Podcasts about Baghdad

Joe Kent Resigns Over Iran. Hegseth is Losing It. More than 200 Troops Wounded Now. Drones Hit US Embassy in Baghdad. WBC: USA vs…Venezuela. QB Dante Moore Sets A Good Example on Mental Health.  On a wild and weird St. Patrick's Day, Paul Rieckhoff breaks down Trump's expanding war in Iran and his shocking talk about “taking Cuba,” and explains why once you kick a hornet's nest, the hornets—not Trump—decide when it's over. From 50,000 U.S. troops in harm's way, growing drone threats, and a widening conflict across the Middle East, to MAGA insiders breaking ranks like Joe Kent and an unraveling Pete Hegseth, Paul calls out dangerous weakness at the top, a feckless Congress, and the newest inductees into the 2026 Chickenhawk Club. No guest, no spin—just Paul, like your political pint of Guinness, giving you the independence, information and integrity you won't get anywhere else. Paul also focuses on the human cost of war: more than 200 wounded troops in seven countries, grieving Gold Star families like Cheryl Simmons, and the vital work of helpers like TAPS and Bonnie Carroll supporting survivors long after the cameras are gone. He connects that pain to a powerful story of a young quarterback opening up about depression, using his platform to fight stigma and prove that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.  From St. Patrick's Day in New York and Dropkick Murphys on the playlist, to mental health, March Madness and a packed slate of upcoming guests like Ken Casey, General Mark Hertling, Seth Bodner, Tim Mak and more, this episode will help you stay informed, stay engaged—and stay vigilant. -WATCH full video of this episode here. -Learn more about Paul's work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America. -Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here. -Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It's a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. Connect with Independent Americans: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms Read more at Substack Support ad-free episodes at Patreon  Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook  Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky -Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power.  -And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year.  Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media.  And now part of the BLEAV network!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The United States embassy in Baghdad is under attack again as Israel issues a new threat to against Iran's new supreme leader. Plus, an American warship believed to be carrying 2,000 Marines now heads to the Middle East. Plus, a key member of Trump's team, the National Counterterrorism Center director, resigned from his post today saying Iran posed no imminent threat to the US.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whereas some Kaddishim end with "Da'amiran Be'alma Ve'imru Amen," others consist of additional prayers and conclude with "Oseh Shalom Bi'mromav…" Is the one reciting Kaddish required to take three steps back for "Oseh Shalom" at the end of Kaddish, as we do for "Oseh Shalom" at the end of the Amida? The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909), in his Od Yosef Hai, distinguished in this regard between the "Kaddish Titkabal" that the Hazzan recites following the repetition of the Amida, and other Kaddishim. For the Hazzan reciting "Kaddish Titkabal," the Ben Ish Hai writes, taking three steps back is required, because he needs to step back after repeating the Amida. When reciting the other Kaddishim, however, this is not necessary. The Ben Ish Hai cites this ruling in the name of earlier Poskim (Shalmeh Sibur, Mateh Yehuda). This is the view also of the Kaf Ha'haim (Rav Yaakob Haim Sofer, Baghdad-Jerusalem, 1870-1939), who observed that this was the common practice, adding that this is consistent with the teachings of Kabbalah. Hacham Ovadia Yosef, however, disagreed, and ruled that it is proper to step back for "Oseh Shalom" at the end of every Kaddish. He refuted the Kaf Ha'haim's claim that Kabbalistic teaching does not require stepping back, noting that Rav Eliyahu Hamwe of Aleppo (1839-1915), a great Kabbalist, writes in his Peh Eliyahu that one must step back at the end of every Kaddish. Moreover, the Radbaz (Rav David Ben Zimra, Egypt, 1479-1573) maintained that one should take three steps back at the end of every Kaddish, and this is also the position of Maran, in Bet Yosef and Shulhan Aruch. Therefore, whenever one recites a Kaddish that ends with "Oseh Shalom," he should take three steps back. The proper procedure is to move the left foot back, then move the right foot behind the left foot, and then move the left foot next to the right foot. One then recites the words "Oseh Shalom Bi'mromav" while bowing to the left, "Hu Ya'aseh Shalom Alenu" while bowing to the right, and "Ve'al Kol Yisrael" while bowing frontward. He then stands upright for "Ve'imru Amen."

On tonights live, Andy & DJ are joined in the studio by Andy Stumpf. They discuss Americans being urged to leave Iraq immediately by the US Embassy in Baghdad, gunfire at a crowded Flordia beach during spring break and the woke Canadian school banning children from eating in its cafeteria and lunch room to avoid offending Muslim students during Ramadan.

Your daily news in under three minutes. At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes! Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Israel says it has killed two top Iranian leaders as new attacks hit U.S. targets. The conflict expands with drones targeting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Plus, a new report says the Trump administration is pushing Cuba to remove its president during ongoing talks. And a judge blocks RFK Jr.'s overhaul of childhood vaccine recommendations, halting the changes and freezing the advisory panel's actions. These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Tuesday, March 17, 2026.

It's Monday, March 16th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus 400 Christians murdered in Congo in one year Christians are being attacked, murdered, and abducted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo every week, and the violence appears to be worse than ever, reports International Christian Concern. Between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025, the Institute for International Religious Freedom reported that nearly 400 Christians were murdered in the African nation of Congo. And this is only a fraction of the total violence being perpetrated. Rebel militias have gained vast influence over the Christian-majority nation due to extremist Islamist ideologies, years-long civil wars, and political upheaval. According to Open Doors, Congo is the 29th most oppressive country worldwide for Christians. The persecuted Christians in Congo are no doubt praying Psalm 91 which says, “I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Surely, He will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. … You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day. … A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.” (verses 2,3,5, 7-8) Missile strikes U.S. Embassy in Iraq A missile has struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq as President Donald Trump's war on Iran heads into its third week, reports The Daily Mail. Plumes of smoke were seen above the U.S. embassy in the Iraqi capital. The missile landed within the embassy's boundaries. Pentagon sending assault ship & 2,500 Marines toward Iran The Pentagon is deploying the U.S.S. Tripoli and 2,500 Marines to the Middle East after President Trump vowed Friday to unleash “unparalleled firepower,” reports the New York Post. On Friday morning, War Secretary Pete Hegseth gave this overview. HEGSETH: “With every passing hour, we know, and we know they know, that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling. They can barely communicate, let alone coordinate. They're confused, and we know it.  Our response? We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” Iran's blocking Strait of Hormuz leading to global oil price spike The deployment of the amphibious assault ship comes as the American military admits it's currently unable to break Iranian influence over the vital Strait of Hormuz as global oil prices spike.  The Strait of Hormuz is located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. It provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the world's most strategically important choke points. The expected two-week voyage from East Asia matches Energy Secretary Chris Wright's prediction of reopening the crucial waterway “by the end of the month.” Secretary Hegseth was perturbed by a CNN report that Iran's stranglehold of the Strait of Hormuz was a surprise. HEGSETH: “More fake news from CNN. Reports that the ‘Trump administration underestimated the Iran war's impact on the Strait of Hormuz.' “Patently ridiculous, of course! For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This is always what they do: Hold the Strait hostage. CNN doesn't think we thought of that. It's a fundamentally unserious report.” Idaho House urges Supreme Court to invalidate homosexual “marriage” The Idaho House of Representatives has voted to reject the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and urged the justices to reconsider the decision legalizing homosexual marriage nationwide, reports the Herzog Foundation. Lawmakers approved House Joint Memorial 17 last Tuesday in a 44-26 vote. All Democrats voted against the measure, and a small number of Republicans joined them. The resolution now heads to the Idaho Senate. The memorial states the Legislature “rejects the Obergefell decision” and “calls upon the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse Obergefell and restore the natural definition of marriage.” Supporters say the 2015 ruling overrode the authority of states and ignored the will of voters who had already defined marriage in state law. The resolution says Obergefell “is at odds with the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which the United States is established.” It also says the ruling “arbitrarily and unjustly” cast aside the historic understanding of marriage, which “has been recognized as the union of one man and one woman for more than 2,000 years.” Idaho Republican State Rep. Tony Wisniewski sponsored the memorial. He said supporters oppose “the debasing of the term of marriage to that of something that is abhorrent to many of us.” The memorial also points to Idaho voters' earlier decision on the issue. In 2006, 63% of voters approved Amendment 2, which added language to the state Constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Supporters argue the Supreme Court brushed aside that vote when it issued the Obergefell ruling. The resolution also states the decision “may have been illegitimately adjudicated” because two justices in the majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, had previously officiated homosexual weddings and did not recuse themselves. The memorial now moves to the Idaho Senate. The governor does not play a role because joint memorials do not require a signature. “Educated for Liberty” film urges Christian parents to wake up And finally, the rise of government-controlled schools and secular education has produced a decline of moral and academic excellence, which has led to a loss of liberty, reports The Providence Foundation. Schools have become progressively dangerous. Some of the most negative influences that young Americans can face today are found in public schools. Exposure to drugs, assault, rape, and murder are becoming more and more common. Radical transgender and homosexual ideology is promoted in classrooms, and reinforced by biological males having access to girls' restrooms and being allowed to compete in girls' sports. Well, there's a new Christian documentary out entitled Educated for Liberty. It urges Christian parents to pull their kids out of public schools and homeschool them or place them in private Christian schools instead. DAVID BARTON: “If you can't think biblically, then what you have is a bunch of secular-thinking people who attend church which will never change a community in the right direction.” RHONDA THOMAS: “We're not, as a church, raising up parents that understand their responsibility in the education of their children.” CAROL SWAIN: “Sunday School is fine. It's good. Vacation Bible School: Fine and good, but it's not enough.” CAROLE ADAMS: “Education is discipleship -- one way or another. Discipling our children in a secularized society, or it's discipling them to Christ.” CASEY GORDON: “How could you possibly segregate the concept of education from the duty and responsibility of the Christian faith, and that they should be trained in the Christian faith and in a Christian way?” ALEX NEWMAN: “For hundreds of years in this country, the Bible was the essential book. It was the foundation of everything. And yet, here we are where it's actually controversial that we should have the Bible in education. It's truly astounding.” MRS. SAM SORBO: “Give your children the Bible, and you give them an understanding of God, which is education. Then the world will become clear to them, and they'll be world changers.” Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Watch the film, Educated for Liberty, for free through a special link in our transcript today at www.TheWorldview.com. Close And that's The Worldview on this Monday, March 16th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

March, 14 2026, 7 AM; The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was struck by a missile according to Iraqi security forces Saturday morning, after U.S. forces bombed targets on Iran's Kharg Island, home to the primary terminal that handles that country's oil exports. Meanwhile, MS NOW has learned the military plans to send 5K troops and several additional ships to the Arabian Sea, a day after the U.S. military confirmed six U.S. service members were killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq. Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth addressed the tragedy nearly 9 minutes into his press briefing yesterday after first scolding the media. Terry Moran and Toluse Olorunnipa join The Weekend to discuss the latest with the war in Iran. For more, follow us on social media: Bluesky: @theweekendmsnow.bsky.social Instagram: @theweekendmsnow TikTok: @theweekendmsnow To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your daily news in under three minutes. At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes! Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

President Donald Trump is threatening more strikes on what he calls Iran's “crown jewel.” The president says he has spared Kharg Island's oil infrastructure—but would reconsider strikes if Iran interferes with ships in the Strait of Hormuz. He also said on Truth Social Saturday that some other countries would help the United States protect the Strait of Hormuz.March 14 marks a historic moment between the United States and Venezuela. For the first time in exactly seven years, the U.S. consulate raised the American flag in the capital city of Caracas.The U.S. is urging Americans to leave Iraq immediately. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a warning today that Iran-aligned terrorists are encouraging and carrying out attacks against U.S. citizens and people associated with the United States. The alert also urged Americans to stay away from the embassy in Baghdad.

