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A West Virginia rabbi’s ‘obsession with Lego’ connects him with his changing community
(JTA) — A West Virginia rabbi landed on the front page of his city’s newspaper earlier this month — not because of anything that happened at his synagogue, but because of his local fame as the builder of ever-more-ambitious Lego projects.
A 4-foot-tall Superman figure — all made of the tiny plastic blocks — stands alongside the books and Judaica in Rabbi Victor Urecki’s office at Charleston’s B’nai Jacob Synagogue. Where other rabbis might keep candy for children who visit his office, Urecki stores small Lego sets from the Disney Princess series and Moana’s dolphin cove in his desk drawers.
Urecki told the newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, that he was drawn to Lego building because he and his wife Marilyn can work together and feel a shared sense of accomplishment.
But to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Yeshiva University-ordained rabbi said that wasn’t the whole story. While he initially wrote in an email that he feels there isn’t “really a ‘Judaism’ angle to this story,” he added that part of what he loves about his small community is that they are “giving and understanding,” especially when it comes to his hobbies.
“They have put up with this comic book collecting, Peloton/fitness crazy, and now Lego building rabbi,” Urecki added. “If you want to know why my wife and I have never once thought of leaving this state that continues to decline in population and why we plan to stay around when we retire in a couple of years, look no further than this amazingly supportive shul we have been blessed with. They are the real story.”
Urecki’s extracurricular pursuits are a major part of his identity. He was born in Argentina, and his early interest with comic-book collecting began as a way to learn English. Now, he has a whole room dedicated to comics — and, increasingly, Lego — in his house in Charleston, where he has also hosted an adult continuing education class on Lego construction through a local university.
“One of the gifts that this congregation has given me is they have allowed me to be me,” Urecki told JTA. “They didn’t shudder when they heard I collect comics. Instead, for my birthday and for different things, they get a kiddush lunch and they put comic books on the things for the luncheon.”
The support goes a long way back. Urecki once told a local news TV host that when he appeared — as himself — on the cover of a short-lived comic book called “Big Bad Blood of Dracula,” in 1991, a congregant bought 100 copies to share with others in the community.
B’nai Jacob, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement: Many of its 160 families are dual members of the nearby Reform synagogue, Temple Israel. Fewer than 1,200 Jews are estimated to live in West Virginia overall.
It also was not always a Conservative synagogue. When Urecki and his then-fiancée arrived in 1986, he was fresh out of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, the flagship modern Orthodox educational institution.
At the time, B’nai Jacob identified as a Traditional synagogue, one of a small group of such congregations, mostly located in the Midwest, in which women did not count in the minyan, or prayer quorum, as per the Orthodox tradition, and did not lead services — though men and women did sit together.
But as the times changed, so did the needs of the Jewish community in Charleston. West Virginia, a state in deep economic decline since the mid-1960s due to the a decreasing reliance on coal, has also seen a significant drop in population. There is no Jewish day school in Charleston, and while there used to be a few kosher butchers in town in the 1950s and 1960s, those, too, have shuttered. Urecki and his wife recently drove two and a half hours up to Columbus, Ohio, to buy kosher meat. The couple sent their three daughters to Catholic high school — an uncommon choice for an Orthodox rabbi’s children.
Those shifts also led to changes at his synagogue. In 2017, B’nai Jacob held its first High Holiday services where women counted in the prayer quorum. In 2018, the synagogue officially joined the Conservative movement. Urecki welcomes the flexibility.
“The congregation has allowed me to grow not just as me, but also as a rabbi,” Urecki said. “I’ve got to explore avenues that I don’t think I would have done in other places. I’m not the same rabbi that came in back in ’86. I want to perform intermarriages. I want to be there for same-sex marriages — things that I didn’t think I would ever be comfortable or want to do, now I embrace. And I think part of it is because I’ve been in such a diverse community that I have to be there for everyone.”
Those transitions have not always been easy. Urecki remembers the exact date he got the phone call from the Rabbinical Council of America, an association for Orthodox rabbis, asking him to resign: May 29, 2018.
“I thought that was one of the hardest and blackest days of my life,” Urecki said. “And my wife said, ‘It’s going to be one of the best because you will be able to do more things that you’ve always wanted to do and your congregation has always encouraged you to find yourself, but you couldn’t because you were kind of shackled to an organization.’ And sure enough, that’s happened to me.”
Urecki has since taken the time to find himself, from Peloton to Legos.
“That obsession with Lego and comics and exercise kind of reminds me that I’m a human being,” he said.
And sharing those interests with his congregants has helped him connect to them. Letting the wider community and his congregation in, letting them see his comic book collection and his giant Superman build, Urecki says, “does create a certain amount of humanity. People put rabbis, ministers, priests on this pedestal and they’re afraid to talk to them.”
