fu72vol

[fu72vol @fu72vol]

Vandy is the hottest school in the South, maybe the country. It's as hard now to get into as Princeton. No wonder it has attracted so many Jewish students. Jews value education as much as any group of Americans. Hillel is well established; Jews represent about 15% of students.

[Vanderbilt University @VanderbiltU]

For the first time ever, Chabad of Vanderbilt hosted its annual Passover seder inside FirstBank Stadium, bringing hundreds of students together for an unforgettable on-field celebration.

Read more in the @Tennessean: https://t.co/i1aEeZn4zd

[Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Ed @ufhamilton]

The Hamilton School mourns the passing of Gordon S. Wood (1933–2026), one of the foremost historians of the American founding.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar whose work shaped generations of students and historians, his legacy will endure through his scholarship, teaching, and example.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

In May 1944, 23-year-old Phyllis Latour jumped out of a US bomber and parachuted into occupied Normandy, France. Her mission was to gather information about Nazi positions in preparation for D-Day. Once on the ground, she quickly buried her parachute and clothes, and began a secret mission that would last four months, pretending to be a poor teenage French girl.

Phyllis had been trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). She learned how to send secret messages in Morse code, how to fix wireless radios, and how to spy without being caught. She also went through tough physical training in the Scottish highlands. Phyllis wanted to get revenge on the Nazis who had killed her godfather.

Phyllis said, “The men who had been sent before me were caught and killed. I was chosen because I would be less suspicious.” She would ride a bicycle through the region, pretending to sell soap, and secretly pass messages to the British about German locations. She acted like a country girl chatting with German soldiers to avoid raising suspicion. She moved from place to place to stay hidden and often slept in forests finding her own food.

Phyllis also came up with a clever way to hide her secret codes. She wrote them on a piece of silk and pricked it with a pin each time she used a code. She kept it hidden inside a hair tie. Once when the Germans briefly detained her and searched her she took out the hair tie and let her hair fall, showing she had nothing to hide. In the summer of 1944, Phyllis sent 135 coded messages helping Allied bombers find German targets.

After the war, Phyllis married and moved to New Zealand. Her children didn’t know about her wartime service until 2000, when her oldest son found out online. This hero passed on October 7, 2023. May she rest In peace.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

🙏

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

“You can’t negotiate peace with somebody who comes to kill you.”

- Golda Meir

[fu72vol @fu72vol]

Smart move NCAA

[Furman Paladins @FurmanPaladins]

Donnelly Named To NCAA Men's Basketball Oversight Committee https://t.co/OKdTAimCaL

[fu72vol @fu72vol]

WSJ Editorial Board writes this morning “Mr. Trump’s skill set isn’t facts”. Was any truer understatement ever written?

[Golf Digest @GolfDigest]

17-year-old Miles Russell (with Charlie Woods on the bag) has qualified for the U.S. Open at Shinnecock!

[Furman Basketball @FurmanMBB]

Straight to work📈

#AllDIN // #BetterTogether

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Tens of thousands of proud Canadians rallied in support of Israel.

Every single one of you in Canada who stand with us, the Jewish people, at times when it mattered most, know this:

We love you, and we are eternally grateful. 🇨🇦❤️🇮🇱

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.” — Andy Rooney

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

A Nazi commander loaded his pistol, pressed the cold metal barrel directly against the forehead of an American soldier, and gave a chilling ultimatum: "Order the Jewish soldiers to step forward, or I will shoot you right now."

What happened next in that frozen prisoner-of-war camp changed history forever, yet the man who stared down death kept it a secret for the rest of his life.

It was January 1945, and the bitter winter of World War II was at its peak. Inside Stalag IX-A, a notorious German prison camp near Ziegenhain, thousands of American soldiers were trapped behind barbed wire. Among them was Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a twenty-five-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee. As the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in his section, Edmonds was responsible for the lives of 1,275 men.

One day, the camp commander, a fanatical Nazi major named Siegmann, issued a terrifying directive.

He ordered that the following morning, all American prisoners of Jewish faith must step out of the ranks during roll call. Everyone knew what this meant. Separating the Jewish soldiers was the first step toward sending them to extermination camps.

Inside the dark, freezing barracks, the prisoners panicked. Some of the Jewish soldiers considered stepping forward willingly to protect their Christian brothers from Nazi wrath. But Edmonds refused to let that happen. He looked at his men and gave a clear, definitive order: "Tomorrow, everyone steps forward. Everyone."

The next morning, the ground was thick with snow. Major Siegmann walked out onto the parade ground, expecting to see a small, isolated group of Jewish soldiers standing apart from the rest. Instead, he stopped dead in his tracks. All 1,275 American soldiers had stepped forward together in perfect unison.

The commander turned red with anger and stormed over to Edmonds. "They cannot all be Jews!" Siegmann screamed.

Edmonds stood completely still, looked the Nazi straight in the eyes, and replied: "We are all Jews here."

Enraged, Siegmann drew his Luger pistol and pressed it against Edmonds' forehead. The tension was suffocating. Hundreds of men held their breath, waiting for the gunshot. But Edmonds did not blink.

"According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank, and serial number," Edmonds said, his voice steady and calm. "If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us. And when the war ends, you will be tried for war crimes."

