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‘Mitzvah Mania’: A Los Angeles synagogue is hosting a show with Jewish professional wrestlers

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Colt Cabana, real name Scott Colton, is used to walking out to crowds of hundreds of fans as a member of All Elite Wrestling, a popular show that airs on channels such as TBS and TNT.

On Sunday, he’ll be wrestling at a synagogue.

Temple Beth Am, located in Los Angeles’ heavily Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, is putting on “Mitzvah Mania,” a one-off show with mostly Jewish wrestlers. It’s pegged to another event taking place this weekend: “WrestleMania,” the annual marquee event for the WWE, the country’s largest professional wrestling series.

“Mitzvah Mania” will break new ground for the synagogue with about 900 member families that typically holds more traditional programming, such as Shabbat dinners, adult education offerings and text study.

“We’re trying to do something different that synagogues haven’t seen before,” said Ari Fife, the synagogue’s director of programming and engagement.

The show, which is being billed as the first of its kind, will include six matches, five of which will feature only Jewish wrestlers who perform at various professional tiers, and one with a Jewish referee.

In addition to Cabana, attendees will see former Jewish WWE stars Lisa Marie Varon (or Victoria, as she was known in the ring) and Chris Mordetzky (a two-time National Wrestling Alliance champion known as Chris Masters and later Chris Adonis).

“Certainly in America, this is the first time there’s been representation in every match on the card, Jewishly,” said Jeremy Fine, a Chicago-area rabbi who planned the event.

The backstory started about seven years ago, when Fine, who runs the Jewish sports blog “The Great Rabbino,” went to his first independent wrestling show and saw Cabana, a fellow native of Deerfield, Illinois.

Fine was living in Minnesota at the time, and he recalled telling some of his congregants about the show. When they suggested putting on a wrestling show at the synagogue, he thought the idea was crazy. (Fine’s former synagogue is still innovating: they recently built an ice skating rink.)

“They were very persistent,” Fine told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We did it, and it was a huge success. And by our second show, we were sold out in a Minnesota blizzard on a Wednesday evening.”

Fine ended up hosting three wrestling shows at Temple of Aaron Synagogue in St. Paul Jewish with Israeli athletes and entertainers — “Mitzvah Mayhem,” “Hanukkah Havoc” and “Exodus.” It turned into his own wrestling company, 2econd Wrestling, that puts on shows near his current pulpit in Chicago and around the country, including Sunday’s event in L.A.

“Mitzvah Mania” will be Fine’s most Jewish show yet.

Fine had approached Beth Am about the event to tie it to “WrestleMania,” which rotates its location and is this year being held at nearby SoFi Stadium. Fife said the synagogue’s senior staff was hesitant about the idea, even as they set out to hold more unique events.

Fife, who himself grew up a wrestling fan, said there was initially “a lack of understanding of what wrestling really is.” For the uninitiated, professional wrestling in the likes of the WWE and AEW is a far cry from Olympic-style wrestling. In addition to being athletic performers, wrestlers like Cabana are also entertainment figures, complete with detailed costumes and character backstories.

Fife said once everyone understood the storytelling aspect of the sport — and were assured that it’s not as violent as they thought — the idea was approved.

“Mitzvah Mania” is sponsored by a number of Jewish organizations, including Maccabi USA, BBYO and the Jewish National Fund. Fife said Beth Am secured a grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles to help put the event on.

Fine said Jewish interest in wrestling has increased in recent years, in part thanks to Maxwell Jacob Friedman (known simply as “MJF”), the current AEW world champion and an outspoken and proud Jew. Earlier this month, for example, Friedman celebrated his “re-bar mitzvah” as part of an “AEW Dynamite” night on TBS. Jewish fans also cheered when Goldberg, one of the stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s WWE craze, returned to the ring in 2015.

Maxwell Jacob Friedman attends a UFC event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Dec. 10, 2022. (Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC)

The overlap between Jews and wrestling extends beyond the ring, Fine said, arguing that the connection is biblical — from Jacob wrestling with an angel in Genesis to rabbis intellectually wrestling in the Talmud.

“If we just take that and put it into the context of wrestling, we at our core, are storytellers,” Fine said. “We’re listening to the stories, and we’re incorporating them into our lives and we’re building up. And so wrestling is the greatest platform to struggle, to wrestle and to very much create stories that present a narrative for us to think and root for what’s good and boo what’s evil. That’s the story of Purim!”

He said it’s important for rabbis to go beyond the usual work of teaching the weekly Torah portion, or speaking about antisemitism and Israel. Many wrestlers Fine has worked with will approach him with questions about Judaism — from asking about holidays to basic questions about what a synagogue or JCC is.

“If we’re really going to defeat antisemitism, if we’re really going to be able to have intellectual conversations about the modern State of Israel, what better way to do that than rabbis getting into niche communities and really having those conversations, and not just talking to the congregants who either agree or have heard it before?” Fine said.


The post ‘Mitzvah Mania’: A Los Angeles synagogue is hosting a show with Jewish professional wrestlers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Gazans Stream Back Home as Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Holds

Palestinians gather to collect aid supplies from trucks that entered Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip October 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

Thousands of Palestinians streamed north along the coast of Gaza on Saturday, trekking by foot, car and cart back to their abandoned homes as a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas appeared to be holding.

Israeli troops pulled back under the first phase of a US-brokered agreement reached this week to end the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left much of the enclave in ruins.

“It is an indescribable feeling; praise be to God,” said Nabila Basal as she traveled by foot with her daughter, who she said had suffered a head wound in the war. “We are very, very happy that the war has stopped, and the suffering has ended.”