Simon's live update for Matt Frei's Saturday morning programme on the UK's LBC.

President Trump warns he may destroy Iran's oil infrastructure following a major bombing raid on Kharg Island. A missile strike hits the U-S Embassy in Baghdad. PM Mark Carney pitches Canada as a "low-risk" energy partner during a visit to Norway that also included a stop at the Nordic World Cup. Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warns the war with Iran is a boost for Russia and a threat to Ukraine. War in the middle east continues to spill over, a Jewish school in Amsterdam attacked, adding to multiple attacks on Jewish community across Europe and North America. One year into the review of Canada's F-35 contract, the government admits relations with the U-S are complicating the deal. Japan's fishing industry is concerned that crude oil shortage due to war in middle east will affect their industry.

AP correspondent Rica Ann Garcia reports on the missile that struck the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad after U.S. bombed an oil-critical Iranian island

In the mid‑13th century, the Mongols seemed unstoppable until a former slave‑soldier stood in their way. Mamluk Sultan Qutuz of Egypt defied an empire that had crushed Baghdad and Syria, and began the beginning of the end of the Crusader States.Matt Lewis and Nicholas Morton uncover how Mongol conquests shattered the Crusader world, set Louis IX's doomed crusade in motion, and paved the way for the Mamluks to end the era of the Crusader states forever.MOREMongol EmpireListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGenghis Khan's Pax MongolicaListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Shukor, author, architect and principle of ISD Architects Inc. who brings a distinctive global perspective to design and urban regeneration joins Enterprise Radio.… Read more The post From Baghdad to Toronto: An Architect's Journey to Regenerative Design appeared first on Top Entrepreneurs Podcast | Enterprise Podcast Network.

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. Editor David Horovitz joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's episode. Lebanese terror group Hezbollah blasted some 200 rockets and 20 drones at northern Israel for hours on Wednesday evening, repeatedly sending hundreds of thousands of Israelis to shelters. At the same time, much of the rest of the country was also sent to safe rooms with four salvos of ballistic missiles shot from Iran. We hear how this is affecting Israelis' spirits right now. Yesterday, the UN Security Council called for Iran to halt its attacks on Gulf states. Notably, the resolution did not mention US or Israeli strikes on Iran and was passed by 13 votes with two abstentions. Horovitz weighs in. In counterpoint to the support from Israelis at large, Americans are not overwhelmingly in favor of their new war. We discuss the mixed messaging coming from the Trump administration -- and how much skin Israel has in the game for mutual war goals to be attained. Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates. For further reading: Seeking clarity, and safety, in a war marked by incoherent leadership and a momentous goal Hezbollah fires 200 rockets at north, Iran launches missiles in ‘integrated operation’ UN Security Council demands Iran halt attacks on Gulf states Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Gabriella Jacobs and edited by Ari Schlacht. IMAGE: Iraqis step on US and Israeli flags during a protest against US and Israeli attacks on multiple cities across Iran, in Baghdad, Iraq, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Different customs exist regarding the phrase "Le'alam U'l'almeh Almaya" in the "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response to Kaddish. Some recite this phrase this way, whereas others omit the letter Vav from "U'l'almeh" and recite simply "Le'almeh." The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909), in his work Od Yosef Hai, writes that the word should be pronounced "Le'almeh," without the letter Vav at the beginning. He explains that the "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response is meant to consist of 28 letters, and if the Vav is included, this response consists of 29 letters. Therefore, the Vav must be omitted. This is the position also of the Kaf Ha'haim (Rav Yaakob Haim Sofer, Baghdad-Jerusalem, 1870-1939). This argument assumes that the word "Shemeh" in "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" is spelled with a Yod (Shin, Mem, Yod, Heh). In some Siddurim, this word is spelled without the letter Yod, thus allowing for the Vav to be included in "U'l'almeh" without exceeding 28 letters. It is true that, as discussed in a previous installment, the Mahzor Vitri understood the phrase "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" as a prayer that the divine Name, which currently contains only the letters Yod and Heh, should become complete, and according to this reading, the word "Shemeh" is read as "Shem Yod-Heh" ("the Name of Yod-Heh"). However, as we saw, Halacha does not follow this opinion, and therefore it is acceptable to omit the letter Yod from the word "Shemeh." Moreover, Hacham Ovadia Yosef noted that Maran (author of the Shulhan Aruch), in Bet Yosef, clearly follows the opinion that the correct text is "U'l'almeh," and this is how the word appears in the texts of earlier Rabbis such as Rav Saadia Gaon, Rav Amram Gaon, the Rambam, and others. Hacham Ovadia asserts that in light of these sources, a Kabbalistic teaching involving the significance of the number 28 does not justify altering the text. By contrast, Rav Meir Mazuz (1945-2025), who was a renowned expert in grammar, maintained that the correct text is "Le'almeh." Rav Moshe Rahamim Shayo (contemporary), in his Mehkereh Aretz, writes that in the Bet Obed edition of the Siddur, which was used by the Jewish communities of Aleppo, Syria, the text reads "Le'almeh," without the letter Vav. This text also appears in the Siddur published by Rav Abraham Hamway, and this was the ruling of Rav Yeshayahu Dayan (1833-1903), head of Aleppo's Rabbinical court. There is also testimony that later, in the times of Aleppo's Chief Rabbi Moshe Mizrahi (1863-1955), Rav Mizrahi sharply reprimanded a member of the community who recited "U'l'almeh" instead of the "Le'almeh," which was the accepted custom in Aleppo. In the Kol Yaakob edition of the Siddur, which is used by many Syrian Jews, the word appears as "U'l'almeh," but this is a mistake, as the custom in Aleppo was clearly to say "Le'almeh." In practice, therefore, it is proper for members of the Syrian community to recite "Le'almeh," and not "U'l'almeh." Summary: In the "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response to Kaddish, the word "Le'almeh" appears this way in some editions of the Siddur, and in others, "U'l'almeh," with the letter Vav at the beginning. The text that should be followed by members of the Syrian community is "Le'almeh."

The simple interpretation of the phrase "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba Mebarach" – which we respond to Kaddish – is "May the Great Name be blessed." Meaning, we declare that "Shemeh Rabba" – G-d's great Name – shall be blessed and glorified. Tosafot (Berachot 3a) cite this interpretation in the name of Rabbenu Yishak. However, Tosafot also bring a different interpretation of this phrase, in the name of the Mahzor Vitri, according to which this phrase actually consists of two separate proclamations. First, we declare that "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" – that G-d's Name shall be great, or complete, and we then add that it should be blessed forever ("Mebarach Le'alam…"). The concept underlying this second explanation is that G-d's Name is "incomplete" in our nation's state of exile. G-d's complete Name consists of four letters – Yod, Heh, Vav and Heh – but when the Jewish People are in exile, His Name is compromised, consisting of only Yod and Heh. This is indicated by G-d's pronouncement after Beneh Yisrael's first battle against Amalek: "Ki Yad Al Kes Y-ah" (Shemot 17:16). As long as Amalek exists, Hashem's Name is only "Y-ah," missing the final two letters, Vav and Heh. For the same reason, G-d refers in this verse to His throne with the word "Kes," a shortened version of the word "Kiseh," indicating the incompletion of His reign, so-to-speak, due to the presence of evil in the world. The Maharsha (Rav Shmuel Eidels, 1555-1631) explains on this basis the verse in Tehillim (132:13) which we recite each morning, "KI Bahar Hashem Be'Sion, Iva Le'moshab Lo" (literally, "For G-d has chosen Zion, desiring it as His abode"). This means that when Hashem will choose to return to Zion, with the rebuilding of the Bet Ha'mikdash, then "Iva" – the letters Alef, Vav and Heh – will be restored to their rightful place ("Le'moshab"). The missing Alef of the word "Kiseh," and the Vav and Heh missing from Hashem's Name, will finally return. Similarly, we recite each morning after Shema, "Hu Kayam U'shemo Kayam Ve'chis'o Nachon" – "He exists, His Name exists, and His throne is firmly set in place." Rav Shlomo Amar explains this to mean that when "Hu Kayam" – the letters Heh and Vav will come back, then "Shemo Kayam" – Hashem's Name will again be complete, and "Ve'chis'o Nachon" – His throne will be complete, as well. This notion is alluded to also in the prayer added by Ashkenazim to Birkat Ha'mazon: "Ha'Rahaman Hu Yishlah Lanu Et Eliyahu Ha'nabi" – "The Compassionate One – He will send us Eliyahu the prophet." When Eliyahu comes, "Hu" – the letters Heh and Vav – will be restored. Another allusion to this concept appears in the final verse in Tehillim: "Kol Ha'neshama Tehalel Ya-ah" – "Every soul shall praise Y-ah." The word "He'neshama" ("the soul") can be punctuated differently such that it means "the desolation." This verse thus implies that in the current state of "desolation," in the absence of the Bet Ha'mikdash, we can praise only "Y-ah," as Hashem's Name remains incomplete. According to this second interpretation of "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba Mebarach," we are praying that "Shemeh" – a contraction of the words "Shem" and "Y-ah," referring to the incomplete Name – shall be made "Rabba," complete, and, additionally, His Name should be blessed ("Mebarach"). Incidentally, the word "Yitgadal" consists of five letters, and the word "Ve'yitkadash" consists of six letters. These two words thus represent the letters Heh and Vav, which, respectively, equal in Gematria 5 and 6. We pray through the recitation of these words that G-d's Name should be glorified through the restoration of the missing Vav and Heh. According to this second opinion, when reciting "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba Mebarach," one should pause slightly between the words "Shemeh" and "Rabba," as this is a prayer that the Name ("Shemeh") should become great ("Rabba"), and the word "Rabba" is thus not describing the word "Shemeh." The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) cites the Arizal as concurring with this view of the Mahzor Vitri. However, as Hacham Ovadia Yosef cites, Tosafot challenged this reading in light of the Gemara's comment (there in Berachot) that speaks of Jews proclaiming in the synagogue, "Yeheh Shemeh Ha'gadol Meborach" ("May His great Name be blessed") – which clearly indicates that we are declaring that the great Name shall be blessed, as Rabbenu Yishak explained. Moreover, Rav Yisrael Bitan notes that the Ben Ish Hai elsewhere brings Rabbenu Yishak's understanding, and ruled that one should therefore not pause between the words "Shemeh" and "Rabba." This is, indeed, the correct practice to follow. Summary: The accepted interpretation of "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba Mebarach" is "May the Great Name be blessed." One should recite these words without any pause in between the words "Shemeh" and "Rabba."

We are continuing our conversation with Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International. On Sunday, tens of thousands of women around the world marked International Women's Day by demonstrating against gender-based violence and calling for an end to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. And today marks the opening of a major United Nations summit: the 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. This all comes a week after Iraqi human rights defender and feminist advocate Yanar Mohammed was assassinated in Baghdad. She was killed in an attack on her home.

