Syria – With highly improbable timing, even as it guns down its own people while attempting to retain power, the Syrian government has invited an Israeli rabbi to visit the country where many of his forefathers are buried, and to pray at their Damascus gravesites.

Over the course of Mimouna celebrations at Moshav Gimzo, between Lod and Modi’in, last week, Jack Avital, the visiting head of the Brooklyn-based Sephardic National Alliance, told Rabbi Yeoshiau Pinto that the Syrian ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha, had asked him to invite the rabbi to Syria.

One of Pinto’s forefathers, after whom he was named, was the rabbi of the Jewish community of Damascus in the first half of the 17th century.

Avital, one of the leaders of the Syrian-Jewish community of North America, has maintained good relations with President Bashar Assad and with Syrian officials in the US, and even headed small delegations of American Jews to Syriafor official visits in 2004 and 2006. A year ago, Avital told Pinto of his visits to Syria and suggested the rabbi visit there as well.

Pinto asked Avital to explore the possibility. An opportunity to do so arose at the wedding of Avidat’s daughter four months ago, attended by both Moustapha and the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja’afari, following which Avital spoke with the two diplomats.

They extended an official invitation to Pinto and ensured that he would have all the necessary security arrangements in place. Preliminary preparations began, including bringing glattkosher food from Turkey for the rabbi’s tentative visit to Syria.

Washington – U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is calling for new regulations to require banks to clearly and briefly describe checking account fees now buried in applications that can be more than 100 pages long.

The New York Democrat says his bill will provide consumers with an easy way to understand the many fees for overdrafts and other actions that will force Americans to pay more than $38 million in fees.

Schumer is seeking a similar box now required in credit card applications forced by his legislation in 1988.

The Pew Charitable Trust reported last week that many banks have checking fee disclosures that are twice as long as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

The Pew trust says that makes it difficult for consumers to compare different banks’ accounts.

Detroit, MI – The mayor of New York says Detroit should lift its lamp as a beacon for new immigrants as a way to counter its drastic population losses.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg floated the proposal during an appearance Sunday on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

Bloomberg says there’s a “crisis of confidence” among business people about the nation’s economy.

He says the “most obvious” response to economic growth is encouraging immigration, particularly to places like Detroit.

The city has seen its population fall from 1.8 million in the 1950 U.S. Census to 714,000 in 2010. The population dropped 26 percent in the last decade alone.

Bloomberg says the U.S. should admit immigrants who agree to live for five or 10 years in the city and work or start businesses.

Jerusalem – Israel’s prime minister warned Sunday that the nation must not dismiss Iran’s threats to its existence, drawing a parallel at a ceremony in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, a mass murder that still reverberates in the Jewish state more than six decades later.

Iran and its allies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, openly call for the destruction of Israel, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and “Iran is even arming itself with nuclear weapons to accomplish that goal.”

He said the most important lesson of the Holocaust for the Jewish people is, “if someone threatens to destroy us, we must not ignore their threats.”

Netanyahu addressed a crowd of hundreds of Holocaust survivors, diplomats and Israeli leaders at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial center.

“The threat against our existence and our future is not theoretical,” he said. “It must be stopped.” Iran denies it is making nuclear weapons.

For years Israel has called for world action to stop the Iranian nuclear program, backing diplomatic efforts and sanctions but never taking the option of a military strike off the table.

At the memorial ceremony, six Holocaust survivors lit symbolic torches to mark the beginning of the annual observance.

At midmorning Monday, air raid sirens were to sound around the country to mark two minutes of silence in honor of the victims, followed by ceremonies called “Each Person Has a Name,” in which people read out the names of victims at Israel’s parliament and other public locations.

Organizers explain that listing names gives the huge number of 6 million a personal element, as well as countering those who claim the Holocaust did not happen.

Israel has also been marking 50 years since the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi master planner who was abducted from Argentina and brought to Israel to face charges.

The 1961 trial marked a turning point in Israel’s attitude toward survivors, at first denigrated for being helpless victims. The stories that emerged from the trial, revealing the inhuman conditions Jews faced at the hands of the Nazis and relating their mostly ineffective attempts to rebel, won new sympathy for the survivors.

Just hours before the commemoration began, Moshe Landau, the chief judge at the Eichmann trial, died. He was 99.

The Holocaust ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies in 1945, but the Nazi goal of killing all Jews and their ability to wipe out a third of the Jewish people in death camps still provide a prominent motif for Israeli politics and society.

About 200,000 aged survivors of the Nazi genocide live in Israel, some of them alone and destitute. On Sunday, Israel’s Cabinet took a small step toward giving additional aid to the survivors, recognizing their umbrella group as their official representative.

Because entire European families and communities were eliminated by the Nazi death machine, millions of dollars in bank accounts and other valuables remain unclaimed.

Project HEART, The Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce, has amassed a database listing over 650,000 pieces of property owned by Jews in prewar Europe.

Bobby Brown, the executive director of Project HEART, said the campaign hopes to deliver restitution to aging survivors before it is too late.

“Now is the time for us to do our utmost to give these heroes some of the compensation that has been denied them for so long,” he said.

The campaign is a joint initiative of the Israeli government and the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency.

Birmingham, AL – Officials at the National Weather Service say the tornado that killed at least 25 people in the Alabama town of Hackleburg was packing winds stronger than 200 mph.

The weather service report says the tornado was given an EF5 rating, the highest possible. The report says the tornado was on the ground for more than 20 minutes, tearing a 25-mile-long path across Marion County. It was three-quarters of a mile wide.

Weather service surveyors said the twister tossed cars as far as 200 yards and completely demolished a sturdy brick home.

Cairo – Egypt’s Justice Minister Mohammed el-Guindi has said ousted President Hosni Mubarak gathered his wealth from gas exports to Israel through a company owned by his friend, and arms deals.

He said Mubarak could face the death penalty if he is convicted of ordering the shooting of protesters during the uprisings that forced him out of power.

“Certainly, if convicted for the crime of killing protesters, it could result in the death sentence,” the Daily Mail quoted el-Guindi, as saying.

Mubarak would be investigated at the Sharm el-Sheikh Hospital in the next few days, the minister said, adding that the only person capable of pardoning Mubarak would be the new president.

“If I were the president, I will not pardon him for killing 800 martyrs,” el-Guindi said.

He also stressed that the ousted leader’s two sons and wife are also facing allegations of corruption.

Former First Lady Suzanne Mubarak would reportedly be questioned for the first time in a few days over her illicit amassing of wealth.

Poland – A new multimedia project has been launched to highlight the long Jewish history of Oswiecim, the former shtetl in southern Poland where the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp.

The project, launched this week, is called “Oshpitzin” – the Yiddish name for the town – and centers on a website, http://www.oshpitzin.pl.

