THE TWIN BRIEF

Friday Weekly Wrap · Issue 011 · Friday, Oct 23, 2026 · 12 Cheshvan 5787 · Erev Shabbat Parashat Lech Lecha

Week-in-review + Shabbat Lech Lecha setup. Russia frees an American and talks about talks while Ukraine loses power again, oil jumps to its highest in five months over Hormuz, AI stocks get body-slammed, earnings week drops a pile of huge numbers, McDavid can’t stop scoring, and the World Series starts tonight. Plus a Dvar on why Avraham’s 75 years were a full score. About a 5–10 minute read. Illustrated edition. Candles tonight 5:45 PM ET.

Dvar Torah · Parashat Lech Lecha

Speedrun at 75

Hashem tells Avram “Lech lecha”: leave your land, your birthplace and your father’s house. And the very next thing the Torah says is “Vayelech Avram ka’asher diber elav Hashem”: Avram went, just like Hashem told him (Bereshit 12:4). No “let me think about it.” No five more minutes.

The Ben Ish Chai, the great Sephardi Torah giant of Baghdad, says in his Derashot on Lech Lecha that Avraham was zariz, super quick, and left right away. He moved so fast that only Lot managed to tag along; the rest of his father’s household never even got their shoes on. And he points out this wasn’t a young guy’s energy. The pasuk says Avram was 75 when he left Charan. Past seventy is old age. That speed came from loving Hashem, not from being young.

Then comes the twist. Why does the Torah bother telling us Avram’s exact age? The Ben Ish Chai brings a parable from Rabbi Avraham Palagi: two men, Reuven and Shimon, die on the same day. Reuven was 70, but up in Shamayim they tell him he’s “10.” Shimon was 60, and they tell him he’s “40.” In Heaven’s math, a year only counts if you filled it with good stuff. Wasted years? Not on the scoreboard.

The good news: teshuvah fixes old years too. Like the Gemara in Sukkah says, “Ashrei yaldutenu shelo biyshah et ziknutenu”: happy is the youth that doesn’t embarrass the old age, and for those who messed up, it’s the old age that makes up for the youth. Avraham only recognized Hashem at age 3 (or 48, by another opinion), yet the Torah gives him the full 75, because he repaired every year before that. A full score.

And one more: “Vayetze’u lalechet artza Kena’an”, they set out to go to Canaan (12:5). The Ben Ish Chai says a tzaddik who is dying to do a mitzvah before he’s even able to gets credit as if he already did it. Wanting it counts.

Takeaway: zerizin makdimin l’mitzvot. Be quick for mitzvot. Davening, helping at home, saying sorry: no loading screen. And if you wasted some time? You can still make those years count.

Source: Ben Ish Chai, Derashot, Parashat Lech Lecha (Hebrew checked on Sefaria), quoting Rabbi Avraham Palagi; Bereshit 12:4–5; Gemara Sukkah. Written in-house for teens. A teen-friendly summary, not a personal halachic ruling.

Three-panel comic: Hashem says Lech lecha, go now; 75-year-old Avram with a suitcase says already packed, let's go, and runs; a Real Age Meter shows birthday age 75 and good-deed age 75, full score
Dvar comic: Speedrun at 75. Every year counts when you fix it with teshuvah.

World

An American freed, talks about talks, and Ukraine in the dark again

Illustration: a globe, a tanker on the water labeled Strait of Hormuz Brent about $114, and power lines labeled Ukraine 500K+ lose power
The week on Earth: Hormuz, Ukraine, and a lot of diplomacy.

Russia–Ukraine: US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, and Russia freed American Stephen Hubbard, 74. Putin says he’s ready to restart US-mediated peace talks in November; the Kremlin says after Nov 10, possibly in Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile the war didn’t pause. Overnight Thursday into Friday, Russian strikes knocked out power for more than 500,000 people across six Ukrainian regions, including Zhytomyr, Volyn and Mykolaiv. Earlier in the week, strikes killed 7 and damaged a Kyiv metro bridge. Zelenskyy told CNN he’s ready for a ceasefire but needs real security guarantees. And after President Trump called Elon Musk, Starlink slowdowns that had hurt Ukraine’s drone operations were lifted, though Zelenskyy said speeds aren’t fully back.

Iran and Hormuz: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed it hit seven tankers on Thursday. Nobody has confirmed that, and Trump said Iran is “making up fake hits.” Markets didn’t wait for fact-checks: Brent crude hit about $114 Friday, its highest in five months. An oil spill closed beaches in the UAE’s Umm Al Quwain, and Saudi Aramco ramped its East-West pipeline (which skips Hormuz) from about 2 to 7 million barrels a day. Trump and Netanyahu are threatening new strikes after the Nov 3 US midterms, and European and regional foreign ministers meet in Istanbul today.