Today's poem is The Road to Baghdad by Seth Brady Tucker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Home is a mythic place as much as a real place. It's different in our minds than it is on the map. And some of what we remember isn't on the map at all — the way we felt when we were there, how we spent our time in that place, and who we were with. The emotional cartography of any place is different from its actual cartography.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

We are continuing our conversation with Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General Amnesty International. On Sunday, tens of thousands of women around the world marked International Women's Day by demonstrating against gender-based violence and calling for an end to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. And today marks the opening of a major United Nations summit–the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. This all comes a week after Iraqi human rights defender and feminist advocate Yanar Mohammed was assassinated in Baghdad. She was killed in an attack on her home.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, I sit down with retired FBI agent Geoff Kelly, a specialist in art theft investigations who inherited one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American history—the 1990 robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He recently wrote a book about this theft titled 13 Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Kelly's law enforcement career began as a New York City transit police officer before transitioning to the FBI. Like many agents, he initially sought violent crime work. Instead, he was assigned to economic crimes before eventually transferring to a violent crime squad. It was there that he encountered the Gardner case—a cold case largely untouched by senior agents at the time. The robbery itself remains extraordinary: two men posing as police officers gained entry to the museum and stole 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt. More than three decades later, none of the works have been recovered. Inside the Gardner Heist Geoff explains how art theft is often misunderstood. Popular culture portrays refined, sophisticated criminals orchestrating elaborate capers. The reality, he says, is usually more opportunistic and frequently violent. Art theft often intersects with organized crime, drug trafficking, and even homicide. Massachusetts has a documented history of art-related crimes, and several individuals connected to the Gardner investigation met violent ends. The criminal underworld surrounding stolen art is less about wealthy collectors hiding paintings in private vaults and more about leverage—using artwork as collateral in criminal negotiations. The FBI's Art Crime Evolution Following the 2003 looting of Iraq's National Museum during the Baghdad invasion, the FBI formalized its Art Crime Team. Kelly discusses how intelligence gathering, informants, and international cooperation became central tools in recovering stolen artifacts. He emphasizes that solving art crimes often depends less on forensic breakthroughs and more on human intelligence. Informants remain essential, especially in cases where organized crime overlaps with high-value theft. Kelly also discusses his upcoming book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, which explores the intersections of mobsters, murder, and the illicit art market. Organized Crime and the Reality of Stolen Art Drawing on my own experience working organized crime in Kansas City, I found clear parallels between traditional mob rackets and art theft networks. The same structures—intimidation, secrecy, and violence—apply. Once a painting disappears into criminal circulation, it becomes a liability as much as an asset. Kelly challenges the myth that thieves profit easily from masterpieces. High-profile works are difficult to sell. The black-market art world is volatile and dangerous. In many cases, the artwork becomes bargaining collateral rather than a cash windfall. A Case Still Waiting for Closure More than 30 years later, the Gardner Museum still displays empty frames where the paintings once hung. Kelly remains committed to the idea that public awareness may eventually generate new leads.  The Gardner heist stands as both a cultural tragedy and a criminal mystery—one that continues to intersect with organized crime, violence, and international intrigue. Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire Click here to “buy me a cup of coffee” Subscribe to the website for weekly notifications about updates and other Mob information. To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup, click here To rent ‘Brothers against Brothers’ or ‘Gangland Wire,’ the documentaries click here.  To purchase one of my books, click here. Transcript [0:00] Hey, you guys, Gary Jenkins back here in studio Gangland Wire. Y’all know me. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and now podcaster and documentary filmmaker. I have in the studio today… Jeff Kelly, he’s a now-retired FBI agent. He was an expert in recovering stolen artifacts and art pieces. He was involved. He wasn’t involved in the original theft of the Boston art theft, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but he ended up inheriting that case. So welcome, Jeff. Hi. Thanks, Gary. Nice to be here. And guys, I need to mention this right off the bat. Jeff has a book, 13 Perfect Fugitives, The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World’s Largest Art Heist. Be out on Amazon. I’ll have links down below in the show notes if you want to get that book. I think it would be pretty interesting. I was telling Jeff, I just interviewed Joe Ford, the million-dollar detective, the guy that goes after classic cars, and I read that book. I love these kind of caper kind of books and caper crimes. Those are the ones I like the best is the caper crimes. And Jeff is an expert at working caper crimes. And that’s what these are, capers. So Jeff, how did you get into this? Now you came on the FBI. You were a policeman before, I believe. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your FBI career. Yeah, I started out with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police in New York City. It was a transit cop. I did that for three years. And then I got into the FBI in October of 95. [1:30] And my goal was always, I wanted to work violent crime. That’s what drew me to law enforcement in the first place, working bank robberies and kidnappings and fugitives. I had to do my five years on working economic crime, telemarketing fraud. It was interesting, but not all that exciting. And finally in 2000, I got my transfer to the violent crime squad. And I loved working it. And I did it for my entire career from then on, right up until my retirement in 2024. But back then, art theft was considered a major theft violation, [2:01] and it was worked by the Violent Crime Squad. And so in 2002… My supervisor dumped this old moribund cold case in my lap. It was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. [2:15] Nobody wanted it on the squad, so they figured, let’s give it to the new guy. I was ecstatic to get it because I’d heard about it. I went to school in Boston. I went to Boston University and graduated the year before it happened, but I knew about it. [2:28] That’s how I started working this case, this particular case, and then the following year during the U.S., there was a, the U.S. And coalition forces invaded Baghdad in Iraq. And during a 36-hour period, more than 15,000 objects of very, very important cultural history were looted from the National Museum of Iraq. And it’s really one of the most important museums in the world in terms of our shared history. Kind of the cradle of civilization over there in the Tigers and Euphrates River. Yeah, and that was the time when the FBI kind of belatedly realized that there was no art crime team to investigate this. And of course, FBI agents have been working art theft like any other property crime since the beginning of the FBI’s existence, but there was no codified team. So they did a canvas for the team in 2004 and I applied for it because at this point I’d been working the Gardner case for a couple of years and really was fascinated by it and made the team. And so then over the next 20 years, we continued to expand the team both in size and in scope and in our intelligence base and knowledge base. And when I left the Bureau in 2024, it was and still is a tremendous team with a lot of very dedicated and professional agents and professional support. [3:51] Now, guys, if you don’t know about the Isabella Stewart Gardner case, there was a Netflix documentary on it a few years ago. It was an art museum in Boston. [4:01] Two guys showed up. They had Boston police uniforms on, and they got in. They basically, it was an armed robbery, and they took control of the museum. The guards were in there late at night and took these really valuable paintings out. I believe you told me earlier they were Remington paintings. We’ll get into that. And it was a violent crime. It was an armed robbery of paintings, and you told me about other armed robberies of paintings. I think you got into some other armed robberies of paintings. You always think of, as you mentioned before, the Thomas Crown Affair character that goes out and does these sophisticated art thefts. That’s not always true, is it? It’s never that way, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Everybody wants to believe that art thefts are pulled off by the Thomas Crown Affairs and these gentlemen thieves repel in through skylights and do all that fancy stuff, put it in their underground lair. That’s just not the way it works. But if you look to art theft. [4:55] Massachusetts really is a cradle of art theft in this country, and it’s very unique. The first armed robbery of a museum occurred in Boston in 1972. It was committed by a guy named Al Monday, who was a prolific art thief. And they stole four pieces from the Worcester Art Museum in central Massachusetts with a gun. They ended up shooting the guard. And one of the pieces that they stole was a Rembrandt called St. Bartholomew. [5:26] And in keeping with the milieu of true art thieves, the paintings were stored on a pig farm just over the state line in Rhode Island. And when this Connecticut safecracker by the name of Chucky Carlo, who was looking at some serious time in prison for some of the crimes that he committed, when he found out that Al Monday had these paintings, he just simply kidnapped Al Monday and stuck a gun in his ribs and said he would kill him if he didn’t give him the paintings. which is no honor among thieves. And Al turned over the paintings, Chucky returned them, and he got a very significant break on his pending jail sentence. Right here in 1972, Boston thieves see Rembrandt as a valuable get-out-of-jail-free card. [6:09] And then if we jump forward three years to 1975, there was a very skilled art thief, really a master thief by the name of Miles Conner. I interviewed Miles for my book. It was very gracious of him to sit down with me for it. And he had robbed or committed a burglary of the Woolworth estate up in Maine, the family, the five and dime family magnets. And he got caught for it because he tried to sell those paintings to an undercover FBI agent. And so he was looking at 12 years in prison for it. And he was out on bail. And he reached out to a family friend who was a state trooper. And he asked him, how can I get away with this one? How can I get out of this? Because he was in serious trouble. The trooper’s response was meant to be hyperbolic. The trooper said, Miles, it’s going to take you a Rembrandt to get out of this one. [6:57] And so Miles said, okay, I’ll go get a Rembrandt. And he got a crew together and they did a daylight smash and grab at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, just across the street from the Gardner. And they stole Rembrandt, the girl in a gold-trimmed cloak. [7:12] And he was able to return that painting. Instead of doing 12 years, he did 28 months. And he even managed to, he told me he even managed to get the $10,000 reward in the process. So you have this atmosphere in Massachusetts that Rembrandts are a valuable commodity, right? They can help you out in a jam. And so I think it’s no coincidence that in 1990, when the Gardner Museum heist came down, the Gardner Museum had this array of motion sensors all throughout the museum. It would alert to wherever you went, every gallery, hallway, whatever. [7:49] And we know from these motion sensors that after, as you said, the two guys went in disguised as cops and bluffed their way into the museum, they made a beeline for the Dutch room, which is the room of all things Rembrandt. They stole three Rembrandts. They stole a fourth piece called Landscape with an Obelisk, which was actually by Govard Flink, but it had been misattributed to Rembrandt until the mid 80s. And then they took a large Rembrandt oil-on-panel off the wall and it was recovered the next morning leaning against a piece of furniture. We believe they just overlooked it in the dark. So out of the 13 pieces taken, three were Rembrandt, a fourth was misattributed to Rembrandt, and there was going to be a 14th piece taken, which was also Rembrandt. It definitely falls into that theory that this was going to be a hold-on to these pieces for a while and see if you can use them for a break. [8:48] Interesting. Now, back in the 70s, for example, when somebody would work in an art robbery like that or an art theft, you got your tried and true ways of working a crime. You got to have sources, you got to have witnesses, and hopefully you can get a crime like this. You can get a source that says, hey, this guy, we had a guy in Kansas City that he was a fence for these kinds of guys. He had an antique auction and he took all this stuff and got it somewhere else. So at the time, just use your regular police methods. And what changed over the years as you’ve done this? Yeah, certainly we’ve become much more sophisticated with the techniques that we use. But at the end of the day, it’s always still going to be intelligence. But I found from working my entire career in violent crime, virtually my whole career in violent crime, the sources are crucial. Having a good informant can make and break a case. And working art theft investigations, you’re certainly going to have the same types of fences of informants, fences for stolen property and what they’re hearing about what organized crime guys are doing and what drug guys are doing. But it also opened up a whole new avenue of sources for me as working in art investigations, because now you’ve got pawn shops and gallery owners and auction houses, and they’re in a position to know when not only when stolen artwork is coming in, but also fakes and forgeries. We spoke about this, that. [10:16] Somebody comes in with one valuable piece that would be very difficult for somebody in his or her position to come across one piece like this, let alone a dozen of them. That really points to probably a fake. And so that’s really the key to solving these things is just having a good intelligence base who’s going to let us know about when something comes up that’s either stolen or it’s been forged. [10:43] Brings up a question. In my mind, did you ever work a gallery owner or a gallery [10:48] that then would filter in, knowingly filter in some fakes every once in a while? They couldn’t do it 100% of the time, but you could certainly make some extra money by filtering fakes out of it because many people would get it and they’d never know. Nobody would ever know. Listen, it is a really difficult thing when you’re working these types of crimes because unlike bank robber, you go into a bank and you stick them up with a gun and take them on. It’s not up to the government to be able to prove at trial that you knew that the bank was insured by the FDIC. You went in and you robbed it, you committed the offense. When you’re talking about interstate transportation of stolen property or possession of stolen property, there are what’s called specific intent crimes, meaning you have to prove the element of knowledge. You have to be able to prove that the person knew that that item was stolen. Not that it said it was stolen. and you had to show that they knew it. And that’s a really high hurdle to overcome. And typically what we do to try and prove that specific intent is we’re going to go through. [11:53] Recorded statements made to a source or to an undercover or emails or texts or something that we can show that this person knew that item was stolen. And so we would see that a lot in auction houses and galleries. There’s a lot of willful blindness where a lot of gallery owners and auction houses, they’re going to look the other way because it’s too lucrative to pass up. And in fact, in 2015, the art crime team, once we received information that ISIL or ISIS was using looted cultural property from Syria and Iraq as a form, a viable form of terrorism financing. And we put auction houses and gallery owners on notice in 2015, and we basically told them that if you’re selling objects of cultural patrimony or cultural heritage with a dubious provenance, like a wink and a nod, you may be unwittingly or wittingly funding terrorism. While we never charged anybody with it, hopefully it was an eye-opener that when you’re getting into this world, it’s not a victimless crime. There are very real victims involved. [13:07] And that’s one of the things that really is interesting about working our crime