RSS
30 days after Oct. 7, a Jewish world wracked by grief is marking a traditional milestone of mourning
(JTA) — A wide array of events and experiences are planned to mark the 30-day threshold since the Oct. 7 massacre that killed 1,400 Israelis — even though many of their loved ones have yet to reach that point in the Jewish grieving process.
The 30-day mark after death is a meaningful moment in the Jewish calendar of grief. It is when a secondary period of ritual mourning – following shiva, which lasts for seven days beginning with burial — is lifted for anyone who has lost a spouse, sibling or child. (People who have lost a parent mourn for a whole year.)
During the period, known as shloshim, mourners are prohibited from some activities, such as cutting their hair, listening to music, and attending religious celebrations and social events, but they are permitted to resume many personal and professional activities. The idea, according to the tradition, is to help mourners ease back into their communities.
“Judaism acknowledges that grief isn’t linear, and shloshim is really part of that framework,” said Sarit Wishnevski, head of Kavod v’Nichum, a nonprofit that supports progressive and pluralistic Jewish burial societies in North America. “Tradition gives us a roadmap about how to proceed at a time when there is no clear path forward.”
Kavod v’Nichum is holding a 30-minute Zoom vigil on Sunday evening aimed at letting community members share their grief and pain and drawing on each other as they prepare to enter the next phase of the grieving process. The group’s shloshim gathering joins others held by groups ranging from major Israeli organizations, which streamed a ceremony from Jerusalem on Sunday, to local Jewish federations to individual synagogues and communities around the world.
The gatherings are complicated by the fact that the communal loss does not line up with the timelines of many of the families of those who died. Burials in many cases did not happen on the swift timeline prescribed by Judaism, because of the dangers and difficulties in retrieving their bodies. The remains of some victims are still being identified. As recently as last week, someone died of injuries sustained on Oct. 7.
Yet even though the 30-day mark is unlikely to be the moment when any mourners are relieved of their proscriptions under Jewish law, it makes sense as a time to mark a communal shift, according to Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the rabbi in residence at UJA-Federation of New York, which like other Jewish federations around the country is planning a vigil to mark shloshim.
“This is uncharted territory. Not since the Shoah have we had to deal with this massive scale of grief,” Creditor said. “And we need each other so deeply that coming together even if some of the language doesn’t fit every part of our pain is essential and healthy.”
UJA-Federation’s event in Central Park on Monday night will feature Israeli musicians alongside local Jewish and elected officials. A host of similar events held by Jewish federations and branches of the Israeli consulate across the United States will offer a range of programming, for example a reading of names of those murdered and held hostage in St. Louis and a speech by survivors of the massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Los Angeles.
Other initiatives are also underway to mark shloshim. The American Zionist Movement is urging Jews to wear blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, on Monday. On Monday at the Western Wall, 1,400 candles will be lit in honor of the victims, according to a report in Hamodia, an Orthodox news outlet. The And on social media, people have begun sharing pictures of the memorial candles that they are lighting to mark the moment.
Today marks the Shloshim (30 days) since the barbaric Hamas pogrom. I light this candle in memory of those murdered while also thinking of those still held hostage and those recovering from their injuries #the_light_will_overcome pic.twitter.com/qkhxL23pAg
— Russell Langer (@R_Langer) November 5, 2023
Some Jews have taken on the mourning rituals of the shloshim period despite not being obligated to under Jewish law, in part because at least some of the people killed on Oct. 7 left behind no one to mourn for them.
“My wife Tami and I decided, when we learned how many of the dead from the October 7th attack were complete families and therefore wouldn’t have a kaddishel (someone obligated to say kaddish for them), we vowed that we would observe shloshim for them,” Rabbi Jeffrey Arnowitz of Westchester Jewish Center said in a blog post about his trip to Israel last week, in which he and other Conservative rabbis from the United States were the first civilian group to visit Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than a quarter of residents were killed or abducted.
“If you’ve noticed me looking a bit scruffy lately, that’s why,” Arnowitz wrote. “The truth is I have been grieving like a mourner and the ritual has helped me move through the last four weeks as I get used to a world that looks and feels different than it did on October 6th.”
Marking shloshim does not take away from the pain that is deeply felt across the Jewish world right now, said Wishnevski, whose own cousin’s husband, Sagui Dekel-Chen, disappeared from his kibbutz on Oct. 7 and is thought to be held hostage in Gaza.
“We need to be able to continue living our lives and being with our families and doing our work and being in the world,” she said. “We’re not forgetting. We’re not leaving anything behind. But we’re marking time together.”
—
The post 30 days after Oct. 7, a Jewish world wracked by grief is marking a traditional milestone of mourning appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.