an “X” over the flyer they put up and has also written “Free Palestine” on it.

As a Jew who eats bagels once a year and skips lunch on Yom Kippur, I denounce the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the family of Haman and the people of Shushan who supported him. As Rabbi Linda told me while she was moving her yarmulke to put on her tefillin: There is no reason for the Jews who have colonized this ancient Persian culture to overreact because of a simple lottery result.  All Jews of conscience must denounce Mordechai.

Despite losing diplomatic, financial, and military support, Ukraine continues to hold its front line on the outskirts of Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and within the Kursk region of Russia. “Ukraine shouldn’t last a day without American support,” Trump said after his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. “How would they fight without the Bradley and Abrams tanks? I can’t imagine how they have so much intelligence on the Russians after Elon Musk cut off access to Starlink.”