investigations. And I used to get ribbed by my friends who were not on the art crime team about [13:18] where like the wine and cheese squad were raised and everything. But our subjects are far from it. We’re dealing with organized crime, gangs, terrorists. This is no joke. These are serious individuals and the stakes are high. And in the Gardner case, three or four people that we believe were involved in the heist were murdered a year after the Gardner case crime occurred. Yeah, I was just going to go back to that a little bit, as we said before, a little bit like the Lufthansa case. All of a sudden, everybody that was involved in the theft. Started dropping like flies. So tell the guys about that. That is really interesting. [14:00] Yeah. So the two individuals that we believe went into the museum dressed as cops, just a week shy of the one-year anniversary, one of the guys was found dead in his apartment of an acute overdose of cocaine, intravenous. And his family admitted that he used Coke, but they said he was terrified of needles. He was scared of needles. So it really looked to be like a hotshot, an intentional overdose of cocaine. Two weeks later, the other guy who we believe went into the museum with him, his wife reported him missing. And a couple of weeks later, his bullet riddled body was recovered in the trunk of his car out by Logan Airport in East Boston. There was another member of that crew. These were all part of the same crew. This Carmelo Merlino, who was a Boston mobster, had an auto shop down in the Dorchester section of Boston. Another member of his crew, a guy named Bobby, six weeks after the heist, he brought in, he visited a jeweler in the downtown crossing jewelry district in Boston. He came in with this object and he unwrapped it. It was an eagle. [15:03] It was the finial from the Napoleonic flag that was stolen in the Gardner heist. And he asked the jeweler, how much is this thing worth? And the jeweler looked at it and he said, it’s worth nothing. Because he immediately recognized it as one of the people that had been stolen six weeks earlier from the Gardner heist. And then a few months later, Bobby was stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on the front porch of his house. And the responding police saw that his house had been broken into and ransacked like his killers had been looking for something. There was a fourth guy, Jimmy, who bragged to his girlfriend a few months after the heist that he had a couple of pieces from the Gardner Museum hidden in his attic. [15:47] And in February of 1990, 11 months after the heist, he was executed on his front porch in what the local police called a mob hit. So, yeah, these are the types of crimes that have a tendency to have a chilling effect on anybody who harbors any aspirations to come forward with information. Yeah, and we talked earlier a little bit about, like, the crime itself, and the statute of limitations is up on that, what you said, and the crime itself, but how we talked a little bit and explained to them about how this could be part of a RICO case. And you’ve got the murders and you’ve got the actual theft and whatever they did with the paintings, then maybe you could get over after a Bob boss as a Rico case. Tell the guys a little bit about doing that. Yeah. [16:32] I’ve heard it so many times in more than two decades that I worked the case and people would say, geez, why don’t people come forward? They’re just paintings. There are so many times they’re just paintings. They’re like, yeah, they are, but there’s two things about that. Number one, there’s some dead bodies on these paintings, three or four, and that there’s no statute of limitations for murder. And so if you implicate yourself in the theft or you implicate yourself in possessing or transporting these paintings at any time, the fear is that you’re then implicating yourself in a homicide. And the other aspect of this, which I think has a chilling effect, is the fact that transportation of stolen property is one of the predicate acts for RICO, racketeering influence corrupt organization case. And RICO is basically, Gary, is basically an entire organization is corrupt. Yeah. There’s no legitimate purpose. It’s what we think about the mob and the [17:27] FBI has taken down the mob in the past. So if you implicate yourself in stolen property and you’re part of organized crime, that’s one of the predicate acts for a RICO. And that’s basically life sentences. And so one of my goals in the years and years that I worked in this case was to try and convince people that you could come forward with information and the U S attorney’s offices, whether it’s up in Boston or new Haven or Philadelphia. [17:58] Would be willing to figure out a way to get the paintings back with immunity from prosecution for a RICO case. Look, that’s a high hurdle. That’s a high hurdle to convince somebody that if you come forward, you’re not going to get charged and you’re eligible for millions of dollars in reward. That’s a tough bill to swallow, but it’s the truth. I’m retired from the FBI now. I can tell you that it was, it’s a, it was, and still is a bona fide offer. And that’s one of the goals that I’ve always tried to impress on anyone is the opportunity to become a millionaire without going to jail. There you go, Jeff. Can you, now you’re not with the Bureau anymore. Can you go out, if you could go out and find them and bring them in, could you collect that reward? I would certainly hope so. [18:48] I can’t tell you how many of my friends thought that I had some of these paintings stashed in my basement. Waiting for retirement to go turn them in the next day. I think half the guys I worked with were expecting to see me pull into the parking lot of the FBI. [19:01] Big package, but no. But yeah, I suppose I could. By this point, I can tell you the amount of my very being that I put into this case over two days. Yeah. I just would love to see these paintings go back just because they need to be back at the museum. That’s where they belong. Now, these crimes, they seem, You said there’s a lot of murders attached to this. They seem a little boring. Did you have any exciting moments trying to pop anybody or do any surveillances? I know we did a big surveillance of a bunch of junkies that were going around stealing from small museums around the Midwest. And we follow them here in Kansas City. And they would have been pretty exciting had we had a confrontation with them. Did you have any exciting moments in this? It actually was a fascinating case. And for the first, there’s the really boring aspects of this job and tedious aspects. And I would say that in my, two decades working this case, I probably did, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 consent searches, searching in attics and basements and crawling through crawl spaces and just getting sweaty and covered in cobwebs. But the break in the case for me came in 2009 when one of the guys who was part of Merlino’s crew who was deceased, his niece came forward to me and told me that the paintings. Some of them had been hidden up in this guy’s hide at his house up in Maine. I went up to Maine with Anthony Amore, who’s the director of security for the Gardner Museum. We worked on this case together for years. [20:29] And then we found that hide. And then we interviewed, right from there, we went and interviewed Guarenti. That’s the guy, Bobby Guarenti. We interviewed his widow and she broke down and admitted that he once showed her the paintings and she gave them to a guy down in Connecticut. And we identified that guy and we interviewed him. My name is Bobby Gentile. He’s a made member of the Philly Mob. He got straightened out with his crew back in the late 90s. [20:54] And he refused to cooperate. And then that’s where we really just started getting, using a lot of ingenuity to try and break it. And an agent down in the New Haven office, a guy by the name of Jamie Lawton, he joined our team and we started working this case. And he had a source who knew Gentile, Bobby Gentile, and the source started buying drugs from Gentile. Ah, there we go. We ended up arresting Gentile and we did a search warrant at his house. And it was crazy. Like we recovered, I want to say seven handguns, loaded handguns lying all over the place. He had a pump action shotgun hanging by the front door. He had high explosives. We had to evacuate the house and call him the bomb squad. But the interesting thing was he had the March 19th, 1990 edition of the Boston Herald with headlines about the Gardner heist and tucked inside that newspaper was a handwritten list of all the stolen items. With what looked like their black market values. This is in the house of a guy who swore up and down that he’d never heard of the Gardner Museum. And we were able to figure out who wrote the list. It was written by none other than Al Monday, who’s the guy that did the first armed robbery of a museum, of a Rembrandt. And we interviewed him and he told us that he wrote that list for Bobby Gentile and his buddy up in Maine, Bobby Garanti, because they had a buyer for the paintings and they wanted to know what they were worth. [22:24] So yeah, and then Gentile took 30 months. [22:28] He wouldn’t cooperate. And while he was incarcerated, we turned two of his closest friends to becoming sources. And so when he got out of prison in February or April of 2014, they started talking to him and talked about the gardener and they said they might know somebody who’d want to buy him. That’s how we then introduced an undercover agent. Gentile was introduced to Tony, this undercover FBI agent. Over six months, they had long talks about selling the paintings. Unfortunately, before Gentile would sell the paintings, he wanted to do a drug deal first, which we couldn’t allow to happen. We can’t let drugs walk on the street. So we had to take it down. And although we’d seized all these guns from Gentile back in 2012, he told the sources the FBI didn’t get all of his guns. Because of that disturbing comment, one of the sources asked Gentile if he could buy a gun for him. And Gentile sold him a loaded 38. So we arrested him again. And he still refused to cooperate. I don’t respect what he did for a living or a lot of the things that he did, but you do have to respect his adherence to his values. However, misguided they may have been, he took the code of omerta, the code of silence to heart, and he took it to his grave. He died, I think, in 2021 after going to prison a second time. [23:50] While we never got any paintings back, it was a tremendous ride, and I’m confident they will come back. It’s just going to be a question of when. Yeah, that kind of brings up the question that you hear people speculate. Did you ever run across this? Is there actually any rich old guys or an Arab sheik or somebody that buys stuff like this and then really keeps it and never shows it to anybody? Does that unicorn really exist? everybody wants that to be true i know virtually it’s not yeah there’s there’s never been a case of some wealthy what we call the doctor no theory some some reclusive billionaire with his underground lair filled with all the illicit stolen treasures of the world yeah that’s it’s never happened yeah i guess you never say never but but no look the majority statistically about three-quarters of everyone that collects art in this country does it for, and I assume it’s probably worldwide, does it for the investment potential. There’s a lot of money to be made in collecting art. It rarely, if ever, drops in value. So that’s why people collect art. If there’s somebody who has a particular piece that they want so badly that they’re going to commission its theft, it’s more the stuff of Hollywood. It could happen, but we’ve never seen that happen yet. Interesting. [25:14] We did have one case here where we had a medical doctor and he had it on the wall of his house. And it was, I believe it was a Western artist named Remington that these junkies stole out of Omaha. But it was such a minor piece that he could show it to anybody and they wouldn’t. They would say, oh, that’s cool. You got a Remington. [25:30] There’s plenty of those around. And he could afford a real deal Remington anyhow. So it wasn’t that big a deal. And that’s really what it comes down to is that art, high-end art does get stolen. It gets stolen quite often. The art market is about $60 billion, and the FBI, we estimated about $6 to $8 billion of that is illicit, whether it’s theft or fakes and forgeries. It’s a tremendous market, but it’s mostly second and third tier items. [26:02] Really valuable, well-known pieces. They do get stolen, but that’s the easy part. The easy part is stealing it. The hard part is monetizing it. That’s why you very rarely see recidivism among art thieves, high-end art thieves, because you do it once, and now you’re stuck with the thing. It’s easier to steal something else. You got to go out and boost fur coats and stuff to make a living. Exactly. Do a jewelry store robbery down there and make a living. And that’s exactly the point. That’s why you’re seeing a sea change in terms of art thefts, museum thefts. The Louvre was a great example of that. Dresden green vault robbery where 100 million euros in gems were stolen back in 2019 yeah. [26:45] Gems and jewelry, it can be broken down. It’s going to greatly diminish their value, but you can recut a gem. You can melt down the setting. You can monetize it for a greatly diminished value, but at least you can monetize it. You can’t cut up a Rembrandt into smaller pieces. [27:02] It’s only valuable as a whole complete piece. Yeah. I’m just thinking about that. We got a couple of guys, Jerry Scalise and Art Rachel in Chicago, flew to London, robbed a really valuable piece, the Lady Churchill’s diamond or something, I don’t remember, but really valuable piece and mailed it to somebody on their way to the airport and then got caught when they got back to Chicago and brought back to London and did 14 years in England and they never gave up that piece and nobody could, it never appeared anywhere, but it was just cut up and they didn’t make hardly any money off of it. Yeah. Look, there’s a, there’s much more profitable ways to. Yeah. To make an illicit living than stealing high-end artwork, but it does still get stolen. And that’s one of the cruel ironies when you’re talking about art theft is if somebody has a $20,000 piece of jewelry or a very expensive watch, they’re most likely going to lock it up in a safe in their bedroom or something. But you have a $10 million piece of artwork, you probably got it on the mantle. You’ve got it over the fireplace or in the front foyer of your house and probably doesn’t have a passive alarm system protecting it or security screws to keep it from being taken off the wall because people want to show it off. Yeah. It’s way too enticing. [28:24] Really? So, yes, you need to keep the word out there and keep this in people’s minds. And I’m sure the museum tries to do this in some ways in order, hopefully, that maybe somebody will say, oh. Yeah. [28:38] I think I saw that somewhere in this news program or on this podcast. [28:42] I’ll put some pictures on the podcast when I end up editing this. No, please do, Kerry. And that’s the thing. That’s the basis for the title of my book is it really is a fugitive investigation. And that’s how I work this case is fugitives and perfect fugitives because they’re not like their human counterparts. They’re not going to get tripped up on the silly things that we need to do as human beings, getting a driver’s license or whatnot. Yeah. [29:09] And so that’s how I worked the case. The FBI was really, I was always impressed with the FBI’s support that they gave me on this investigation. We did billboard campaigns and social media and a lot of things to get these images out there to the public, hoping it might resonate with somebody. And that’s really my goal for this book. I felt it should be written. I felt it’s an important case. Certainly, it’s something that I wanted to write about. It’s something that’s very important to me. [29:42] But it’s yet another attempt to apprehend these fugitives. And I’m hopeful that somebody, it might resonate with somebody. Somebody’s going to see something. And there’s so much disinformation and misinformation that’s out there in the media about this case. People are endlessly, all these armchair detectives, and I don’t say it in a deprecating way. Good for them. Work as hard as you can. But if you want to work this case from your armchair, great. but you should be going off accurate information because there’s a lot of bad information that’s out there on the internet. And if you want to help out, if you want to collect that $10 million reward, great, but you should be going off the most accurate factual information that’s available. Yeah. And you probably ought to go down to the deep seamy underbelly of Philadelphia or Boston or somewhere and get involved with a mob and then work your way up and make different cocaine deals and everything. And eventually you might be trusted enough that some might say, oh yeah, I’ve got those in this basement. I would suggest there’s better hobbies. [30:47] That could be hazardous to your health. I wouldn’t recommend it. Yes, it could. All right. Jeffrey Kelly, the book is 13 Perfect Tuesdays. Those are the paintings that were stolen that you’ll see on the podcast on the YouTube channel. The true story of the mob, murder, and the world’s largest art heist. Jeffrey, thanks so much for coming on to tell us about this. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for having me.