Though notorious as the site of the Auschwitz camp, Oswiecim had a majority Jewish population before World War II.

The project includes an interactive map of synagogues, businesses and other pre-war Jewish sites, plus films, photographs, articles, memoirs, interviews and other educational material on its Jewish history.

Many Hasidic tazdikim, and Rabbis lived in Oshpitzin.

Read more at JTA

New York – English speakers throughout the world still benefit from the wisdom and eloquence of Rav Avigdor Miller ztz”l, whose unforgiving schedule produced countless shiurim and lessons that continue to educate after his passing. But there’s an unlikely group of Yiddish speakers in a little pocket in Williamsburg who see Rav Miller as their rebbe, too. Led by Rav Avraham Shlomo Yavo, the chassidim of Nitei Avigdor retain their chassidish identities even as they imbibe the approach and ideals of an avowed Litvack. In honor of his rebbe’s tenth yahrtzeit, Rav Yavo shares his own memories of a precious relationship, his pain at his rebbe’s passing, and the role he’s played in ensuring that Rav Avigdor’s legacy remains firm and enduring

Williamsburg, Friday afternoon, near sundown. A blur of shtreimlach and beketshes fills the street, as chassidim young and old rush off to shul. Each one heads to his rebbe, to the Chassidus toward which he feels a particular pull, to greet Shabbos on a spiritual uplift.

On Rutledge Street, seventy families form a parade of their own, heading to a modest basement shul. They too hope to be inspired by the words of their rebbe, to be enthralled with the spirit of Shabbos. There are two differences, however. One, their rebbe is not alive anymore — and many of the chassidim never met him, though they have heard plenty of his drashos. More surprisingly, their rebbe doesn’t wear chassidish levush. In fact, he was an avowed Litvack throughout his life.

The shul they are headed to is Nitei Avigdor, named for their rebbe, Rav Avigdor Miller ztz”l. And his impact on these chassidim, while unexpected, is firm and enduring.

The Litvishe Rebbe Rabbi Avraham Shlomo Yavo, the Lemberger Rav, is the founder and leader of the Nitei Avigdor community. Known throughout the chassidishe world for his absolute mastery of Shas — he can quote lengthy passages from anywhere in Shas, and can source any statement of Chazal off the top of his head — Rav Yavo became a devout chassid of Rav Avigdor Miller seventeen years ago. His time is precious, with many sheilos pouring in even as we speak, but he sets aside an hour to discuss his rebbe, and how it came to pass that so many chassidim became drawn to the teachings of a litvishe mashgiach.

“I was always a mevakesh,” he begins, “and one time, a close friend told me that there was this amazing shiur in Nach every Motzaei Shabbos delivered by a rav named Rav Avigdor Miller that I just had to attend. I went to try it, and really enjoyed it. But after about two months Rav Avigdor got up after the shiur and apologetically announced that he would have to discontinue the series, because it was too difficult to maintain along with his otherwise packed schedule of weekly and daily shiurim. I was very disappointed, and when I expressed it to someone standing next to me, he informed me that the Rav also gave a shiur every Thursday night. ‘That shiur is even better than this one,’ he promised.”

There was a barrier, however — the language. As a Williamsburg native, Rav Yavo spoke almost no English, and barely even understood it. “Come anyway,” the fellow nudged when Rav Yavo tried to beg off. “You’ll see, you’ll understand.”

“That first shiur was life-altering,” recalls Rav Yavo. “He was speaking about thanking Hashem. The title of that tape is ‘We Live to Praise.’ I’ll never forget his memorable, sing-song. ‘Aleinu l’shabei’ach. What’s our purpose in this world? To praise Hashem.’

“Despite my misgivings, I understood about 90 percent of what he said, which was surprising, considering his rich vocabulary.

“I walked out of there thinking, this is my rebbe. From then on, for the last nearly seven years of his life, I didn’t miss a single shiur. It didn’t make a difference whether it was raining or snowing. I felt that I couldn’t miss a shiur. Even when I spent the day sick in bed, I found the strength to drag myself into Flatbush for the shiur.”

Rav Yavo is still nostalgic about those Thursday night drashos, and specifically by the way Rav Avigdor Miller could find inspiration in what we often take for granted. A common theme was Gadlo VeTuvo malei olam, which he would define as Hashem’s plan and purpose for the world. Rav Avigdor would often bring “props” to illustrate what he was describing.

“Once, he brought along apple seeds to show the wisdom of Hashem inherent in each apple tree,” relates Rav Yavo. “As he spoke about it, he got so excited that he started to throw the seeds out to the crowd, encouraging people to take one home and use it to study the greatness of Hashem.”

Next to Reb Avigdor’s seat in shul sat a bottle of water that he never drank from. What was it doing there? “He would often talk about the amazing miracle of water; what it was composed of and what it did for a person. He had purchased that bottle some fifty or sixty years earlier, and he kept it at his side as a ‘Shivisi Hashem l’negdi samid.’ Seeing that bottle there made him remember Hashem constantly.”

Anyone who has listened to one of the thousands of recordings Rav Avigdor Miller left behind knows about the famous question-and-answer sessions. For the last twenty minutes of the shiur, the audience could ask any question that came to mind. For Rav Yavo, this presented a long-awaited opportunity to receive answers to all his questions in hashkafah. “He was like an Urim V’Tumim. No matter what you asked him, he was ready with an answer — and each one was full of wisdom.”

As time went on, a close relationship developed between the two. Around twelve years ago, when the story of an alleged dibbuk circulated first through Eretz Yisrael and then throughout the world, Rav Yavo asked during the shiur whether the Rav felt that there was any truth to the claims. “Come after the shiur and we’ll discuss it,” was all Rav Avigdor would say.

After the shiur, Rav Avigdor led him into a hallway where they could discuss it privately. Many people tried to follow them, but Rav Avigdor told them to remain in the shul. “We began to discuss the issue at length. I tried to cite proofs for the concept of a dibbuk from different statements of Chazal, but he refuted every one. In many instances he told me that this conversation was not to be repeated, so as we were wrapping up, I asked him what I should tell the curious audience awaiting my return to the shul.

“‘Tell them that we don’t find any source for it in Shas or Chazal,’ he replied, ‘and we shouldn’t make an issue out of it.’”

An Unlikely Bond The unlikely bond between Rav Avigdor Miller and Rav Yavo went well beyond the weekly shiur. When Rav Yavo’s son turned three, he took the child to his “rebbe” just like any chassid would do. Rav Avigdor was very happy to take part in the simchah. He had the little chassidishe yingele stand on a chair, called the entire shul over, and began to compliment him on how bacheint (full of charm) he was. Then he cut his hair and showered him with brachos.

