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The Jewish Calendar: Sanctifying Time in a Fractured World
Mourners visit the graves of fallen IDF soldiers at Israel’s Yom HaZikaron ceremony. Photo: Israel Defense Forces
Time doesn’t always move the way we expect it to. Sometimes it blurs — with days stretching endlessly, their differences erased. Sometimes, everything happens at once, compressing joy and grief, memory and urgency, into a single, overwhelming present.
Since October 7, I’ve felt both: the loss of rhythm and the intensity of everything arriving at the same moment. I find myself forgetting what came before, uncertain how to prepare for what’s next. The rituals and holidays that once structured the year now land with surprising weight, or else pass almost unnoticed, leaving me searching for a sense of passage.
On November 24, 2023 — just before the release of the first hostages — Rabbi Oded Mazor penned a prayer:
In the days when each hour collides with the next
We have no choice but to cry and to laugh with the same eyes
To mourn and to dance at the same time
And the long arc of history is compressed into one day and one hour…
There is no order in this kind of time. Tears and laughter, mourning and music, are all pressed together. The calendar’s boxes are still there, but what fills them is unpredictable, and often too much to hold.
In the season of the Yamim — Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut — I’m especially aware of this disorientation. The rituals that are supposed to mark transitions often feel like thin threads pulled through chaos. When time is broken, how do we begin to heal?
Time as an Act of Freedom
While still slaves in Egypt, with no power over their own days or nights, the very first mitzvah ever given to the Jewish people was declaring the new month. God did not hand us a calendar to follow; God gave us the power and responsibility to shape it. Slaves do not own their time. The commandment to sanctify the new month was an act of spiritual agency — a way to say, “We may not control our circumstances, but we can shape our experience of them.” We built the rhythms and boundaries that give life meaning.
That same creative impulse lives in how we’ve shaped the modern calendar, and especially in the sequence of placing Yom HaZikaron directly before Yom HaAtzmaut. This structure was designed not to ease the emotional weight, but to heighten it. To insist that independence could not be celebrated without acknowledging its cost—and that mourning must give way to meaning.
The calendar was built to hold that intensity, and to transform it into something sacred. The emotional whiplash is real, but it is also honest. It says that celebration built on forgetfulness is empty, and that mourning cut off from hope is paralyzing. The calendar itself becomes a ritual, a choreography of the Jewish soul.
Time, Separation, and Sanctity
When time collapses or blurs, I find myself longing for boundaries. Not barriers, but passages that guide us. Judaism offers rituals of separation — like Havdalah at the end of Shabbat — as tools for transition. These rituals bless the space between sacred and ordinary.
This need for sanctity and distinction feels urgent in a time when so much has collapsed. Over the past year, we have seen people invent small rituals to push back against the blur. One I return to often is the Wings of Hope project.
In the summer of 2023, educator and mother Livnat Kutz invited children from her kibbutz, Kfar Aza, to help decorate a local bomb shelter. They gathered broken plastic toys, and — with creativity and vision — formed them into a pair of massive, colorful wings on the shelter wall.
It was a joyful, imaginative expression of freedom and hope. Then came October 7. Livnat, her husband Aviv, and their three children, Rotem, Yonatan, and Yiftach, were brutally murdered in their home. The family was gone — but the wings they built remained. Untouched. Unharmed.
Wings of Hope have been recreated around the world — as rituals of memory, healing, and longing for peace. At a recent M² seminar, educators wrote prayers on paper wings; in schools worldwide, children created “wings of blessing,” honoring lives and hostages. More than a memorial, Wings of Hope shows how Jewish time is marked through lived experience, and how our communities have embraced it as a powerful new ritual — one that expands tradition, sanctifies time, and gives deep emotions a form we can carry together.
Shaping Our Own Meaning Today
Jewish time is not only a record of what has happened. It is an imperative — an opportunity to participate, to shape the emotional and spiritual rhythms of the community. When the calendar feels out of sync, our challenge is not to surrender to the blur, but to to make each passage, however fragile, a place of meaning.
This year, as the Yamim return, let’s build them — out of memory, out of ritual, out of the full weight of what has been lost and what must still be hoped for. Because the calendar is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we are called, again and again, to create.
Shuki Taylor is the Founder & CEO of M2:The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education.
The post The Jewish Calendar: Sanctifying Time in a Fractured World first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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