As America and Israel's conflict with Iran spills out into the region and beyond, Christiane gets perspective from around the world with a range of guests. U.S. Democratic Senator, Chris Murphy, who sits on the foreign relations committee is up first with a furious response to the roll out of this war and the lack of clear objectives. Then from inside Iran, Christiane hears from human rights activist Mehdi Mahmoudian, who co-write the Oscar-nominated drama 'It Was Just an Accident' and was until recently, a political prisoner of the regime. And with the Gulf region under fire, Christiane speaks to Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal, the country's former director of intelligence. Plus with America's allies increasingly walking a tightrope, Christiane hears from Britain's former spymaster, John Sawers, after President Trump criticised Prime Minister Starmer's initial response. And, with many Americans hearing echoes of Iraq, a lookback at Christiane's reporting from Baghdad just after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Air date: March 7, 2026   Guests:  Senator Chris Murphy Former Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal  Former MI6 Chief, John Sawers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Saturday, February 21, 2026 by Dr. Fawzia Al-Rawi The Qur'an speaks to the body, the heart, and the invisible depths of the soul. Among the gifts it offers us are six verses that God Himself calls “the verses of healing,” āyāt ash-shifā'. These verses are not metaphors, but gateways where the Divine Word meets the human wound. During this gathering, we will explore and experience the way in which God heals: through words, light, dhikr, and the awakening of the deep heart. Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi Al-Rifai was born in Baghdad. She holds a doctorate in Islamic studies and studied Arabic language, Islam, and ethnology at the universities of Vienna and Cairo. She lived for twelve years in Jerusalem, where she deepened her knowledge of Sufism, both in theory and in practice, with her master, Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Al-Rifai. Since 2001, she has lived in Vienna and has been dedicated to transmitting Sufi wisdom and its traditions. Her teaching is particularly addressed to women and aims to build bridges of understanding between different cultures in order to contribute to peace in the world. Fawzia Al-Rawi is the author of several books, notably “The Call of Allah – a companion for the sacred month of Ramadan.” The Verses of Healing – Āyāt al-Shifā' In the Qur'an, the “verses of healing” (āyāt al-shifā' / آيات الشفاء) are six in number. These are the verses in which the word shifā' (healing) or the verb yashfī (to heal) are mentioned. They are recited for the purpose of healing. قَاتِلُوهُمْ يُعَذِّبْهُمُ اللَّهُ بِأَيْدِيكُمْ وَيُخْزِهِمْ وَيَنْصُرْكُمْ عَلَيْهِمْ وَيَشْفِ صُدُورَ قَوْمٍ مُؤْمِنِينَ “Fight them; God will punish them by your hands, disgrace them, grant you victory over them, and heal the hearts of a believing people.” (Surah 9 At-Tawbah – The Repentance, verse 14) يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ قَدْ جَاءَتْكُمْ مَوْعِظَةٌ مِنْ رَبِّكُمْ وَشِفَاءٌ لِمَا فِي الصُّدُورِ وَهُدًى وَرَحْمَةٌ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ “O mankind! There has come to you an exhortation from your Lord, a healing for what is in your hearts, and guidance and mercy for the believers.” (Surah 10 Yūnus – Jonah, verse 57) يَخْرُجُ مِنْ بُطُونِهَا شَرَابٌ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ فِيهِ شِفَاءٌ لِلنَّاسِ “From their bellies comes a drink of varying colors, in which there is healing for people.” (Surah 16 An-Nahl – The Bees, verse 69) وَنُنَزِّلُ مِنَ الْقُرْآنِ مَا هُوَ شِفَاءٌ وَرَحْمَةٌ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ “And We send down through the Qur'an that which is a healing and a mercy for the believers.” (Surah 17 Al-Isrā' – The Night Journey, verse 82) وَإِذَا مَرِضْتُ فَهُوَ يَشْفِينِ “And when I fall ill, it is He who heals me.” (Surah 26 Ash-Shu‘arā' – The Poets, verse 80) قُلْ هُوَ لِلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا هُدًى وَشِفَاءٌ “Say: For those who believe, it [the Qur'an] is a guidance and a healing.” (Surah 41 Fuṣṣilat – Explained in Detail, verse 44) For more information, visit our website: https://consciencesoufie.com/

The new Baghdad Bob. How many illegals are driving around your neighborhood who cant read or understand English or even basic road signs. Is Cuba on the chopping block? What does taking control mean in Iran? Follow The Jesse Kelly Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheJesseKellyShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

FULL STREAM### March 3: European Instability and Widening Conflict (5)1638 PERSIAHeadline: Europe Faces Energy Panic as Middle East War Intensifies(6)Summary: On the second day of the conflict, the focus shifts to Europe's lack of readiness for the resulting 50% spike in natural gas prices and rising inflation. Judy Dempsey highlights the "discombobulated" leadership within the EU and NATO as they struggle to coordinate a response. While French President Macron proposes a shared nuclear umbrella, German Chancellor Scholz meets with President Trump to seek clarity on war aims. Domestically, US polls indicate a lack of public support for the war, with only 27% of voters favoring the intervention. The Afghanistan-Pakistanconflict remains intense as Pakistan targets abandoned US equipment and militant camps. In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least 16 drone attacks against US bases, though Baghdad remains relatively quiet as Iran attempts to maintain its political hooks in the Iraqi government. (7)Guest(s): Judy Dempsey (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Bill Roggio (Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). (8)

Stijn Schmitz welcomes Douglas MacGregor to the show. Douglas is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and Decorated Combat Veteran. In this in-depth discussion, MacGregor provides a critical analysis of the current geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, particularly focusing on the conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States. MacGregor argues that the current military strategy against Iran is fundamentally flawed, with no clear purpose or achievable end state. He suggests that the United States and Israel are attempting to destabilize Iran, but this approach is unlikely to succeed. The colonel emphasizes that Iran’s primary goal is simply to survive, while the U.S. would need to completely conquer the nation – an impossible task given Iran’s size and resilience. The conversation delves into the broader economic implications of the conflict, particularly its impact on global oil markets and supply chains. MacGregor predicts significant economic disruption, with oil prices potentially exceeding $100 per barrel and widespread increases in commodity prices. He highlights the critical importance of resource sovereignty, emphasizing the need for nations to control their fuel, food, fertilizer, and defense supply chains. A key theme of the discussion is the potential acceleration of de-dollarization and the emergence of a new global financial system. MacGregor suggests that the United States and Israel are essentially “fighting against the future” by resisting these inevitable economic shifts. He points to the growing influence of BRICS nations and the increasing interest in alternative currency systems, potentially backed by gold or a basket of precious metals. MacGregor concludes with a stark warning about the destructive nature of current geopolitical strategies, arguing that these “pointless wars” are counterproductive and potentially catastrophic. He calls for more measured, strategic approaches to international relations and economic development, emphasizing the need for stability, long-term planning, and cooperation between governments and private sectors. Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:00:56 – Middle East Assessment 00:01:32 – Strategic Goals Discussion 00:02:55 – Oil Dependency Impacts 00:04:52 – Global Economic Shutdown 00:07:28 – Logistics and Escalation 00:09:01 – Lack of Planning 00:11:32 – Israel’s Internal Problems 00:13:00 – Oil Markets Analysis 00:16:16 – Conflict Motivations Explored 00:20:05 – Emerging Alliances Support 00:26:27 – Reshoring Supply Chains 00:39:12 – Gold Currency Future 00:42:04 – Concluding Thoughts Guest Links: Website: https://douglasmacgregor.com X: https://x.com/DougAMacgregor YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasmacgregorTV Articles: https://breakingdefense.com/author/doug-macgregor/ Substack: https://substack.com/@coloneldoug Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, an author of five books, a PhD, and a defense and foreign policy consultant. Macgregor was commissioned in the Regular Army in 1976 after 1 year at VMI and 4 years at West Point. In 2004, Macgregor retired with the rank of Colonel. In 2020, the President appointed Macgregor to serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, a post he held until President Trump left office. He holds an MA in comparative politics and a PhD in international relations from the University of Virginia. Macgregor is widely known inside the U.S., Europe, Israel, Russia, China and Korea for both his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting, the U.S. Army's largest tank battle since World War II, and for his ground breaking books on military transformation: Breaking the Phalanx (Praeger, 1997) and Transformation under Fire (Praeger, 2003). Macgregor's recommendations for change in Force Design and “integrated all arms-all effects” operations have profoundly influenced force development in Israel, Russia and China. In 2010, Macgregor traveled to Seoul, Korea to advise the ROK Ministry of Defense on force design. In 2019, Transformation under Fire was selected by Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, Chief of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), as the intellectual basis for IDF transformation. His fifth book, Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War from Naval Institute Press is available in Chinese, as well as, English and will soon appear in Hebrew. In 28 years of service Macgregor taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point, commanded the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, and served as the Director of the Joint Operations Center at SHAPE during the 1999 Kosovo Air Campaign for which he was awarded the Defense Superior Service medal. In January 2002, at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's insistence the USCENTCOM Commander listened to Colonel Macgregor's concept for the offensive to seize Baghdad. The plan was largely adopted, but assumed no occupation of Iraq by U.S. Forces. Macgregor has also testified as an expert witness before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees and appeared as a defense analyst on Fox News, CNN, BBC, Sky News and public radio. He is fluent in German.