Rav Yavo would daven Selichos in Rav Avigdor Miller’s shul each Erev Yom Kippur and get a brachah for the new year. He would also go to greet his rebbe every Chol HaMoed, in keeping with Chazal’s teaching that one must do so. And he never missed Purim, an occasion when Rav Avigdor, though he wouldn’t drink, would be extremely emotional.

When Rav Avigdor Miller reached the age of ninety-three in 2001, he still looked like a young man. “He was so healthy that we were certain that he would live — and continue speaking — until at least 108,” Rav Yavo remembers. “My oldest son was very little back then, and I would dream about the time when he’d be old enough to attend the shiur with me.

“Then one Thursday night shortly after Purim, when the Rav arrived for the shiur, I noticed that his face had a yellowish tinge. He was able to concentrate and deliver his shiur seamlessly, but I got very nervous.”

Each Thursday night, Rabbi Miller would break for five minutes during the shiur, exactly when the tapes recording each lecture would have to be flipped. That evening, when his rebbe appeared unwell, Rav Yavo decided to use the break to find out if everything was okay. Preferring not to say anything aloud in front of the crowd, he took a piece of paper and wrote down his concern for the Rav’s health. Rav Avigdor read the note, but his response was just to smile and nod knowingly.

The next week, Rabbi Miller looked fine once again, and everything was back to normal. Two weeks later, on the last Thursday night before Pesach 5761/2001, Rav Avigdor delivered the shiur as always. “But one thing was strange,” says Rav Yavo. “The Rav used to title the tapes by himself. He named that tape Havdalah, which seemed to have no bearing on the topic.”

On Thursday of Chol HaMoed Pesach, Rav Yavo traveled in to the shiur as usual. A sign was hanging on the door with the notice “Sorry, but the shiur is canceled.” When Rav Yavo walked into the shul, he saw Rabbi Miller sitting with a Gemara. He went over to the Rav, greeted him with his usual “Shulem uleichu, rabi imori,” and then asked why there wouldn’t be a shiur that night. “I’m very weak,” Rabbi Miller answered.

“Can’t the Rav speak at least for a short time?” Rav Yavo persisted. “People travel in from Monsey, New Square, and many other places for the shiur. Shouldn’t there be at least something for them to hear?”

“Trust me,” he answered, “if you knew how weak I am, you would understand that I simply can’t speak.”

“On most Thursday nights,” continues Rav Yavo, “I would daven Maariv along with him in the shul. This time, I felt an urge to hear how he davened Shemoneh Esrei, so I decided to daven later and listen in while he davened. He would daven audibly enough for a listener to make out the words, and I positioned myself right behind him so I could hear him.

“Aside from how he enunciated each word carefully, there were two interesting things that I noticed. One was that during Refo’einu, he listed off at least twenty-five names of people in need of a refuah. Second was that when he davened VeliYerushalayim Ircha, Es tzemach Dovid, and anything else related to the Geulah, he did so with such hishtokekus, yearning for the Ultimate Redemption.

“I figured that his condition that night was just a passing illness like the one that had struck him a month or so before. On the Wednesday night right after Yom Tov, the Rav’s grandchild was getting married in the Vayoel Moshe hall in my neighborhood of Williamsburg, and I decided to drop in to say mazel tov. When I got there, his family told me that he had been taken to the hospital. Rav Simchah Bunim Cohen, a grandchild who is one of today’s great poskim, told me that the Rav had asked him to approach the Satmar Rav, the Beirach Moshe, for a brachah for a refuah sheleimah. He asked me whether I wanted to join him, and of course I did. When we left the Beirach Moshe, I asked him if I could come see his grandfather. He told me that Rav Avigdor had given specific instructions that no one was to come visit him, because he had to rest.”

A chassid is a chassid, even when his rebbe isn’t the classic chassidic rebbe. Listening to Rav Yavo tell the story, you sense a level of connection that only chassidim have. “I felt that I had to see him, and I begged Rav Simchah Bunim to allow me in. Finally, he told me that he was scheduled to be there the next night (the grandchildren were there on rotation), and if I would come at 11:00 p.m. and station myself outside Rav Avigdor’s private room, he would lift one blade of the venetian blind so I could see the Rav.”

We Cried, He Smiled “The next night, a Thursday night, I felt that I couldn’t miss the shiur,” Rav Yavo continues his gripping account of those tense times. “So I contacted a person who could supply us with tapes for a live presentation of the shiur for the duration of the Rav’s hospitalization. The person lived in Queens, so I went to his home to pick up the tapes, and then headed for Maimonides Hospital. It never entered my mind that this was going to be the Rav’s final day.

“As soon as I got to the hallway where the Rav’s room was located, I saw Rav Simchah Bunim running towards me, distraught. ‘Call a minyan urgently,’ he said. ‘The Rav’s condition deteriorated precipitously, and we need a minyan for yetzias neshamah.’

“I was stunned — lost, really — but I started making phone calls. When a minyan came, we stood next to his room reciting Tehillim. Suddenly we heard from inside the room that they had made some progress, and we stopped saying Tehillim and moved towards the room. We could see the medics working on him, and gradually, more grandchildren filed in around his bed.

“Then I noticed one of the medics turning to another and shaking his head, indicating that he didn’t think the Rav would make it.”

Ten years is a long time, but apparently not long enough. Rav Yavo is suddenly back there, in that hospital room, and he can’t continue speaking. His voice breaks as he tries, and he wipes his eyes and struggles to regain composure.

“Everyone in the room started reciting Vidui with bechiyos noruos, crying our hearts out. I stole a glance at the Rav, and he was lying there, completely relaxed — almost with a smile on his face. The machines indicated that he was slipping away. It says in halachah that you’re not supposed to cry when someone is passing on, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“A few minutes later, it was over. We left the room. Along with one friend who was also a devoted talmid of Rav Avigdor, I sat in the hospital corridor from midnight until sunrise recalling many of the teachings we had heard from him, crying all night through. I don’t know if I cried in my entire life as much as I did that night.

“Suddenly, as I wondered whether I would ever be able to reign in my emotions, I thought of an incident that had occurred a few years earlier. Rav Avigdor’s oldest grandson had gone to Eretz Yisrael to put tefillin on his son for the first time at the Kosel, and he was killed in a terrible car accident. That had also transpired on a Thursday night, and when I got to the shul for the shiur, there was a sign on the door stating that there would be a live hookup to the levayah in the middle of the night, and Rav Avigdor would say a hesped. It must have been a great shock to the family — I remember feeling broken for him. But Rav Avigdor didn’t break easily. When he walked into the shul, he noticed the sign there, and pulled it down. He didn’t want people to have to come out in the middle of the night. He strode to his seat, sat down, and with total equanimity, began with his trademark, ‘Bruchim haba’im. Welcome, everyone. We are about to begin, b’ezras Hashem, number…’ He then delivered the shiur as though nothing had happened.