Edmonds knew the German army was collapsing and the Allies were advancing. Siegmann knew it too. The Nazi commander looked at the wall of unified men, realized he could not break their spirit, and slowly lowered his gun. He turned around and walked away without saying another word.

Because of that moment of defiance, two hundred Jewish-American soldiers survived the Holocaust. When the war ended, Edmonds returned to Tennessee, married his sweetheart, and raised a family. He never bragged about his actions, never looked for medals, and never even told his own children what he had done. To him, protecting his men was simply his duty.

Decades after his death in 1985, his son uncovered the truth by talking to the survivors. In 2015, Edmonds was officially recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor Israel bestows upon non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. He remains the only American soldier to ever receive this recognition.

True heroism does not look for applause, and love will always be louder than hatred.

By standing together in the snow, those soldiers proved that when we refuse to abandon each other, ordinary human beings can become absolutely invincible.

[Furman Basketball @FurmanMBB]

Good to be back🙏🏽

#AllDIN // #BetterTogether

[Dan Senor @dansenor]

👇👇👇

[FAN TRUMP ARMY @TRUMP_ARMY_]

WATCH: In a jaw-dropping video that's going viral across social media, the Iranian diaspora is putting Persian identity over religious affiliation.

I'M PERSIAN, I'M NOT A MUSLIM.

[Estevan Belo @belo_estevan]

@VividProwess Islam teaches that infidels and Jews are animals ... k!LL!ng them is OK .. only Muslims are worthy of dignity.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Douglas Murray:

"Imagine what kind of a psychopath you have to be to gang rape a girl and then shoot her in the head. Most won't be proud of that, but Hamas is."

The vast majority of Gazans celebrated this.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room.

She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill.

Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final.

Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat.

Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped.

She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won.

By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million.
One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

[Dave Scarangella @DaveScarangella]

Tonight, as I do every year at this time, I’ll be raising a glass to a scared young man, who 82 years ago was preparing to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy as part of an event code-named Operation Overlord.

D-Day.

I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I’d be scared to death and I’m sure he was too. But in that first wave was a 21-year-old Private First Class from Henry County, VA by the name of Allen Homer Sink.

Fortunately, he would survive that initial wave, participate in battle until it ended in August, then come home to marry and raise a family of four, including two daughters after the war ended.

He would also become my father-in-law until his death in 2006.

His nickname for some reason was “Hank” and when I asked him how he got it, he said some guy in the Army said he “looked like a Hank.” From the time I first met him, he was a salt-of-the-earth man who was never afraid of anything. He was a carpenter by trade, and he’d stand up on the tallest roofs, grab bumblebees with his bare hands when they tried to persuade him to move elsewhere, and never be bothered by anything.

His hands were tough and leathery, but he was a softie. He spoiled his children, complained when my mother-in-law would gripe about something involving one of his alleged misdeeds, and always thought he was fooling everybody when he snuck around the back of the house and lit a cigarette, a habit everyone opposed but he could never part himself from.

He could talk your ear off for hours at a time, and I always suggested he become a greeter at Wal-Mart when he retired because then he could talk all day to strangers and none of them would – like his wife and daughters often did – tell him to be quiet for a few moments. Yet for all his love of talking, there was one subject he just wouldn’t discuss.

June 6, 1944. Omaha Beach.

In 1998, when he was 76 years old, the subject came up again. The movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out and the beginning was gruesome. Reviews said it was incredibly realistic to what really happened that day. I asked Hank if he wanted to go see it.

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see any of that again.”

He did offer that he remembered the night before when troops were loaded into the boats for the amphibious assault. He said it was raining and that once everyone was in place, they gave everybody ice cream and told them to try to get some sleep. Then the next thing he knew, they were waking everybody up telling them to stay low and head for the beach.

No, that doesn’t sound like somebody drugged the ice cream. Not at all.

That’s all he would say about the subject, and he never said another word about it until the final months of his life. Alzheimer’s would gradually rob him of his mind, and as his condition deteriorated, memories of the past would briefly spill out. One evening he thought I was his commanding officer and he was back at Normandy. It is the only time I ever saw him where he appeared to be scared. Ever.

It reminds me every day of something I had unknowingly taken for granted. The greatest generation did fight in and win World War II, then did incredible things over the next 50 to 60 years after the war. But many carried unspeakable memories from the War, ones they would never talk about and carry inside them to their graves. Those veterans lost a piece of themselves in battle they would never, ever, get back.

I mean, how can you at the tender age of 21 storm a beach, see friends die only a few feet from you, wonder each night if you will wake up alive the next morning and then return home a year later and try to pick up on the same normal life you had before you left? I told him once that after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, I understood why he was never afraid of anything; after you’ve made it through something like that, everything else pales in comparison.

So tonight, I raise a glass to Hank and the 150,000-plus men, who like my father-in-law, were very young, very scared, and still charged that beach, paying a price that even for the survivors would last the rest of their days.

Rest In Peace...

[The Iceman @the_iceman64]

90% of the soldiers on the first boats to hit the beach didn't live to see the end of the day. Look at those faces. Some of them never made it to 18.

Never forget that they paid the ultimate price for our freedom. We live our lives the way we do because of them.