May their memories be a blessing.

The calamity in Surfside will live on as one of the worst building collapses in US history. Surfside, Florida, is home to a bustling Jewish community of roughly 5,000, more than one third of the North Beach population to be exact, and largely Orthodox in practice. North Beach, a top portion of narrow land on the Atlantic Ocean, also includes Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, and Indian Creek. The area, once the scene of rampant anti-Semitism, including lodging slogans like, “Always a view, never a Jew,” now boasts large religious observance, with much stemming from the Shul of Bal Harbour under the leadership of Rabbi Sholom D. and Rebbetzin Chani Lipskar, and Rabbi Yair Massri, who leads the Sephardic minyan on the premises. Just blocks from the Towers site is the Surfside Minyan Synagogue, under the helm of Rabbi Aryeh Citron, where six families have been affected by the unfolding events. While the Jewish communities of South Florida are known to house retirees over 65, Surfside’s Jewish community has a median age of only 43.

The British Empire played a crucial role in the creation of the State of Israel. There is no condoning the British government’s appalling 1939 “White Paper” whose draconian restrictions severely reduced Jewish immigration to Palestine until 1948, and had tragic consequences for European Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis in World War II. However, 22 years prior, the British gave a wonderful – I would call it miraculous – gift to the Zionist cause called the Balfour Declaration.

 The handover of power in the Knesset this past Sunday was raucous, as nationalist lawmakers heckled incoming Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for betraying their cause by joining his Yamina party to seven others in a ruling coalition, breaking the stalemate that goes back to the 2019 election when incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party failed to maintain their coalition.

Unique collaboration seeks to expand sales and customers for Israeli products

Israel’s Ministry of Economy and Industry, in cooperation with the Ministry’s attachés in New York, has unveiled a unique collaboration with the American Communities Helping Israel (ACHI) organization to expand the circle of customers and sales of Israeli manufacturers with a “Made in Israel” label in the US and Canadian markets.

 If the enemies of Israel needed a pretext for rioting and rocket attacks, last week’s planned eviction of four Palestinian Arab families in eastern Jerusalem served as the convenient excuse. Predictably, the usual voices on social media and in diplomatic circles expressed a range of statements from being “concerned” to condemnation of “Jewish supremacism,” a new term coined by leftists to conflate white racism with Zionism.