“Half the people knew about the tragedy, but those who had arrived after he had torn down the sign didn’t. When I told some of them after the shiur, they couldn’t believe it. His levelheaded delivery made it seem impossible to fathom that he was in the midst of coping with something so terrible.

“Later I found out that he had actually delivered his hesped for his grandson beforehand on camera, because he couldn’t disturb his schedule later that night. His family said that before he recorded the hesped, he was weeping uncontrollably. That was the eis lispod. But at the shiur, there was no sign of his heartbreak.

“A friend of mine asked him during the shivah how he’d been able to deliver that shiur without any trace of sadness. ‘Just because Hashem did one thing that I don’t care for, doesn’t mean that I don’t owe him thanks for all the chasadim he has done and does for me. He took one thing away from me now? I thank Hashem that I had him for all these years.’

“Sitting in the hospital at sunrise, hours after his passing, I suddenly recalled what I had learned from him back then, and I thought to myself, Ribono shel Olam, You gave me Rav Avigdor for seven years. Thank You!

“I was suddenly filled with simchah, and I went into the Satmar beis medrash nearby and davened a Shacharis like I never davened before or after in my life.”

Filling the Void Picking up the pieces after losing his beloved rebbe was difficult for Rav Yavo. Part of the healing process was keeping his rebbe’s legacy alive.
“The Thursday during shivah, I had my first opportunity to use the tapes I had picked up before Rav Avigdor’s petirah. I decided that we would start getting together here in Williamsburg for a live presentation. We started in someone’s office, and on the first week, we had thirty people. Many of them were crying as they watched.

“The next morning, I was very broken again. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Rav. That night, leil Shabbos, I had a dream. Rav Avigdor was there. In my dream, I didn’t know that he was no longer alive. He smiled at me, and addressed me as Avraham Shlomo Leizer. Now, what’s interesting is that I’m known to everyone as Avraham Shlomo; almost no one knows that I also have the name Leizer. How does he know that my name is Leizer, I wondered in the dream.
“‘Be calm,’ he said. ‘I’m in a good place.’

“Suddenly, he grew very serious. He took my hand and led me to a pushke. He took a nickel out of his pocket and put it in the pushke. ‘I want you to give a nickel to tzedakah every day for my sake,’ he said. I woke up and remembered every detail, and I calmed down considerably after that.”

Aside from organizing the live presentations, Rav Yavo also started a gemach to lend out cassettes of Rav Avigdor’s shiurim. After a while, a group drew together and decided to start a community of ovdei Hashem who wanted to follow Rav Avigdor’s hashkafos. Their first shul was a tiny basement, but they have since expanded to their current home on Rutledge Street, with help from Reb Leizer, Rav Avigdor’s oldest son.

At first, Rav Yavo would discuss some of Rav Avigdor’s teachings at Shalosh Seudos in the shul. Now he has also instituted a shiur in Chovos HaLevavos each Shabbos before Krias HaTorah. Although they only plumb the depths of a few lines each week, they are already on their second cycle. The community itself numbers around seventy families, but the yahrtzeit seudah each year draws several hundred chassidishe devotees of Rav Avigdor Miller — including several respected rabbanim — to the shul.

How have chassidim, whose avodah is usually practiced through a rebbe, become devotees of a Litvack?

Rav Yavo’s answer goes back to the basics. “Rav Avigdor based his teachings on Chovos HaLevavos. Just as the Beis Yosef and the Rema are the accepted authorities in halachah, the Chovos HaLevavos is the accepted authority on hashkafah. Litvish, chassidish, Sephardic — it makes no difference. Chovos HaLevavos is for everyone, and by extension, so is the approach of Rav Avigdor Miller.”

Do chassidim ever feel that they are leading a double life, and that perhaps, instead of trying to reconcile the two different approaches, it would be more practical to give up their own upbringing and follow Rav Avigdor’s litvishe path more closely?

“On the contrary,” Rav Yavo avers. “Rav Avigdor maintained that just as there were shvatim and everyone was supposed to stick to their own shevet, each person should be part of his unique community, and serve Hashem in that fashion. But in avodas Hashem, everyone should be united in implementing the approach of the Chovos HaLevavos.”

Rav Avigdor’s Cure for Cancer And there’s one more legacy that Rav Yavo maintains from his rebbe. This one is not a theological understanding; it’s a practical lesson with tangible, measurable effects. When Rav Avigdor’s wife was niftar several years ago, Rav Yavo delivered a hesped at the levayah. Afterwards, a man came over to him and said, “I have to tell you a story, and you should tell it to your kehillah.

“Several years ago,” he began, “I was diagnosed with a serious case of cancer, and the doctors had no hope for me. They told me that it was just a matter of time. Shattered, I went to Rav Avigdor to ask him for a brachah. ‘Where do you daven?’ he asked me. When I told him where I davened, he asked, ‘Do they talk during davening there?’ I admitted that they did.

“‘Don’t step into that shul ever again,’ Rav Avigdor instructed. ‘Even if you daven perfectly, your tefillos are trapped by those of people who talk by davening, and they cannot ascend to Heaven. Look for another shul where they don’t talk.’

“I followed his advice, and several weeks later I went back to the doctor. They thought I was a different person. The cancer was disappearing.”
Rav Yavo didn’t have a chance to share the story with his mispallelim instantly, but on Simchas Torah, as they were about to begin Kol HaNe’orim, with all the children already under the tallis, a mispallel approached Rav Yavo with his son and begged him for a brachah. “My son was diagnosed with the machlah,” he said, “and the prognosis is not good.”

The memory brings up strong emotions even today, more than two years later. “I gave him the brachah,” Rav Yavo relates. “But I wondered what we could do for him.

“During Kol HaNe’orim, I suddenly remembered the story with Rav Avigdor. As soon as the aliyah was over, I klopped on the bimah and told the mispallelim that there was a child in the crowd with cancer. I then told them the story, and said, ‘We’re about to start Parshas Bereishis. Let’s be mekabel to make an extra effort not to talk during davening and leining for the next year.’ Everyone agreed to join.

“Three months later, the man came running over to me one day. The doctor informed him that the cancer was gone.”

Rav Yavo told the story at a yahrtzeit seudah, and before long, it grew wings. People now call from all over the world to inquire a bout the story, which has made it onto signs hung in many shuls.

But like a true chassid, Rav Yavo attributes the impact to his rebbe, ending his account with a familiar refrain, “This is all due to the influence of Rav Avigdor Miller.”

Reprinted with permission from Mishpacha

New York – Everyone’s mad at Irving Picard.

To be fair, his job is thankless. He is the court-appointed bloodhound in charge of hunting down money for the victims of Bernard Madoff, a man who was so skilled at hiding money that he kept the biggest scam in the history of American finance going for at least two decades.