The brother of a Nobel Peace Prize winner detained in Iran says there's no escape for those trapped in prisons -- and he's afraid of what the regime will do to them in the fog of war. A Nova Scotia father says provincial cuts to programs for people with disabilities, like the one his daughter uses, are a real punch in the gut -- and he's not sure how families like his will cope. We'll pay tribute to Yanar Mohammed, who was killed by gunmen in Baghdad this week -- after decades of fighting for equality and safety for women in Iraq.A Canadian man has been held in ICE detention for the past four months; his brother says his family wants him back home -- but first, they just want him to go before a judge. A curator of old movies tells us about finding a lost gem by a true pioneer of silent film -- and the man who gave him that lost gem tells us just how close he came to chucking it in a dumpster. A Las Vegas casino magnate lays his cards on the table: he wants Canadians who are avoiding travel to the U.S. back at his blackjack tables and slot machines -- and he's willing to take a gamble of his own to get us there. As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that's not sure it'll visit -- but won't roulette out.

Following President Donald Trump's announcement over the weekend that the United States was launching an offensive in Iran alongside the Israeli military, comparisons to past US interventions in the region began to proliferate. Many Americans asked whether this latest military operation would become another ‘forever war', as the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan came to be called. We talk to Gordon Correra, security analyst for the BBC, about America's complicated history of intervention in the Middle East and surrounding region, and ask what these past conflicts might tell us about possible outcomes for the war in Iran. Producer: Viv Jones, Aron Keller and Xandra Ellin Sound engineer: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: A US soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad in 2003. Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

Jamie Walden doesn't do soft landings. A Marine infantryman who pushed to Baghdad in '03, turned firefighter-paramedic, turned missionary, turned pastor in the shadow of Mesa Verde, Jamie has been consuming and contending with the intersection of the UAP space, intelligence operations, and biblical prophecy for over twenty years. Jamie is deeply connected to a task force of Green Berets and intelligence community operators who are briefing Congress and policymakers on the UAP and NHI space, and he brings a battlefield perspective to what he sees as the most comprehensive influence campaign in human history. He breaks down why 90% of what's being seen in the skies is human-made advanced tech, which is either ours, adversarial, or private sector breakaway, while the remaining unknown percentage traces back to channeled ancient knowledge from the powers of darkness. Jamie walks through the elephant analogy his task force uses to explain how the government is intentionally showing different people different angles of the same reality to keep everyone confused, divided, and most importantly, distracted from Christ. The deception, he argues, is not the existence of the phenomena, but the context and narrative wrapped around it.Jamie doesn't stop at disclosure. He connects the UAP conversation to the golden age language coming out of the current administration, tracing it back to the Cumaean Sibyl prophecies and the cult of Apollo, the occult symbolism embedded in the Great Seal, and what he calls a continuity of agenda running through every presidency. He unpacks how 'Christ consciousness' is being sown through the institutions of the new age, NAR, Mormonism, Catholicism, and even mainstream evangelicalism, and is priming the world to receive an anti-Christ. Though not through a jackboot on the neck, but through a deception so appealing that people will demand it, cheer it, and turn on anyone who refuses. Jamie lays out his polycrisis theory, which is a convergence of World War III, AI-driven bioweapons, astro-catastrophism, and global trauma designed to soften the collective consciousness, and makes the case that the only thing that will survive what's coming is an unmitigated, uncompromised identity in Christ. Not knowledge about Him, but a knowing of Him, and identity rooted in Him. https://brooklynbedding.com — Get 30% off sitewide when you use code Blurry. https://preborn.com/blurry — Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://timtebow.com/tree-blurry/ — Get your copy of If the Tree Could Speak by Tim Tebow on Amazon today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Roggio reports that the US exercises extreme caution with battle-hardened Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, fearing retaliation against its small footprint of personnel and the Baghdad embassy. 14.PASHA

3-3-20261600  WORLDElizabeth Peek reports that Iran attacks Qatar's gas fields, causing European prices to soar by 50% as the continent relies on US liquified natural gas amidst a cold winter. 1.Elizabeth Peek reports that Democrats break tradition by opposing the administration during wartime, citing potential anti-Israel sentiment and risks to the upcoming midterms as the conflict with Iran escalates. 2.Judy Dempsey reports that the UAE raises combat readiness after intercepts over Dubai, while Europe faces depleted energy stocks and a lack of strategic clarity from Washington regarding the conflict. 3.Judy Dempsey reports that recent polls show US voters oppose intervention in Iran, while rumors of internal administration friction suggest a lack of unified strategy for the expanding war. 4.Joseph Sternberg reports that Kevin Warsh aims to reduce the Federal Reserve's $2.9 trillion in bank reserves, sparking a debate over the central bank's size relative to the economy. 5.Joseph Sternberg reports that a shrinking working-age population forces Germany to focus on productivity and innovation, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz navigates welfare state sustainability and potential brain drain. 6.Gregory Copley reports that gold and oil prices fluctuate as Pakistan strikes Taliban targets in Afghanistan and Israelexpands ground operations into Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah's resurgent military infrastructure. 7.Gregory Copley reports that Israeli missiles reportedly hit a meeting of Iran's Council of Experts, while the administration considers supporting Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi for a post-regime future. 8.Mary Kissel reports that Beijing watches US munitions depletion and asset movements, potentially using homeland distractions to prepare for future aggression against Taiwan or Philippine territory in Asia. 9.Mary Kissel reports that while Maduro is rendered, his lieutenants maintain control in Caracas, slow-walking transition efforts as Maria Corina Machado plans her return to lead the nation. 10.Jonathan Schanzer reports that IDF ground troops enter Lebanon to "clean house," targeting missile silos and leadership, while secret talks explore normalization between the two nations after Hezbollah's removal. 11.Jonathan Schanzer reports that Iran's attacks on neutral Gulf nations backfire, pushing previously hesitant allies like Qatar and Oman toward a unified front with Israel and the United States. 12.Bill Roggio reports that escalating border clashes result in the destruction of former US equipment, while Pakistanpressures the Afghan Taliban to restrain extremist groups attacking inside Pakistani territory. 13.Bill Roggio reports that the US exercises extreme caution with battle-hardened Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, fearing retaliation against its small footprint of personnel and the Baghdad embassy. 14.Alejandro Peña Esclusa and Ernesto Araújo report that Secretary of State Rubio discusses a transition for the cash-strapped Cuban regime, while Venezuela's Rodriguez brothers continue to stall on releasing political prisoners. 15.Ernesto Araújo and Alejandro Peña Esclusa report that President Lula faces domestic polling challenges and USsanctions while attempting to balance his leftist base's support for Iran with necessary trade relations with Trump. 16.

The US-Israel war with Iran brought the crisis in global shipping. We hear how it's affecting seafarers and speak to the Head of the International Maritime Organisation.Also, all provinces in Iraq have experienced a power blackout, which the government has attributed to a technical fault. We get the latest from Baghdad.And how a bag of money on a runway caused havoc in Bolivia.

The Shulhan Aruch writes that one who recites Kaddish should bow at five points during the recitation: the first word, "Yitgadal"; "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba"; "Yitbarach"; "Berich Hu"; "Ve'imru Amen" after "Da'amiran Be'alma." Some have the custom to bow also while reciting "Ve'imru Amen" before "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba." A number of Poskim, including Rav Haim Palachi (Turkey, 1788-1868) and the Kaf Ha'haim Sofer (Rav Yaakob Haim Sofer, Baghdad-Jerusalem, 1870-1939), cite the Yad Aharon as ruling that one should now each time he says the word "Amen" during Kaddish. It is recorded (in the work Neveh Shalom) that this was the custom in Cairo, and this is the position taken by the Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909), in Od Yosef Hai. By contrast, the Ish Masliah (Rav Masliah Mazuz, 1911-1971) claimed that this custom has no Halachic basis, and should not be followed. This is the opinion accepted by Hacham David Yosed, in Halacha Berura, writing that one should bow only at the five points mentioned by the Shulhan Aruch. In contrast to all these views, the Gaon of Vilna (Rav Eliyahu of Vilna, 1720-1797) ruled that one should not bow at all during Kaddish. The accepted custom among Sepharadim, however, is to bow at the five points mentioned by the Shulhan Aruch, and some bow also while reciting "Ve'imru Amen" before "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba," as mentioned. It is customary to turn to the sides when reciting the words "Be'hayechon U'b'yomechon." This is done as a sign of affection for the congregation, as these words express the wish that Hashem's Name should be glorified with the coming of Mashiah "in your lives and in your days" – during the lifetime of the members of the congregation. Summary: Different customs exist when it comes to bowing during the recitation of Kaddish. The accepted custom among Sepharadim is to bow at the five points mentioned by the Shulhan Aruch, and some bow also while reciting "Ve'imru Amen" before "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba."

When the mission ends, the questions often begin. Jeremy Stalnecker spent years building his identity around service, leadership, and responsibility as a United States Marine infantry officer. But when combat ended and the uniform came off, Jeremy found himself facing a different kind of battle, one marked by anger, isolation, loss of identity, and a quiet belief that he was completely alone. This episode traces Jeremy's journey from combat leadership to personal collapse, and ultimately to clarity. Through painful self-reflection, accountability, faith, and community, Jeremy discovered that the wounds carried after service are not signs of weakness, they are invitations to heal. His story speaks to anyone who has ever lost their sense of purpose after a major life transition and wondered if hope was still possible. Guest Bio Jeremy Stalnecker is the CEO of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping military service members, veterans, first responders, and their families heal from the unseen wounds of trauma, including PTSD. Raised in San Jacinto, California, Jeremy pursued his lifelong goal of becoming a United States Marine, earning an active-duty commission in 1999 and serving as an infantry platoon commander with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. In 2003, Jeremy deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where his unit breached the berm separating Kuwait and Iraq and helped secure Baghdad. Following his return from combat, Jeremy transitioned into full-time ministry, serving first as an Assistant Pastor at Coastline Baptist Church in Oceanside, California, and later as Senior Pastor of Bay Area Baptist Church in Fremont, California. In 2015, he joined Mighty Oaks full time, uniting his military experience and ministry calling to help others find healing, identity, and purpose after trauma. Jeremy and his wife Susanne are the parents of four children and remain deeply committed to serving those who are hurting. You'll hear About Why leaving military service can feel like losing your identity overnight The unseen emotional wounds many veterans carry home How anger and isolation quietly take over after transition The moment Jeremy realized he was not alone in his struggle How faith, purpose, and community restore hope after trauma   Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Episode Introduction 02:15 Jeremy's Path Into the Marine Corps 05:30 Combat Service and Leadership in Iraq 09:00 Returning Home and Losing Identity 13:30 Anger, Isolation, and Impact on Family 18:00 Being Confronted and Forced to Take Responsibility 22:00 The Realization: "I'm Not the Only One" 26:00 Reconnecting With Fellow Marines and Facing Pain 30:30 Identity, Purpose, and the Role of Faith 34:30 Founding Mighty Oaks and Serving Others 38:30 Leadership, Accountability, and Healing Together 42:00 Jeremy's Message to Anyone Feeling Hopeless 45:00 Chuck's Closing Reflections Chuck's Challenge This week, reflect on who you are beyond your roles, titles, or past seasons. If one of those were taken away, what would still remain? Reach out to one trusted person and have an honest conversation about where you're finding your identity right now. You don't have to carry that weight alone. Connect with Jeremy Stalnecker Website: https://www.jeremystalnecker.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremystalnecker/ X: https://x.com/jstalnecker YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JeremyStalnecker Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremystalneckerofficial Connect with Chuck Check out the website: https://www.thecompassionateconnection.com/ Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-thuss-a9aa044/ Follow on Instagram: @warriorsunmasked Join the Warriors Unmasked community by subscribing to the show. Together, we're breaking stigmas and shining a light on mental health, one story at a time.

