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I recently attended an all-day shidduch program sponsored by the National Council of Young Israel in Manhattan.

Former president Jimmy Carter spoke sharply against the Bush administration and the Israeli government in his speech at the Geneva Accord ceremony on Monday.

In this week's column by Dr. Yael Respler, she addresses a letter sent to her by a reader who had "bones to pick" with some of the points I made regarding shidduchim in the various Orthodox communities.

During Yom Tov, a group of my friends - all middle-aged ( but youthful of course) babyboomers were chatting about the usual things women smooze about when one of them shared with us the call she had recently gotten from her son-in-law's mother.

JERUSALEM - Nearly 60 percent of Europeans say that Israel represents the greatest threat to world peace, according to a survey of more than 7,500 residents of European Union countries.

There is a wise Yiddish saying that translates into this observation: "Yichus (illustrious ancestors) is like a potato - they are both under the ground."

Country-Western singing legend Johnny Cash, who died last week in Nashville at age 71, was remembered fondly by Israeli officials as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state.

Young adults in the thousands have recently returned from a year (or two or three) in Israeli yeshivas and seminaries, full of youthful exuberance and idealism.

President Bush wrapped up his White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday by declaring at a Rose Garden news conference, "America is firmly committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and we are firmly committed to the safety of the Israeli people.

Liya Kochavi/AP/IDF Israeli soldiers train for urban combat at a military base in southern Israel with mock structures in background

In a speech Monday, Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman vowed to work for congressional passage of a bill that would guarantee a range of benefits to partners of gay federal employees, and declared his staunch support for affirmative action and abortion rights ? including the partial birth procedure opposed by many Democrats.

Lieberman?s statements, made at the biannual conference of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, seemed to cement his move away from the centrist image he had crafted for himself in earlier years.

The Torah admonishes each Jew to 'take care of yourself,' to do what's necessary to stay alive and well. Obviously this means to do life enhancing actions like eating and sleeping properly, taking precautions like putting on a seat belt when in a car, and not taking unnecessary risks, like jaywalking across a busy street or walking on a ledge 40 stories high. Most importantly, one needs to get medical attention when sick or injured.

AFP / Tim Sloan President Bush listens as Israeli Prime Minister Sharon speaks during Oval Office visit on Monday.

President Bush gave Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon an overwhelmingly warm welcome at the White House Monday, reiterating his lack of trust in Yasir Arafat and his support of Israel?s right of self-defense.

?No one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government,? Bush told reporters as Sharon stood by his side.

Israeli officials announced on Monday that Palestinian terrorists had planned a bomb attack against the country?s tallest buildings, the twin Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv.

Israeli soldiers prevented the attack with a raid three weeks ago on a West Bank Palestinian town, said a senior military official addressing a closed door session of the Knesset?s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee.

AP Photo/ Pier Paolo Cito Vice President Cheney and wife Lynne pay their respects after laying a wreath as U.S. Marines salute at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, on Monday.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday morning he would personally meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat in the event of a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians.

Cheney, who had just completed a 10-nation visit to the Middle East, said the U.S. would remain ?very actively engaged? in talks between Israelis and Palestinians brokered by American envoy Anthony Zinni.

Shortly after 5:30 p.m. on June 7, 1981, Israel saved the world from the threat of nuclear blackmail. In less than two minutes? time, Israeli jets laid waste an atomic reactor on the outskirts of Baghdad, and so deprived a brutish dictator the potential for mass destruction.

George W Bush

The Bush administration pulled out of the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, Monday evening after efforts to soften the anti-Israel language of the conference?s draft summary statement failed.

Getty Images Israeli tank sits between a mosque and a church during exchange of gunfire with Palestinians in the middle of Beit Jala.

In what Israeli officials were calling the first artillery attack on greater Jerusalem since the 1967 Six-Day War, Palestinians in Beit Jala fired a mortar shell Tuesday night at Jerusalem?s Gilo neighborhood.

Police told reporters that the shell landed in the center of Gilo, which previously was thought to be beyond the range of Palestinian armaments.

The world as we knew it changed in a matter of moments early Tuesday when terrorists crashed two hijacked planes into Manhattan?s World Trade...

AFP / Hossam Abu Alan Palestinian boy aims gun at image of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during march of over 500 Arab children on August 7 in Hebron. The gun is real.

The Middle East ?cease-fire? spread this week to Jordan when an Israeli was shot to death in Amman Monday night. The victim, a diamond merchant in his 50s, was gunned down as he left an apartment he apparently maintained in the Jordanian capital.

In a statement called in to Abu Dhabi television, a group identifying itself as the Islamic Jordanian Resistance Movement took credit for the killing.

AP Smiling faces don?t always tell the truth: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands at Likud convention in Tel Aviv last weekend.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remains a relatively popular figure in Israel but not in his own political party. A Gallup poll out last Friday gave Sharon a 55% approval rating and indicated that if elections were held now, Likud would more than double its number of Knesset seats.

Asked whom they preferred as chairman of the Likud party and the next Likud candidate for prime minister, Israelis chose Sharon over his arch-rival, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by a margin of 15 percentage points, 47 to 32.

A pair of Israeli attack helicopters killed four Palestinians in Bethlehem on Tuesday as the cease-fire that wasn?t entered its second month. At least two of the targeted Palestinians were planning a terror attack for next week?s closing ceremony of the Maccabiah Games, according to Israeli security sources.

AP/Eitan Hess Ashkenazi Police investigators look at one of two cars which blew up on Monday in the city of Yehud in Israel.

A 51-year-old Israeli shepherd became the latest Jewish fatality in the nine-month-
old Palestinian intifada when his body was found near Hebron Tuesday morning. The killing of Yair Har-Sinai, a father of nine children, was just one in a series of violent incidents this week that gave the lie to the notion that anything approaching a state of lowered hostilities is currently in place.