Wall Street hates him. Picard has sued more than a dozen banks, including several whose big link to the Ponzi scheme was one step removed — helping people bet on funds that bet on the fund run by Madoff.

Fans of the New York Mets, which have enough problems on the field, are angry at him for suing the team’s owners for $1 billion, just when they are trying to find new owners and are still reeling from their own Madoff-related losses.

And most bizarrely, some of the people Madoff ripped off say Picard has screwy ideas about the law and is making them victims all over again by demanding they hand back “fictitious profits” that many have already spent.

A little more than two years into the job, the 69-year-old Picard, who was plucked from obscurity to recover the money, has become America’s most unlikely celebrity lawyer, and perhaps its most underrated.

He has filed more than 1,000 suits in 30 countries, and defied expectations by bringing in $10 billion so far. That’s half of what he estimates investors lost in principal when Madoff was arrested, though not as impressive compared with the phony $65 billion that Madoff claimed they had.

To make a bigger dent, Picard will have to wrest money from those banks he’s sued. It won’t be easy. Picard says they saw plenty of red flags and had an obligation to warn investors. The banks say Picard has gotten his facts wrong and his legal logic is flawed. Some prominent attorneys seem to agree.

“He’s pushing the envelope,” says Harvey Miller, a well-known bankruptcy lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who has known Picard for decades. “What is the duty of banks and financial institutions? It’s a gray area of the law.”

Self-effacing and mild-mannered, Picard is not the first person you would associate with aggressive legal tactics and a ruthless hunt for money. Then again, he’s difficult to pin down, a blend of seemingly conflicting characteristics.

Picard, a lawyer at Baker & Hostetler, turned down an interview request from The Associated Press, but two dozen friends, acquaintances and colleagues who did agree to talk describe a man whose deferential manner belies his tenacity, someone who can seem alternately pragmatic and idealistic, shrewd and empathetic.

“I don’t know personally what it’s like to lose everything,” he told Geraldine Ponto, a colleague at Baker, referring to Madoff victims. “But I understand it in others. It’s in my DNA.”

Picard is the youngest child of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Classmates of Picard remember a modest, quiet kid with an appetite for hard work.

After the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University law school, he landed a job as a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he rose to oversee a legal team handling bankruptcy cases. He gained a reputation as someone who wasn’t hidebound by the agency’s old practices, and for a human touch.

Charles Tatelbaum, a lawyer trying to get money back from a Mafia-linked trucking firm overseen by Picard’s lawyers after it fell into bankruptcy, recalls a half-dozen calls from Picard after news broke that the mob had put a contract out on his life and everyone else seemed to be shunning him.

“I couldn’t get a date for six months. My veterinarian wouldn’t even see my cat,” Tatelbaum says. “But Irving would call — ‘Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?’ ”

Colleagues from those years fill in another aspect of his personality: He is whistle-clean and intensely private, perhaps to an extreme.

His reputation as industrious eventually caught the attention of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., a quasi-public group that oversees a fund to compensate customers of failed brokerage firms like the one run by Madoff. SIPC ended up hiring Picard to hunt for money in 10 of their cases, more than any other lawyer. It was SIPC that hired Picard as Madoff trustee in December 2008, citing recoveries in his previous work.

Jerusalem – Moshe Landau, chief judge in the 1961 trial of Nazi arch-criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, died Sunday on the eve of the annual memorial day for the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the government said. He was 99.

Landau was an Israeli Supreme Court justice when he was picked to head the three-judge panel for the Eichmann trial. Eichmann, who was in charge of the “final solution,” the Nazi plan to kill all the Jews of Europe, was kidnapped from Argentina in 1960 by Israel’s Mossad spy agency. He was convicted and hanged.

The trial, broadcast on Israeli radio and followed closely by the people, brought about a major change in attitudes toward Holocaust survivors. Up until then, Israelis, who saw themselves as self-sufficient heroes, denigrated the survivors as helpless victims. The trial brought out the horrors and deprivations the Jews faced, as well as their mostly feeble efforts to rebel, leading to a new appreciation of their plight among Israelis.

Landau was an accomplished jurist by the time of the Eichmann trial. Born in Danzig, Germany, in 1912, he studied law at the University of London and moved to Palestine in 1933, 15 years before the state of Israel was created.

He climbed quickly through the judicial system and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1953. In 1980, he was named chief justice, retiring in 1982. In 1991, he was given the Israel Prize, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Sunday at the ceremony for the beginning of the Holocaust memorial day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid tribute to Landau, recalling that the Eichmann trial made a deep impression on him as a child.

“The people bow their heads in expressing honor and deep appreciation for his life works and character,” Netanyahu said.

Landau died in Jerusalem. Funeral arrangements had not been announced late Sunday.

Washington – To Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, it seemed like a sensible way to attack a major public health problem. To the soft drink industry, giant food companies, makers of snacks and candy, supermarkets, and antihunger groups, it seemed like an attack at the grocery checkout counter.

The mayor wants to reduce obesity and diabetes by banning the use of food stamps to buy “sugar-sweetened beverages” in New York City.

Food and beverage lobbyists see the mayor’s plan as a well-intentioned but misguided and paternalistic effort. They say it would create a logistical bottleneck at checkout counters and stigmatize poor people using food stamps.

They also fear that restrictions on soft drinks would set a precedent for the government to distinguish between good and bad foods and to ban the use of food stamps for other products — an issue sure to come up next year in the Congressional debate on a new farm bill.

“Once you start going into grocery carts, deciding what people can or cannot buy, where do you stop?” asked Kevin W. Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

Continue to read at The NY Times

Jerusalem – After covering the Eichmann trial, which opened in 1961 in Jerusalem, Naphtali Lavie, at the time a correspondent for Haaretz, wrote three articles in which he criticized the Zionist leadership for its failure to rescue European Jewry. But the articles were shelved: Lavie feared they would be damaging to many people who were still alive. To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, which corresponds this year with the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial, Haaretz is publishing them for the first time.

The trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann opened in the auditorium of Beit Ha’am in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961. Naphtali Lavie, at the time a reporter for Haaretz and himself a Holocaust survivor, was assigned to cover the trial, together with Amos Elon. Hovering over the event was the shadow of another famous trial from the previous decade, popularly known as the “Kastner trial,” in which the Zionist leadership was castigated for being indifferent to the fate of European Jewry and for its failure to carry out large-scale rescue operations. In 1944, Reszo (Israel ) Kastner, who was active in the Zionist Labor Movement in Hungary, became head of the Aid and Rescue Committee, a Budapest-based Jewish group. In that capacity, he held negotiations with Eichmann, who visited Hungary in 1944 in order to organize the extermination of its Jews. Another member of the committee, Joel Brand, was sent to Palestine in order to present the Nazis’ demands (10,000 trucks in return for one million Jews ). In the end, the Nazis agreed to spare only a few Jews and deported hundreds of thousands to the death camps.
Outside the Eichmann trial

Hungarian Jews who had survived and testified in the Kastner trial were asked, “Why did you not rebel?” and “Why did you not escape?” According to one of the explanations put forth in the trial, the reason for their inaction was that the rescue committee, not wanting to subvert the negotiations with Eichmann, did not inform the Jewish community at large about the Nazis’ intention to annihilate them. The question of why the Jews did not rebel also came up in the Eichmann trial.