For the synagogue’s kids especially, he says, “instead of looking at the office as this really scary thing when you’re being called the rabbi’s office, they see comic book stuff, they see Lego. And there’s an instant connection that’s made.
“Every Sunday when kids run into the synagogue, the first thing they do is they run into the office to see if I have a new build,” he added. “We might like kids to be running in and their first thing is like, ‘I want to put on tefillin,’ but, you know, they’re running into the synagogue. And that’s a nice thing.”
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The post A West Virginia rabbi’s ‘obsession with Lego’ connects him with his changing community appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success
US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool
The United States launched a large-scale military strike against Iran early Saturday, destroying key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
US President Donald Trump said in a public address that the operation had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities and urged Tehran to “make peace,” warning that any future aggression would be met with even greater force.
The multi-pronged strike combined stealth B‑2 Spirit bombers deploying bunker-buster bombs with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — all central to the Iranian nuclear program — were targeted in a coordinated assault. US military officials said the campaign neutralized Iran’s main enrichment operations.
Trump praised Israel’s role in coordinating the response and hailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a key partner, saying the two leaders worked “as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” Netanyahu, for his part, called the American action “unmatched” and said it signaled a shift toward restoring regional stability.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the operation as a breach of sovereignty and international law, vowing to respond with force. Hours after the strike, Iran retaliated by unleashing a salvo of roughly 30 ballistic and hypersonic missiles toward central Israel. Several missiles hit urban centers including Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Haifa, and surrounding areas, causing injuries to at least 25 civilians and extensive property damage. Israel closed its airspace and instructed residents in key regions to only venture out for essential activities. In response, Israeli jets struck military targets in Iran, including missile launch sites and rocket depots.
Domestically, Trump’s decision exposed sharp political divisions in Washington. Republican hawks applauded the move as decisive, while isolationists and some constitutional conservatives questioned the legality of bypassing Congress, demanding oversight before further military escalation. Meanwhile, the United Nations and key US allies, including Britain and France, urged caution and a swift return to diplomatic solutions.
Iranian state media reported that most nuclear material was evacuated from Fordow ahead of the strike, the Reuters news agency reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said it detected no spike in off-site radiation.
According to Arab sources cited in The Wall Street Journal, the United States sent messages via regional intermediaries to reassure Tehran that the strike was a one-off and not part of a campaign to topple the regime. A senior US official confirmed that the administration clarified it had no intention of pursuing regime change and that the door remained open to renewed negotiations.
US Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), co-sponsors of a bipartisan resolution to block unauthorized military action in Iran, criticized Trump’s strike as unconstitutional. Massie called the move illegal, while Khanna urged Congress to immediately vote on their Iran War Powers Resolution “to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), meanwhile, called for Trump’s ouster, claiming it violated the US Constitution and as such was an impeachable offense.
“The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” she said.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, rejected the criticism. He said Trump was acting well within his powers under Article II of the Constitution, which grants the president authority as commander-in-chief to protect national security.
“This is not without precedent,” Ostrovsky told The Algemeiner, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden and former President Joe Biden’s airstrikes on Iranian proxies in Syria.
“Trump did not need the authorization of Congress in order to initiate a military strike,” he said, adding that the action was also supported by the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms a nation’s right to self-defense.
Ostrovsky also defended the legality of Israel’s involvement, saying its campaign was not a sudden act of aggression but a response to a protracted armed conflict initiated by Iran.
“Faced with an existential and imminent threat from a nuclear Iran, the Jewish state had no choice but to act before it was too late,” he said. He described the strikes as “lawful, necessary, and proportionate under the Laws of Armed Conflict against a genocidal regime that had vowed to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and stood on the cusp of acquiring the means to do so, had Israel not acted.”
“In striking Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel and the United States made the world a safer place. They did it not only in their own defense, but in defense of the free world,” he concluded.
The post ‘Totally Obliterated’: US Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Declares Operation a Success first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi lays a wreath as he visits the burial site of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters and the Iraqi group said on Saturday.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They traveled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
The post Israeli Strike on Tehran Kills Bodyguard of Slain Hezbollah Chief first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers operate during a ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, July 3, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in cooperation with the General Security Service (Shin Bet), announced on Friday the killing of Ibrahim Abu Shamala, a senior financial official in Hamas’ military wing.
The operation took place on June 17th in the central Gaza Strip.
Abu Shamala held several key positions, including financial officer for Hamas’ military wing and assistant to Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’ military wing until his elimination in March 2024.
He was responsible for managing all the financial resources of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, overseeing the planning and execution of the group’s war budget. This involved handling and smuggling millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip to fund Hamas’ military operations.
The post Hamas Financial Officer and Commander Eliminated by IDF in the Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.