There are those who have the practice to rise for Barechu, though this is not the generally accepted custom among Sepharadim. An exception is the recitation of Barechu on Friday night, when many Sepharadim are accustomed to standing, following the teachings of Kabbalah. Some have the custom to momentarily lift themselves off their seats when responding "Baruch Hashem Ha'meborach Le'olam Va'ed" to the Hazzan's declaration of Barechu. The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) writes in his Od Yosef Hai that this was the common practice in Baghdad. He adds, however, that there seems to be no basis for such a practice in the Halachic sources. Hacham Bension Abba Shaul (Israel, 1924-1998) opposed this custom, and ruled that one should simply remain seated without moving when responding to Barechu, without moving at all. He explained that it is improper to bow on occasions when there is no Halachic requirement to do so, as this undermines the significance of this gesture. Therefore, as there is no Halachic basis for bowing when responding to Barechu, this should not be done. Summary: Some have the custom to slightly lift their bodies off their seats when responding to Barechu, but some Poskim discourage this practice.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad describes the fall of Baghdad, witnessing Saddam's statue toppling, and the immense chaos and American disorganization following the initial 2003 military invasion. 1.1896

As one of the world's most respected journalists, CNN's chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour has witnessed some of the most consequential events of our time. In the Middle East, she has reported from the frontlines in the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq and exclusively from the Baghdad courtroom at the trial of Saddam Hussein, where the former dictator was eventually sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. Her fearless reporting from conflict zones has taken her to places including the Balkans, Syria, Sudan, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela and beyond. Throughout her career she has sought to challenge world leaders, expose war crimes and help viewers understand the consequences of war and peace. In February 2026 she came to the Intelligence Squared stage to help us make sense of the World in 2026. Alongside journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah, Amanpour addressed some of the key questions of our time. Will Donald Trump name a successor or try to seek a third term as U.S. President? Could wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan escalate beyond their borders and cause global unrest? And what should journalism look like in a world of increasingly sophisticated AI and unregulated social media? --- This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is well-known that one may not walk in front of somebody while he recites the Amida. Is it similarly forbidden to walk in front of somebody while he recites Kaddish? The Hida (Rav Haim Yosef David Azulai, 1724-1806), in his Birkeh Yosef, references a manuscript written by Rav Yaakob Molcho (Jerusalem, 17 th century) stating that it is forbidden to walk in front of somebody reciting Kaddish. This ruling is cited later approvingly by both the Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) and Rav Yaakob Haim Sofer (Baghdad-Jerusalem, 1870-1939). The reason is that passing in front of the person can easily cause him to be distracted and lose concentration. Hacham Ovadia Yosef clarified that this applies only through the recitation of "Da'amiran Be'alma Ve'imru Amen." The rest of Kaddish was added later, and is thus treated more leniently. Hence, it is permissible to walk in front of somebody while he recites these additions. Unlike in the case of somebody reciting the Amida, it is permissible to sit within four Amot of somebody reciting Kaddish. The reason, as explained by Hacham Ovadia Yosef, is that one does not disrespect the recitation of Kaddish by sitting next to the person, since he responds to the Kaddish recitation. Halacha forbids sitting near a person reciting the Amida because this disrespects the recitation; in the case of Kaddish, however, one is actively participating by responding to the Kaddish, such that there is no display of disrespect, and so this is allowed. Summary: It is forbidden to walk in front of somebody while he recites the main body of Kaddish – from the beginning until "Da'amiran Be'alma Ve'imru Amen." One is allowed to sit near somebody who is reciting Kaddish.

“Behind every great man is an even greater woman.” During the first century of the Abbasid Caliphate, the caliphs oversaw an Islamic Golden Age. These men expanded territory, science and the arts, leaving a lasting mark on human civilisation. But the caliphs were managed, sometimes manipulated, and even murdered, by the women at their side. Most notorious amongst these is Qabiha, the ultimate villain of Assassin's Creed Mirage.Matt Lewis is joined by Dr Ali A. Olomi, historian, writer and podcaster, to talk to us about the lives of three formidable women in the medieval Middle East, and how they influenced the course of history from behind the curtain.Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Watch these interviews and exclusive videos on our YouTube channel.Hosted by: Matt LewisEdited by: Michael McDaidProduced by: Robin McConnell, Peta StamperSenior Producer: Anne-Marie LuffProduction Manager: Beth DonaldsonExecutive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen BennettMusic:Mirage Theme by Brendan Angelides, Layth SidiqPut Your Faith In Me by Brendan AngelidesSpices by Brendan AngelidesIf you liked this podcast please subscribe, share, rate & review. Take part in our listener survey here.Tell us your favourite Assassin's Creed game or podcast episode at echoes-of-history@historyhit.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As one of the world's most respected journalists, CNN's chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour has witnessed some of the most consequential events of our time. In the Middle East, she has reported from the frontlines in the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq and exclusively from the Baghdad courtroom at the trial of Saddam Hussein, where the former dictator was eventually sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. Her fearless reporting from conflict zones has taken her to places including the Balkans, Syria, Sudan, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela and beyond. Throughout her career she has sought to challenge world leaders, expose war crimes and help viewers understand the consequences of war and peace. In February 2026 she came to the Intelligence Squared stage to help us make sense of the World in 2026. Alongside journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah, Amanpour addressed some of the key questions of our time. Will Donald Trump name a successor or try to seek a third term as U.S. President? Could wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan escalate beyond their borders and cause global unrest? And what should journalism look like in a world of increasingly sophisticated AI and unregulated social media? --- This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, an in-depth investigatory show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (3/1/26). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");   Rumble("play", {"video":"v74ao6y","div":"rumble_v74ao6y"}); Video Source Links (In Chronological Order): (8) Herd of Justice on X: "A thread of today's Settlers attacks on the Palestinian town of Duma: Around 11:00, settlers invaded a Bedouin community with their goats, all the while Iranian missile are flying overhead. They were armed with guns, batons and pepper spray. https://t.co/1YWfEiDWW2" / X (12) Breaking the Silence on X: "Yesterday morning, we woke up to rocket alerts. Israel began bombing Iran. As often happens when the media attention shifts, Israel seized the moment to intensify its attacks against Palestinians. Here's what happened while the world was looking the other way

March 1, 2026; 9am: As strikes continue between the U.S. and Iran, Democrats in Congress are calling for an immediate War Powers vote to rein in President Trump's military actions. Trump officials are slated to brief Congressional committee staff on the Iran operation. Top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Gregory Meeks, joins “The Weekend” to discuss. For more, follow us on social media: Bluesky: @theweekendmsnow.bsky.social Instagram: @theweekendmsnow TikTok: @theweekendmsnow To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the summer of 2014, three long estranged Iraqi-British sisters are pulled back into each other's orbit by the rediscovery of their late father's long-lost paintings. Beautiful, elusive Zainab; embittered, practical Mediha; and headstrong, queer Ishtar each lay claim to their father's legacy—an artistic and personal inheritance entwined with betrayal, exile, and a homeland they no longer recognize. As the sisters fight to preserve, erase, or repurpose the past, Zainab's estranged son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by trauma and heartbreak, returns to the family fold. With the reemergence of buried memories comes a reckoning, and the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart. Spanning continents and decades—from 1950s Baghdad to contemporary London, from the Tigris River to Yemeni refugee camps—Floodlines (Europa, 2026) is at once an intimate family drama and, in its scope, a modern epic. It is a rare novel that bridges the historic and the immediate and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to belong, to create, to endure. Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to a Palestinian-Lebanese father and an Iraqi-German mother, and educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and has advised on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues throughout West Asia and North Africa. He is the author of the acclaimed debut Guapa, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book and the winner of the 2017 Polari Prize. His 2019 directorial debut, Marco, was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for “Best British Short Film” and is available to watch on YouTube. He is currently based in Lisbon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In the summer of 2014, three long estranged Iraqi-British sisters are pulled back into each other's orbit by the rediscovery of their late father's long-lost paintings. Beautiful, elusive Zainab; embittered, practical Mediha; and headstrong, queer Ishtar each lay claim to their father's legacy—an artistic and personal inheritance entwined with betrayal, exile, and a homeland they no longer recognize. As the sisters fight to preserve, erase, or repurpose the past, Zainab's estranged son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by trauma and heartbreak, returns to the family fold. With the reemergence of buried memories comes a reckoning, and the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart. Spanning continents and decades—from 1950s Baghdad to contemporary London, from the Tigris River to Yemeni refugee camps—Floodlines (Europa, 2026) is at once an intimate family drama and, in its scope, a modern epic. It is a rare novel that bridges the historic and the immediate and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to belong, to create, to endure. Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to a Palestinian-Lebanese father and an Iraqi-German mother, and educated in Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and has advised on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues throughout West Asia and North Africa. He is the author of the acclaimed debut Guapa, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book and the winner of the 2017 Polari Prize. His 2019 directorial debut, Marco, was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for “Best British Short Film” and is available to watch on YouTube. He is currently based in Lisbon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Our practice follows the custom of the Arizal to remain sitting during Kaddish. Although Ashkenazim make a point of standing for Kaddish, Sephardic practice is to remain seated. The exception to this rule is the Kaddish recited before Barechu at the beginning of Arbit on Friday night, when many have the custom to stand. The Arizal taught that one should stand during this recitation of Barechu, as part of the extra Shabbat soul descends upon a person at this point. Therefore, since in any event one stands for Barechu, many have the custom to stand already during the Kaddish that precedes Barechu. As a general rule, however, Sephardic custom allows one to remain sitting for Kaddish. This applies only if a person was sitting before Kaddish began. If one was already standing when Kaddish starts, then he must remain standing. This was the practice of the Arizal. According to some Poskim, if one was standing when Kaddish began, then he must remain standing throughout the entire recitation of Kaddish. Others maintain that one must remain standing only until the Hazzan reaches "Da'amiran Be'alma Ve'imru Amen." Our custom follows a third opinion, that of the Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) – that one may sit after he completes his "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response, which, according to our community's practice, ends with the words "Da'amiran Be'alma." Once a person completes his response, he may sit, even though the Hazzan has not yet reached "Da'amiran Be'alma." Some have the misconception that it is improper to sit before the Hazzan reaches "Da'amiran Be'alma," but in truth, one may sit once he reaches that point. On Friday night, the congregation stands during the recitation of Vayechulu and the Hazzan's recitation of "Me'en Sheba," which is then followed by Kaddish. In some synagogues, people rush to sit down after the Hazzan concludes "Me'en Sheba" (with the recitation of "Baruch Ata Hashem Mekadesh Ha'Shabbat"), before he begins Kaddish, so they would not have to remain standing during Kaddish. Some Hazzanim even pause before Kaddish to give the congregants the opportunity to sit before Kaddish. Hacham Ovadia Yosef writes that this is improper, as specifically rushing to sit down before Kaddish begins shows disrespect to Kaddish. He brings as an example a ruling of the Ma'amar Mordechai (Rav Mordechai Karmi, 1749-1825) regarding the situation of somebody standing next to a person who is about to begin the Amida. Halacha requires one to stand if the individual next to him is reciting the Amida, unless he was sitting before his neighbor began the Amida, in which case he may remain seated. The Ma'amar Mordechai writes that one who is standing and sees that the person next to him will soon begin the Amida should not rush to sit down so he would not need to remain standing. By the same token, Hacham Ovadia writes, it is inappropriate to specifically rush to sit down before Kaddish in order to avoid having to stand during Kaddish. During Arbit, one may remain seated during the recitation of the Kaddish that precedes the Amida. Since one is already seated during Hashkibenu, he may remain seated for Kaddish, and then stand for the Amida prayer. On days when Tahanunim are not recited after the Hazzan's repetition of the Amida, and only the brief "Yehi Shem" recitation precedes Kaddish, it is proper to remain standing for Kaddish. Some people mistakenly think that they may sit down for Kaddish – even though they had been standing before Kaddish began – if the Hazzan sings the Kaddish and thus prolongs its recitation. This is incorrect; one must remain standing even if the Hazzan sings the Kaddish. However, the Poskim write that if the Hazzan knows that people are standing, he should ensure not to prolong the recitation of Kaddish, in order not to overburden the congregation by making them remain standing for several minutes. This Halacha alerts us to the care that must be taken to avoid "Tirha De'sibura" – causing the congregation even minor inconvenience. If Hazzanim are discouraged from prolonging the Kaddish recitation by several minutes when people are standing, then this shows us the sensitivity that Halacha requires toward the congregation. In fact, a well-known Hazzan told me that when he led the service on the High Holidays in Hacham Ovadia Yosef's synagogue, and he wanted to sing a special melody for Birkat Kohanim that was traditionally sung in Jerusalem communities, Hacham Ovadia instructed him not to. He explained that it would be inconsiderate to overburden the congregation who are standing during Birkat Kohanim – especially on Yom Kippur, when the people are fasting – by prolonging this part of the service. Unfortunately, it has become common to sing a great deal at Huppa ceremonies, which causes a great deal of inconvenience to the guests, and this practice should be discouraged. Summary: Sephardic custom is to remain seated during Kaddish. If one was standing before Kaddish began, then he must remain standing until he completes his "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response, through "Da'amiran Be'alma," at which point he may sit, even if the Hazzan has not yet reached "Da'amiran Be'alma." A Hazzan who knows that people are standing for Kaddish should not prolong the Kaddish recitation. It is improper to rush to sit down before Kaddish to avoid having to remain standing.