At the conclusion of the trial, Haaretz editor-in-chief Gershom Schocken asked Naphtali Lavie to write about the behavior of the Jewish leadership in Palestine during the period of the Holocaust. Lavie interviewed about 20 people, including former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and former Interior Minister Yitzhak Gruenbaum, who were involved in rescue attempts, along with parliamentarians and Zionist activists. He perused minutes of meetings, read reports and exchanges of correspondence in five languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German and Polish ) and also consulted six books and the archives of three newspapers. The research took him three months (Eichmann was executed on May 31, 1962 ). Lavie wrote three articles based on this research addressing the failures of the Zionist leadership during the Holocaust titled “Why did you not act?” But after submitting them for publication, he asked Schocken to shelve them. Why? “To avoid creating an atmosphere that we are guilty,” he explains now.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Eichmann trial, the Massuah International Institute for Holocaust Studies and Yedioth Books have co-published “Six Million Accusers: The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann,” an album-format book based on a permanent exhibition of the same name at the institute, located in Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak. The book consists of photocopies of documents, photographs, passages from testimonies and articles about the trial. After compiling the articles in the book, the project’s director, Ruti Ben-Ari, asked Lavie whether he had any material that merited publication. Lavie told her about the three articles and said they could now be published. The articles, which are not included in the book, appear here for the first time.

Continue to read at Haaretz.com

Tel Aviv – Lydia Avidan, an elegant 79-year-old widow, walked into a Tel Aviv high school with tears streaking from beneath her tinted sunglasses. She was about to hand over to historians the only mementos she had left from relatives who perished in the Holocaust — a yellowed, cracked letter she had never read and a faded black-and-white photo of her grandparents.

“It’s a part of me and it’s hard to let it go,” said the gray-haired Avidan, who escaped Poland as a child and settled in Israel. “I’ve saved them all these years, but once I go they will be lost.”

Avidan donated the materials at a collection point in the spartan classrooms of the school, where the final relics of the Holocaust were being collected.

“Gathering the Fragments” is a project launched by Israel’s Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial ahead of the country’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday. The goal is to gather from aging survivors as many artifacts as possible before they — and their stories — are gone forever.

Dozens of Israelis arrived with items that had been stashed away for decades. Researchers questioned them, logged their stories, tagged their materials, then scanned their documents into Yad Vashem’s vast digitized archive. With white gloves, they carefully placed larger items into boxes that were later shipped back to the large Yad Vashem compound in Jerusalem.

For many, it was a struggle to part with what had become family treasures, their only physical links to ancestors who perished. In addition to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis also confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little behind.

Haim Gertner, director of the Yad Vashem archive, said the collection effort could prove vital for both preservation and research purposes, adding depth to the museum’s existing exhibits and potentially contributing details to Yad Vashem’s huge database of names.

The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, wiping out a third of world Jewry. Of the victims, only about 4 million names have been gathered by Yad Vashem, which is racing to collect testimonies as well as the historic belongings from some 200,000 survivors in Israel.

“The Holocaust is a puzzle, and we need to collect the pieces and put them back together,” Gertner said. “The Nazis didn’t just try to destroy the Jewish people, they tried to destroy its memory … this is a last minute rescue operation.”

Yad Vashem also has the means to maintain historical documents that have been damaged over the passing years. The memorial plans 10 collection dates across the country in the coming year. The first such day, on Apr. 13 in Tel Aviv, produced a variety of letters, pictures, diaries and yellow stars — each telling its own unique story.

One touching donation was a fraying beige sweater with red pockets and green, butterfly-shaped buttons. It belonged to 8-year-old Gitel Londner, who was separated from her parents in Poland in 1943 and perished in Auschwitz shortly after. The sweater is all her parents had to remember her by and they guarded it religiously throughout their own ordeal through Nazi concentration camps and then for 60 years in Israel.

The parents, Ephraim and Mina, had another child after the war. Zehava Mirenberg said her mother never forgave herself for losing Gitel and would never part with the sweater. Mirenberg, 63, said she struggled for years after her parents died over what to do with the sweater but finally decided to donate it for safekeeping.

“It was the most important object to her: she cared for it, folding it carefully, placing it in a bag and staring at it,” she said. “In many ways she stayed there, in the Holocaust, and I preserved the sweater in her honor. But I can’t pass it on to my children. It’s too much of an emotional burden to bear.”

Avidan and her parents had escaped in 1939 on a journey that would take them through Romania and Turkey before they arrived in the British-mandated territory that would later become Israel. She never found out what happened to the rest of her family and only assumed they were exterminated in Auschwitz, as was the rest of their town.

An only child, she kept the letter and the picture hidden for years before deciding to come forward after seeing a newspaper ad about the collection drive.

But first she wanted to know what the letter said. Her Polish aristocratic parents never spoke about the war and she only discovered the letter after their deaths. All she knew was that the letter was written by her grandparents in Yiddish and in Polish — languages she could not read — and sent from their home in 1940. She had been afraid to probe beyond that.

Avidan looked on warily as a Yad Vashem translator began reading. The letter was addressed to her mother, who had just arrived in the Holy Land. In it, her parents wished her luck, telling her to rest up after such a long journey and expressing concern about her new home. The grandparents’ update included that one of them was ill with a fever. Not a word was written about the situation in Nazi-occupied Poland.

“They didn’t believe anything would happen, they thought the Germans would just pass through and things would go back to normal,” a tearful Avidan said.

She said she felt relief at finally learning what she had saved all these years and was at peace with handing it over.

“I did what I had to do for their memory,” she said. “There is nothing more I can do now.”

New York – May 1st, often called May Day, might have more holidays than any other day of the year. It’s a celebration of Spring, but mostly it’s known as a day of political protests marked around the world as international workers’ day with marches demanding more jobs, better working conditions and higher wages.

In Turkey, About 200,000 workers gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in the largest May Day rally there since 1977.

In South Korea, police said 50,000 rallied in Seoul for better labor protections. They also urged the government to contain rising inflation, a growing concern across much of Asia, where food and oil prices have been spiking and threatening to push millions into poverty.

Thousands of workers also marched in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines to vent their anger over the rising cost of living and growing disparities between the rich and poor.

