YouTube video by Senate Democrats

YouTube video by Senate Democrats

Current conditions: Tropical Storm Fay just became the sixth named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, but it’s not expected to make landfall • A new tropical storm is brewing in the Pacific, threatening Mexico with flooding and dangerous swells • It’s a hot, sunny day in Tzfat, the mountain enclave in Israel known for giving rise to the Jewish mystic movement of Kabbalah, where much of the population is marking Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews. THE TOP FIVE 1. Trump strikes a Greenland deal A Danish Air Force EH101 Merlin rescue helicopter comes in to land after the NATO military exercise Arctic Shield 2026 in Narsarsuaq, Greenland, this month. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images When Denmark fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg in April 1940, the still-neutral United States — fearing a German military expansion into North America — invaded the Danish kingdom’s island territory of Greenland. After the war ended, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Washington and Copenhagen agreed to a mutual defense pact that granted the U.S. the right to build and maintain military bases across the world’s largest island. Now President...

The 4th (+ final) installment of our Jewish mysticism series (for now!)

The 4th (+ final) installment of our Jewish mysticism series (for now!)

The 4th (+ final) installment of our Jewish mysticism series (for now!)

Grateful, as always, for you and your support: Thank you. ❤️ Welcome back to our fourth and final installment of the Mystical Magical Mystery Tour, wherin we are going to wind our way to Tzfat and take it all home. You can catch up on episodes 1-3 here: Jewish Mystical Mystery TourPart One: The Weirdest Late Antique Stuff You’ve Never SeenLife is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya RuttenbergThe Sefirot through the agesKabbalah la la (part 2)Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya RuttenbergZohar, ZoGood?Medieval + early Tzfat Kabbalah! Jewish mysticism part 3!Life is a Sacred TextRabbi Danya Ruttenberg When we last saw our heroes, there was a big flowering of Kabbalistic work all over medieval Europe – and we don't have all the receipts, but there are at least a few clues about where some of those traditions might have come from. Most notably, the Zohar came out of Spain ca. 1200. Today we'll talk about a number of the ingredients that went into creating the famous, distinctive movement that was Tzfat Kabbalah, why it wasn't as much of a bro-zone as is often thought, and what happened after. Kabbalah spread as Jews did: often not willingly. In addition to various pogroms and expulsions across Europe between the 12th-16th centuries, the expulsions in 1492 from Spain and by 1506 from Portugal were epoch-defining for the community. Many of these latter Jews wound up in Ottoman lands, including the families of Rabbis Joseph Karo (author of the cornerstone Jewish legal text the _Shulchan Aruch_) and Solomon Alkabetz (author of the liturgical poem _Lecha Dodi)_ , both enthusiastic students of Kabbalah. Karo regarded himself as regularly visited by a heavenly mentor ("maggid") called the Mishnah that revealed kabbalistic doctrines to him. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this spirit thought Karo was the smartest teacher out there.) In 1534 or 36, in either Adrianople, Türkiye or Nicopol, Bulgaria (scholars disagree), Alkabetz, Karo and others were staying up all night studying Torah for the holiday of Shavuot when, as Alkabetz wrote: Share this post: ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

Zikney Tzfat · זקני צפת 2 · Song · 1994

A rocket alert sounded Thursday morning in Tzfat in northern Israel, with reports of a projectile landing in an open area near a public space. As residents scrambled for shelter, a 12-year-old girl collapsed on her way to a protected room and went into cardiac arrest – her heart stopped beating. At 6:16 a.m., Magen […] The post 12-year-old suffers cardiac arrest fleeing to shelter appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Published in Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture (Ahead of Print, 2024)

How a group of anti-establishment yeshiva students from the Israeli city of Tzfat took control of the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn and started digging

How a group of anti-establishment yeshiva students from the Israeli city of Tzfat took control of the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn and started digging