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Gaza early Saturday to observe the Israeli military redeployment, Israeli Army Radio reported, citing a security source.

He was joined by the head of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, who said in a statement that his visit was part of the establishment of a task force that would support stabilization efforts in Gaza, though US troops would not be deployed inside the enclave.

CLOCK TICKING ON RELEASE OF HOSTAGES

Once the Israeli forces had completed their redeployment on Friday, which keeps them out of major urban areas but still in control of roughly half the enclave, the clock began ticking for Hamas to release its hostages within 72 hours.

“We are very excited, waiting for our son and for all the 48 hostages,” said Hagai Angrest, whose son Matan is among the 20 Israeli hostages believed to still be alive. “We are waiting for the phone call.”

Twenty-six hostages have been declared dead in absentia and the fate of two more is unknown.

According to the agreement, after the hostages are handed over, Israel will free 250 Palestinians serving long sentences in its prisons and 1,700 detainees captured during the war.

Hundreds of trucks per day are expected to surge into Gaza carrying food and medical aid, according to the agreement.

TRUMP EXPECTED TO TRAVEL TO ISRAEL AND EGYPT

But questions remain about whether the ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange deal, the biggest step yet towards ending two years of war, will lead to a lasting peace under Trump’s 20-point plan.

Much could still go wrong. Further steps in Trump’s plan have yet to be agreed. These include how the demolished Gaza Strip is to be ruled when fighting ends, and the ultimate fate of Hamas, which has rejected Israel’s demands it disarm.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump expressed confidence the ceasefire would hold, saying: “They’re all tired of the fighting.” He said he believed there was a “consensus” on the next steps but acknowledged some details still have to be worked out.

During the Hamas attack on Israeli communities, military bases and a music festival on October 7, 2023, terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and captured 251 hostages.

Trump is expected to visit the region on Monday and address the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the first US president to do so since George W. Bush in 2008.

Trump said he would also travel to Egypt and that other world leaders were expected to be present.

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Activist Laura Loomer Blasts Pentagon Over Planned Qatar Military Facility in Idaho

Laura Loomer arrives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Far-right activist Laura Loomer slammed President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday over its deepening defense ties with Qatar and made false accusations that spread on social media that the Pentagon was giving it a military base on US soil.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon earlier in the day, announcing that Qatar would pay for a facility at a US air base in Idaho. He did not say the US would give Qatar the base, or any base in the United States.

The facility, which has been in discussions for years, would support Qatar’s plans to train pilots on 12 F-15 fighter jets that the country is buying and which would be located there, a US official told Reuters. The facility would include hangars to shield the aircraft from the elements and a squadron operations building for the pilots, the official said.

U.S. TO SUPERVISE CONSTRUCTION

The arrangement, which the official said was in line with those agreed with other US allies, would result in the facility being built by local contractors under US military supervision and funded by Qatar. Pilots from Singapore already train at the US base.

“We’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said, alongside his Qatari counterpart.

Shortly after the announcement, Loomer said she did not think she would vote in next year’s mid-term elections.

“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans,” Loomer wrote on X.

She posted a clip of Trump speaking in 2017, when he accused Qatar of historically funding terrorism “at a very high level.”

In the wake of her remarks, Hegseth posted on X: “To be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”

Qatar’s embassy spokesperson said the facility in Idaho would not be a Qatari air base.

“Qatar has made an initial 10-year commitment to construct and maintain a dedicated facility within an existing US air base, intended for advanced training and to enhance interoperability,” Ali Al-Ansari said in a statement.

He said the arrangement was similar to existing programs the US has with other international allies.

Qatar is a US security partner and host to al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military facility in the Middle East. It acted as a mediator alongside Egypt in talks between Israel and Hamas.

A self-proclaimed “Islamophobe” who for years argued the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job, Loomer has a history of provocative and self-promotional actions, including handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters in New York in 2018 after the platform banned her for hate speech.

With 1.8 million followers on X and her own weekly program that draws a large audience, Loomer can say she speaks for many of the MAGA faithful and influences their views of the Trump administration.

In April, Trump fired US General Timothy Haugh, who was the director of the National Security Agency and head of US Cyber Command. The New York Times reported that Loomer had called for his ouster.

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Sinwar Memo Obtained by IDF Reveals Hamas Chief Ordered ‘Shocking’ Violence on Oct. 7

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar looks on as Palestinian Hamas supporters take part in an anti-Israel rally over tension in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, in Gaza City, Oct. 1, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

i24 NewsA handwritten memo authored by late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar shows the arch terrorist’s instructions to his men ahead of the October 7 attack included orders to target Israelis with acts of violence that would shock and destabilize the country. Sinwar specified that the violence should be filmed and broadcast, according to a New York Times report on Saturday.

“Two or three operations, in which an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared,” the memo is quoted as saying.

Many homes were set on fire in the southern Israeli communities devastated by Palestinian jihadists on October 7, and acts of barbaric violence were posted to social media and live-streamed.

The document was discovered in the underground hideout of Muhammed Sinwar, who briefly served as the top Hamas official in Gaza following the killing of his brother before being killed in an IDF strike.

The NYT report cites a confidential analysis of the memo and of intercepted Hamas communications on the day of the attack by Israel’s Gazit institute, a think tank affiliated with Israel’s military intelligence.

“Hamas leadership planned and carried out an attack that featured acts of ‘extraordinary brutality,’” the researchers concluded. “Its aim was to cause great turmoil in the country and the military.”

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