In the Philippines, about 3,000 workers demanding higher wages held a protest in a Manila square that included setting alight the effigy of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III grinning in a luxury car. Aquino was criticized this year for buying a secondhand Porsche in a country where a third of people live on a dollar a day.

In Spain, where the unemployment has reached a eurozone high of 21.3 percent, several thousand people gathered in the eastern port city of Valencia and protested the government’s failure to create new jobs.

In Moscow, up to 5,000 Communists and members of other leftist groups marched through the city carrying a sea of red flags to celebrate their traditional holiday, what in Soviet times was known as the Day of International Solidarity of Workers.

See below photos.

Washington – Menachem Zivotofsky was born in a Jerusalem hospital in 2002. Two months later, his mother showed up at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, to get him a passport.

Menachem’s parents, Ari and Naomi, were born in the United States so there was no question that he was American, too.

But when the mother asked that her son’s passport and other documents indicate that he was born in Israel, State Department officials refused, citing longstanding U.S. policy to refrain from expressing an official view about Jerusalem’s status. Israel has proclaimed the once-divided city as its capital; the U.S. and most nations do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital.

A lawsuit followed. The dispute over Menachem’s passport, a mix of the thorny politics of the Middle East and a fight between Congress and the president over primacy in foreign policy, has landed at the Supreme Court. The justices could say as early as Monday whether they will hear the case.

Had Menachem been born in Tel Aviv, the State Department would have issued a passport listing his place of birth as Israel. The regular practice for recording the birth of a U.S. citizen abroad is to list the country where it occurred.

But the department’s guide tells consular officials, “For a person born in Jerusalem, write Jerusalem as the place of birth in the passport.”

Ever since President Harry S. Truman recognized Israel upon its declaration of nationhood in 1948, no president has accepted permanent Israeli rule of the entirety of Jerusalem. Since Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War brought the entire city under Israeli control, U.S. policy has regarded the sensitive status of Jerusalem as something ultimately to be determined in talks between Israel and its negotiating partners. The U.S. Embassy remains in Tel Aviv.

In 1995, Congress essentially adopted the Israeli position, saying the U.S. should recognize a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Shortly before Menachem’s birth, lawmakers passed new provisions urging the president to take steps to move the embassy to Jerusalem and allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to have their place of birth listed as Israel.

The measures were part of a large foreign affairs bill that President George W. Bush signed into law. But even as he did so, Bush issued a signing statement in which he said that “U.S. policy regarding Jerusalem has not changed.” The president said Congress could not tell him what to do in this matter of foreign affairs.

Presidential signing statements, which have been used for centuries, became a point of controversy during Bush’s presidency. He issued them more often than any other president. Democrats in Congress complained that he used them to pick and choose parts of legislation he could ignore, overstepping his bounds as president.

After the Zivotofskys took their complaint to federal court in 2003, a judge refused to get in the middle of the dispute over Jerusalem’s status. It was a political question, the judge said, for Congress and the president to work out without the intervention of the courts.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said that if the courts were to get involved in a case about Jerusalem’s status, “a controversial reaction is virtually guaranteed. Such a reaction can only further complicate and undermine United States efforts to help resolve the Middle East conflict.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed that it had no authority to consider the claim.

One appellate judge, Harry Edwards, said he disagreed with his colleagues. But he would have ruled against the Zivotofskys. Edwards said the Constitution clearly gives the president exclusive power in this area and that it was important for the courts to say so. Three other judges on the appeals court voted to have the entire court hear the case but that was short of the majority of the full court needed to do that.

The focus of the Zivotofskys’ appeal is on the courts’ power to resolve the dispute. A victory at the Supreme Court probably would leave it to lower courts to decide what the passport should say. The child’s father is a rabbi who writes on an array of issues, including the finer points of kosher cuisine.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., has joined the family in urging the Supreme Court to hear the case. “Foreign policy is not a presidential preserve,” Weiner said in a filing with the court. He also criticized the use of signing statements, which he said violates the Constitution’s requirement that the president faithfully execute the law.

The case is Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 10-699.

Tel Aviv – An annual report by an Israeli university says the number of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide declined in 2010 but remains high overall.

Tel Aviv University researchers say 2010 saw a 46% drop in the number of violent incidents targeting Jews relative to 2009 — from 1,129 to 614.

But the report released Sunday said the 2010 number was still among the highest recorded since the late 1980s. It says the drop was largely because 2009 had a particularly high number of incidents linked to Israel’s military offensive that year in the Gaza Strip.

The researchers found a “rising trend in the number of anti-Semitic incidents over the past decade.”

The report said the highest numbers incidents were recorded in Britain, France and Canada.

Jerusalem – Israel will hold up an $89 million cash transfer to the Palestinians planned for this week, the Israeli finance minister said Sunday, in the country’s first tangible step against a new unity arrangement between Palestinian factions.

Israel wants assurances that any money transferred to the Palestinians will not reach the militant Hamas organization, which is set to become part of the Palestinian government, said the minister, Yuval Steinitz.

“I think the burden of proof is on the Palestinians, to make it certain, to give us guarantees that money delivered by Israel is not going to the Hamas, is not going to a terrorist organization, is not going to finance terror operations against Israeli citizens,” Steinitz said ahead of the Israeli government’s weekly meeting.

Israel collects some tax and customs fees for the Palestinians under peace agreements of the 1990s. Israel has held up cash transfers several times in the past decade, citing concerns that the money was being used to fund attacks against Israelis.

The framework Palestinian unity deal announced last week aims at a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Fatah, backed by the West, dominates the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and officially seeks an accommodation with Israel. The Iran-backed Hamas rules Gaza and officially remains committed to Israel’s destruction.

The details of the deal, set to be signed at a ceremony in Cairo on Wednesday, remain unclear. It is meant to lead immediately to a transitional government and new elections within one year.

The current Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said the Israeli move Sunday would not affect the unity plan.

“We definitely will not stop the reconciliation because of these threats, and we are in contact with all the influential international forces and the international parties which can affect this matter to stop Israel from taking these steps,” he said during a visit to Bethlehem.

In Gaza, Hamas official Khalil al-Haya called the Israeli decision “blackmail” and urged the sides to move ahead with the reconciliation agreement, which he said would “bring good for our people and make us able to defeat the occupation of our land.”

The Israeli government says the unity deal rules out the renewal of deadlocked peace talks and threatens Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation in the West Bank.

The agreement “should worry not only all Israeli citizens but all those across the world who want to see peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.

“Peace will be possible only with those who want to live in peace beside us, and not with those who want to destroy us,” he said.

A previous attempt at a Palestinian unity government, in 2007, lasted four months and ended in deadly infighting and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza.