Historian Faisal Husain wrote the book "Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire" and in this episode, helps us explore the history of the Tigris and Euphrates. He argued for the necessity of understanding human history within the context of geological time, discussing the rivers' origins roughly 20 million years ago, tracing their influence on civilization from the "agricultural revolution" (which some scholars argue was a mistake leading to health issues) to the rise of early urban centers like the Sumerian cities. The conversation highlights the difference between the gentle Euphrates, which attracted early settlements, and the fast and unpredictable Tigris. Shifting to the Ottoman era, Husain examines the environmental challenges of Ottoman Iraq, which was poor in essential resources like grain, metal, and wood suited for construction, and details the extraordinary story of the Euphrates river changing its course in the late 1600s due to a poorly dug irrigation canal. He emphasizes the cultural importance of the palm tree and the vital role of water buffaloes, which made life possible for a quarter of the Iraqi population in the wetlands, whose fate would have otherwise been migration to seek resources and refuge elsewhere. 0:00 Introduction1:47 When Did the Tigris and Euphrates Start?3:04 The Importance of Deep History5:49 Geological Origins: 20 Million Years Ago7:37 When the Rivers Began to Matter to Homo Sapiens10:40 The Rationale for Writing Deep History12:00 Starting Middle East History Before 6th Century Arabia14:45 The Difference Between the Twin Rivers17:05 Why Sumerian Civilization Clustered on the Euphrates20:36 Questioning the Agricultural Revolution23:16 How Agriculture Began: Trial and Error27:00 The Consequences of Taming Nature30:40 The Ottoman Conquest of Iraq32:20 Why Iraq Was Environmentally Poor for a Major Power36:06 Iraq's Default Status Under Iranian States38:25 Baghdad in the 16th Century42:25 The Euphrates Shifts Course (Late 1600s)47:09 Water Buffaloes: The Essential Technology of the Wetlands49:28 Ranking the Most Important Crops51:03 Evliya Çelebi: The Traveler54:49 Ottoman vs. European Traveler Perspectives58:35 The Book Cover: Baghdad on the Tigris Faisal Husain is an environmental historian of the Ottoman Empire, with a geographical focus on its eastern provinces in Anatolia and Iraq and a temporal focus on the early modern period. His first book "Rivers of the Sultan" examined the role of the Tigris and Euphrates in the establishment of Ottoman state institutions in the Ottoman eastern borderland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. His second book project is an environmental history of Ottoman frontier expansion east of the Euphrates during the sixteenth century. He is co-editing a book on the global histories of animals (under contract with Oxford University Press) with Emily Wakild (Boise State University) and Nancy Jacobs (Brown University). In 2024-2025, he served as a senior lecturer at Boğaziçi University's Department of History in Istanbul through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. He serves on several editorial boards, including those of Marmara Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (Marmara University), Global Environment (White Horse Press), and the “Middle East Environmental Histories” book series (Leiden University Press). Hosted by: Mikey Muhanna

When a person recites Kaddish, he says at several points, "Ve'imru Amen" ("And say: Amen"), urging the congregation to respond "Amen" to what he has recited. The question thus arises as to what to do when all the men in the Minyan need to recite Kaddish. If they all recite Kaddish, then, seemingly, they cannot say, "Ve'imru Amen," because there is nobody present whom they can invite to respond "Amen." Some Poskim rule that in this situation, one or two men should volunteer not to say Kaddish, so there will be people responding to Kaddish. Others, however, contend that the men may all recite Kaddish without concern. These Poskim point to the fact that we end the silent Amida prayer with "Oseh Shalom Bi'mromav… Ve'imru Amen" – saying, "Ve'imru Amen" even though there is nobody listening. According to the Kabbalists, when we say, "Ve'imru Amen" at the end of the silent Amida, we are speaking to the angels. This can be applied also to Kaddish. Therefore, even if there is nobody responding, it is still acceptable to recite, "Ve'imru Amen." This is the position of Rav Eliyahu Mani (Hebron, 1818-1899), cited by the Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909), in his work Rav Pe'alim. However, in Ben Ish Hai (Parashat Vayehi), after mentioning this position of Rav Eliyahu Mani, the Ben Ish Hai writes that it is preferable to have at least one person refrain from reciting Kaddish so he can respond. The Kaf Ha'haim (Rav Yaakob Haim Sofer, Baghdad-Jerusalem, 1870-1939) added that it is best to have two people refrain, as the phrase "Ve'imru Amen" is formulated in the plural form, inviting more than one person to respond. This is, indeed, the final Halacha – that although it is acceptable for everyone in the Minyan to recite Kaddish, it is preferred that at least two people refrain from reciting Kaddish so they can respond to the others.

Israel has operated in the skies above Tehran. It has struck nuclear facilities near Baghdad and dominated the airspace of its enemies across the region. But according to a newsletter that the Israeli journalist Amit Segal sent out earlier this week, there is one city in the Middle East where the IDF cannot move freely. That city is a fifteen-minute drive from Tel Aviv, and is called Bnei Brak. On February 15, two female soldiers from the IDF's Education and Youth Corps arrived in this densely populated haredi city for a routine visit to a draftee ahead of his induction. A local resident called a hotline run by the Jerusalem Faction—an anti-conscription group—and falsely reported that military police were distributing draft notices. A mob of hundreds materialized, surrounded the soldiers, chased them through the streets, and forced them to hide until police arrived to rescue them. A patrol car was overturned. A police motorcycle was set on fire. Twenty-six were arrested; most were released by nightfall. Israeli leaders across the political spectrum condemned the violence as the provocation of extremists. But whether they support the rioters or not, most of the Jews of Bnei Brak see the draft as an existential threat to their way of life. It's just that the extremists are willing to say so with violence. For the past two years, pressed by the Supreme Court and by growing public resentment, the government has been trying to legislate a resolution to the question of haredi military service. Some 80,000 haredi men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are currently eligible for conscription but have not enlisted. A bill now moving through the Knesset would set enlistment targets, grant continued deferments to full-time yeshiva students, and impose penalties that critics—including the government's own legal advisers — say will produce no meaningful increase in enlistment. The haredi parties have threatened to block the 2026 state budget unless the bill passes. If the budget fails to pass by March 31, the Knesset dissolves and elections are triggered. The country is, in effect, in the middle of a slow-motion constitutional crisis over this question. Into this moment comes Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer. He is the founding editor of Tzarich Iyun—a journal of haredi thought—and has devoted his public life to arguing that the haredi world must take greater responsibility for the Jewish state, and that it can do so without compromising its fundamental values. In January, following the death of a fourteen-year-old boy struck by a bus at a different protest, Rabbi Pfeffer wrote an essay in Tzarich Iyun called "Idleness, Anger, and the Erosion of the Torah World." In light of what happened this week in Bnei Brak, it deserves a wide hearing.  In this episode, Pfeffer speaks with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver about the conscription crisis and the recent riot.

I sit down with Colonel Edward Arntson III, who has 24 years of military service, to unpack what leadership really demands when it counts. We start with self-leadership: how you show up, how you carry yourself, and why humility isn't optional. We get into competence, intellectual curiosity, and the overlooked power of energy and tone. What you tolerate becomes the standard. Colonel Arntson shares hard-earned lessons from leading in garrison and in combat, including moments that tested his decision-making, confidence, and character. If you're building a team, leading a family, or trying to lead yourself better, this episode delivers practical takeaways you can apply immediately.More about Colonel Ed Arntson:Ed Arntson, from Buffalo Grove, Illinois, graduated from Concordia College (2002) and commissioned as a Distinguished Military Graduate infantry officer through NDSU. He led rifle and company units in Alaska, Afghanistan, and Iraq, was wounded in combat, and later served with The Old Guard, including a landmark deployment to Taji, Iraq. After CGSC and SAMS, he held planning and operations roles with 1st Cavalry Division, deployed to Korea and Baghdad, and served on the Joint Staff. He commanded 3-187 Infantry and 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. His education includes Ranger and airborne schools. He's married with two children.CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction05:07 The Importance of Leadership Development15:31 The Role of Feedback in Leadership27:22 The Power of Tone in Leadership41:59 The Power of Tone in Communication48:25 Building Effective Teams Through Peer Leadership52:37 The Importance of Humility and Tone in Leadership01:06:04 Early Military Career and Deployment Experiences01:21:01 Dedication and Commitment in the Military01:39:26 The Impact of 9/11 on ROTC and Military Careers01:45:54 The Importance of Physical and Mental Readiness01:52:27 A Formula for Effective Leadership02:00:06 Final Thoughts on Leadership and InspirationBecome a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionFOLLOW:IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness