An 840-foot skyscraper, the largest residential tower in the Middle East, will rise in the Greater Tel Aviv area, the Azorim Development and Investment Company announced Thursday.

Construction on the 65-floor complex, which will include an observatory, will begin soon on the site located in Ramat Gan, an upscale city adjacent to Tel Aviv.

The building will be one foot lower than the U.S. Steel tower, Pittsburgh’s tallest building, and 27 feet higher than One Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City.

The best weightlifters in the world will arrive for the championship, taking place in Tel Aviv April 5-12.

The championship, will take place at a high school, and practices will take place in a see-through hall in the Tel Aviv Port. Both activities will be open to the public.

This is the first time that the championship is taking place in Israel, hosting 500 athletes and escorts from 40 countries.

The championship will be broadcast on Eurosport during the week.

Steve Tisch, one of the most successful producers in the motion picture industry, will chair the 16th Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival at Tel Aviv University May 31-June 7, 2014.

Tisch is a partner at Escape Artists Productions and chairman of the New York Giants is the only person with both an Academy Award and a Super Bowl ring.

Tisch helped launch Tom Cruise’s career with the sleeper hit” Risky Business,” and his credits with Escape Artists include The Pursuit of Happyness, The Weather Man, Seven Pounds, Knowing, The Taking of Pelham 123, The Back-Up Plan, and Hope Springs.

He has been involved with the Giants since his father, Preston Robert Tisch, purchased 50 percent of the franchise in 1991. Tisch helped win the successful bid to bring Super Bowl XLVIII to MetLife Stadium in February.

“Our students will have the privilege of learning from Mr. Tisch, a role model of accomplishment and an internationally recognized figure in the film industry,” said Prof. Joseph Klafter, president of Tel Aviv University.

The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival is the largest in the world and this year will begin as an annual instead of a bi-annual event.

Produced by more than 100 student volunteers, it showcases promising young directors from over 40 countries.

It’s all over but the singing.

The long-rumored but often-doubted appearance of the Rolling Stones now is official. Mark the calendar, June 4, just about the same minute that the holiday of Shavuot ends.

The timing with the end of the holiday which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the People of Israel is one of the greatest contrasts of values possible. Moses’ going up on Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah is one of the most remarkable and holy events in the history of the world.

It would be nice if the Rolling Stones would begin their concert with Havdalah, the prayer that signals the end of a holiday or Sabbath, but ”but you can’t always get what you want.”

Without any sneers at the quality of the Rolling Stones’ music and multi-media extravaganzas, their lyrics and antics are not where I would want my good Jewish children to be, but then again, I would have a problem with Frank Sinatra, also.

Israel really can do without the Rolling Stones although it will bring in a lot of shekels for the agents, parking attendants, transportation companies and hawkers.

June will not be a quiet month in Tel Aviv, which also has scheduled a two-day rock festival in mid-June with the Pixies, making their first appearance in Israel, the Hives and Soundgarden, whose lead singer Chris Cornell’s has performed solo in Israel.

Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Neil Young and Miley Cyprus also are scheduled to appear in Israel this year.

Avraham Fried also will probably be around, but how can he be mentioned in the same breath with degeneration, with the exception of Neil Young.

Speaking of degenerates, the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction Movement must be having conniptions at the thought of the Stones performing in Israel and not Gaza.

The Israeli producer of the concert will be Shuki Weiss, who told a press conference Tuesday, “It’s the first time in 35 years that I have no words to describe the enormity of this event. This is a historic moment.”

A ticket will cost somewhere around $175 for the plain folks, and a bit more than $800 for the VIPs.

I think I will skip it, thank you. I covered the Stones’ concert back in the 1970s with a freebie ticket. I admit it was an extravaganza, but beyond that, I think I would rather be part of the throng at Mt. Sinai.

Rest assured, the Boycott Israel crowd won’t be in synagogue on Shavuot and won’t be at the Stones concert in Tel Aviv when the holiday is over.

Last week, The Jewish Press dared the BDS Movement to boycott Whirlpool, the giant appliance conglomerate whose subsidiary KitchenAid is working with SodaStream, one of the favorite targets of Boycott Israel.

Okay, BDS, show your stuff and boycott the Stones.

Groceries and kiosks will be allowed to open on Shabbat and holidays according to an amendment approved by the Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Yafo) city government on Monday.

Before the law reaches final passage, however, it must still win the approval of Israel’s Interior Ministry.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai has advocated for passage of the law, which he maintains would allow the city to “keep the Tel Aviv spirit, one that cares for the Shabbat as the day of rest, as a social value in the Jewish State, and also allows for the provision of services and the freedom for everyone to use this day of rest as they wish.”

But city council member Rabbi Naftali Lubert, a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, slammed the statement at a stormy hearing on the matter in city hall. “This is a black day,” he said, warning, “What is about to be carried out is a violation of the law against working and resting hours. And for what? To buy beer?”

The issue also touches upon the problem of employers pressuring Jewish employees to work on the Sabbath – and denying jobs altogether to those who are Sabbath observant.  Such discrimination is illegal in the Jewish State, albeit still perpetrated though rarely discussed.  There may be fears the law could increase the incidence of employer discrimination against Sabbath observant job seekers in the White City.

A change in the Tel Aviv law that would allow stores to open on the Sabbath “will not disturb anyone,” Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai stated in an open and written reply to Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel.

The rabbi said that the proposed permission for stores to open on the day of rest would desecrate the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Mayor Huldai claimed that only one percent of businesses in the city will be able to open on Sabbath and will be in areas where operation won’t bother anyone.

There are flaws in Mayor Huldai’s reasoning. He assumes that Jews in secular neighborhoods will not be disturbed by stores opening on the Sabbath.

He is dead wrong. There are no statistics, but it is safe to say that a sizeable number of “secular” Jews respect and love the sanctity of the Sabbath, even if they don’t observe it.

Moreover, the “one percent” of stores that he says would open on Shabbat, if allowed, is only the beginning. Competitors will be forced to follow suit.

Pro-secular activists always argue that preventing stores from opening on the Sabbath is “religious coercion,” a phrase that always brings out the catcalls for “freedom” from religious influence on the law.

There are laws that prevent business in certain neighborhoods form operating in the middle of the night, but “social coercion” is legitimate.

There are laws that prevent businesses, and residents, from making too much noise, but “environmental coercion” is permissible.

Any law restricts the freedom of some people, and that is allowed, but the secular fundamentalists cannot tolerate the thought of Judaism being an influence on laws in a Jewish state, for the simple reason they do not wan’t a Jewish state.

Hay want a state where Jews can live and practice their religion as they wish, son ,long as the their prayers in synagogues do not disturb the neighbors and so long as not too many people clog the sidewalk when walking back and forth to synagogue on the Sabbath, and so long as the Orthodox Jews don’t dare take affront at parades of homosexuals.

The anti-Orthodox activists don’t admit that they are practicing secular coercion.

The Palestinian Authority terrorist convicted last year of bombing a bus in Tel Aviv in 2012 was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in jail. The explosion on the local bus wounded 28 people.

The terrorist, Mohammed Mafarji and who was 18 years old when he bombed the bus, said he carried out the attack during the Pillar of Defense counter terrorist operation in Gaza as an act of revenge for the death of a Hamas terrorist commander.

The sentence was handed down after plea bargaining, which included a promise that the jail sentence would not be no more than 25 years.

Assuming Israel does not free him sooner as a “goodwill concession” to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas or U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and if Mafarji behaves nicely in jail, he probably will be released long before 25 years pass.

You missed the boat if you wanted to pick up a nice little penthouse in Tel Aviv.

An unidentified Canadian real estate tycoon picked up a seafront penthouse, stull under construction, for a paltry $31 million, Globes reported.

The apartment is on the 20th and 21st floors and the balconies cover an area of 3,000 square feet, and that is not a typo – three thousand and not three hundred.

The “Herbert Samuel” project of 40 apartments is being built by Ofer Investments.

The project includes a swimming pool, spa and fitness room. If you want to buy in before it’s too late, there are four apartments left.