During that brief time, Hamas floated plans for extended cease-fires with Israel, indicating a slight softening of the organization’s policies. But it refused the international community’s demand to recognize Israel and renounce violence.

Yemen – A Gulf official says the signing ceremony of a deal to end Yemen’s political crisis has been indefinitely postponed, signaling the possible collapse of the agreement.

Ahmed Khalifa al-Kaabi, a media official at the Riyadh headquarters of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, said on Sunday that the postponement was caused by the refusal of the Yemeni president to personally sign the deal.

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s leader of 32 years, told the GCC secretary general in a meeting late Saturday in Sanaa that he had asked a senior aide to represent him in the signing ceremony in Riyadh.

The ceremony was expected to be held on Sunday or Monday.

The GCC deal provides for Saleh to step down within 30 days.

Officials from President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ruling party said the Yemeni leader has told the head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation council in a late Saturday meeting in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that a senior aide would represent him at a signing ceremony scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia on Monday.

Yemeni opposition parties said it would not sign the deal if Saleh did not. While the representatives of the hundreds of thousands who have been staging anti-Saleh demonstrations since early February have rejected the entire deal, demanding that Saleh immediately step down and face trial.

The GCC proposals provide for the creation of a national unity government and for him to hand over power to his vice president within 30 days – as well as immunity from any future prosecution.

The officials, who spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said Saleh assured Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, the GCC secretary general, during Saturday’s meeting that he would ratify the deal after it is signed by his close aide and senior ruling party official Abdul-Karim al-Iryani.

Al-Zayani, a Bahraini, left Sanaa Saturday night.

The GCC comprises Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain.

Jerusalem – Some 208,000 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel, 66 years after the end of World War II, a non-profit organization which assists the aging victims said Sunday.

Half of them are older than 80, and every day about 35 die, said the Tel Aviv-based Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel.

It published the results on the eve of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was to begin at sunset Sunday and end at sunset Monday.

A state ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institute Sunday evening was to open the 24 hours of memorial services.

On Monday, a two-minute siren is scheduled to wail throughout the country and Israel will come to a standstill, with cars stopping in the streets and pedestrians pausing in honour of the 6 million Jews who were murdered in World War II.

Some 74,000 are direct survivors of the camps and ghettos, while the remaining 134,000 are Holocaust refugees – European Jews who survived the war by fleeing the Nazi horrors or going into hiding.

While in the early years after Israel’s foundation in 1948, Holocaust survivors made up about half the country’s Jewish population, they today form under 4 per cent.

Their number is dwindling fast – about nearly 13,000 die each year, said the Holocaust survivors foundation.

That means that in some 16 years no one will be left in Israel to tell the story of the Holocaust first hand.

The foundation commissioned a study by an Israeli-Jewish American social research centre, the Meyers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, which found that the remaining survivors sometimes live in difficult conditions.

Some 40 per cent of the survivors reported loneliness. Around 20 per cent said they did not have enough heating in the winter. About 5 per cent said they did not have enough food, while another 25 per cent said they had enough to meet their daily needs, but not the kind they would like. Many also suffer from age-related health problems.

Foundation chairman Elazar Stern said the results of the study showed that the need for assistance among aging Holocaust survivors would only grow in the coming years.

‘The young generation won’t forgive us if we don’t care for the older generation with the respect that it deserves,’ he said.

‘We are in a race against time,’ added CEO Rony Kalinsky, noting that also those without socio-economic problems needed help ‘coping with loneliness and the distress that stems from their harsh past.’

Washington – President Barack Obama exacted his revenge Saturday after weeks of attacks from his would-be Republican challenger Donald Trump, joking that the billionaire businessman could bring change to the White House, transforming it from a stately mansion into a tacky casino with a whirlpool in the garden.

With Trump in attendance, Obama used the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner to mock the reality TV star’s presidential ambitions. The president said Trump has shown the acumen of a future president, from firing Gary Busey on a recent episode of “Celebrity Apprentice” to focusing so much time on conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace.

After a week when Obama released his long-form Hawaii birth certificate, he said Trump could now focus on the serious issues, from whether the moon landing actually happened to “where are Biggie and Tupac?”

“No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than ‘the Donald,'” Obama said, referring to Trump’s claims the same day that he was responsible for solving the issue.

For Trump’s decision to fire actor Busey instead of rock singer Meat Loaf from his TV show earlier this month, Obama quipped: “These are the types of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir.”

And then, as a coup de grace, Obama showed a screen with his vision of how Trump could bring change to the White House. “Trump” was prominently displayed in glittery letters and girls could be seen with cocktails on a Jacuzzi-augmented front lawn.

Trump chuckled at some of the earlier jokes, but was clearly less amused as comedian Seth Meyers picked up where Obama left off.

“Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican, which is surprising,” said the Saturday Night Live actor, entrusted with providing some of the comedy for the evening. “I just assumed he was running as a joke.”

Trump stared icily at Meyers as he continued to criticize the real estate tycoon.

Obama and Trump found themselves in the same room after an intense week of attacks from Trump, who has piggybacked on the birther conspiracies and even Obama’s refusal to release his university grades to raise the profile of his possible presidential bid.

And the birth certificate was clearly the key punchline for the evening, which typically offers the president a chance to show off his humorous side and a town consumed by politics and partisanship to enjoy a light-hearted affair.

Obama’s presentation started after the wrestler Hulk Hogan’s patriotic anthem, “Real American,” played. Images of Americana from Mount Rushmore to Uncle Sam were shown on the screen, alongside his birth certificate. And then he offered to show his live birth video, which turned out to be a clip from the Disney film, “The Lion King.”

On the serious side, Obama took time to thank the troops for their service overseas and noted that the people of the South, especially Alabama, have suffered heart-wrenching losses.

“The devastation is unbelievable and it is heartbreaking,” he said. He encouraged the journalists in the room to help tell the stories of those who have been hurt by the storms and saluted those who lost their lives while covering the news.

Other possible Republican presidential hopefuls in attendance were former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Rep. Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And stars such as Sean Penn and Scarlett Johansson also were among the more than 2,500 people who attended.

The association was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner. Some of the proceeds from the dinner pay for journalism scholarships for college students.

Several journalists will also be honored at the dinner:

— Dan Balz of The Washington Post and Jake Tapper of ABC News, for winning the Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure. Balz won for coverage of an unexpected appearance by Obama and former President Bill Clinton at a White House briefing, and Tapper won for revealing that Obama would ask Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to resign.

— Peter Baker of The New York Times, for winning the Aldo Beckman award for sustained excellence in White House coverage, for stories dubbed “the education of a president.”

— Michael Berens of The Seattle Times, for winning the Edgar A. Poe Award for excellence in coverage of news of national or regional significance. Berens uncovered flaws in a health care plan for seniors that resulted in neglect, abuse and even death.