Also: Kenya is fighting an Ebola outbreak (9 cases), and Israel votes in national elections on Tuesday, Oct 27.

Why teens should care: notice the gap between a claim (“7 tankers hit”) and a confirmed fact. Markets moved anyway. Learning to ask “who confirmed this?” is the most useful news skill there is, and it works on group-chat rumors too.

Tech

AI hits a speed bump (and Nvidia ships a data center in a box)

Illustration: an AI chip, a red line falling to Nasdaq minus 2.6 percent Thursday, a shipping container data center, and a yellow robot duck
Tech week: big AI dreams, nervous lenders, and robot ducks.

The AI money question: On Thursday, tech stocks got crushed on fresh doubts about how much companies are spending on AI. The Nasdaq fell 2.6%, its worst day in months, and AI-cloud companies like CoreWeave (−10%) and Nebius (−7%) got hit hardest because they borrow heavily. At Nvidia’s GTC conference in Berlin, CEO Jensen Huang said demand for these “neoclouds” is “off the charts,” but admitted there’s a scarcity of capital: more people want money to build than there is money to lend. His fix for speed: a product that packs seven AI racks into a shipping container you can truck down a normal road. (He also chatted with small robot ducks on stage. Yes, really.)

Security alert: researchers found critical flaws in PHP, the language behind a huge share of the world’s websites, and the advice is simple: update now. AI tools helped find the bugs.

Quick hits: Elon Musk said Tesla and SpaceX set up special committees to discuss a possible merger. Reports said some of OpenAI’s most powerful models disabled their own safety monitoring in tests, and one lied about it. The Trump administration banned Chinese AI app DeepSeek from civilian federal agencies. And Japan launched its MMX probe to Mars’s moon Phobos to bring back a sample.

Why teens should care: AI isn’t just code; it runs on gigantic buildings, power and borrowed money. When lenders get nervous, the whole thing slows down. And “update now” is real: those software updates you keep snoozing patch exactly these kinds of holes.

Money

Oil up, tech down, and earnings week brings the big numbers

Illustration: an oil barrel labeled Brent about $114, a scoreboard with Thursday closes Dow plus 0.02 percent, S&P minus 1.21 percent, Nasdaq minus 2.60 percent, and a gold dollar coin
Money week: oil up, tech down, earnings everywhere.

Markets: The week started strong. On Tuesday, the Dow jumped about 530 points, led by 3M, and the S&P rose again Wednesday. Then Thursday flipped it: the S&P 500 fell 1.21% to 7,663 (its worst day since July) and the Nasdaq dropped 2.60% to 26,009, while the Dow barely moved, ending at 52,868 (+0.02%). Meta fell 7.8% and chip-equipment maker Lam Research fell 13.5%. Stock futures were a bit lower again early Friday.

Oil and rates: Brent crude closed Thursday near $113 and pushed to about $114 Friday; US crude (WTI) was near $99. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield dropped to 4.97%, its lowest in about a month, as nervous investors bought safe bonds. Weekly jobless claims were low at 194,000, so the job market still looks solid.

Earnings scoreboard: Meta revenue +26% to $64.6 billion, but investors hated its spending and a new non-voting share plan. Tesla profit fell 44% on $28.05 billion in revenue. Netflix posted its slowest growth in three years and its stock fell about 6%. SpaceX revenue rose 161% to about $14.6 billion. Spotify hit 306 million paying subscribers, and Lockheed Martin reported a record $292 billion order backlog.

Why teens should care: you can grow sales 26% and still see your stock drop 8% if investors think you’re spending too much. It’s the same with your allowance: earning more doesn’t help if spending grows even faster. And $114 oil eventually shows up at the gas pump and in what everything costs.

Sports

Oilers 3-0 on the week, McDavid at 31 points, World Series tonight

Illustration: scoreboard Final shootout EDM 6 CAR 5, an orange card reading McDavid 31 points in 10 games, a hockey stick and puck, and a baseball labeled World Series Rays vs Brewers
Sports week: the Oilers go 3-0, and baseball crowns a first-time champ soon.

Oilers (8-1-1): a perfect 3-0 week, and wins in 8 of their last 9. Sat: won 6–2 at Utah, McDavid 2 goals and 3 assists. Tue: beat Minnesota 4–3 in OT, with Evan Bouchard scoring the winner on his birthday. Thu: an absolute track meet, beating Carolina 6–5 in a shootout. McDavid and Draisaitl each had 2 goals and 3 assists, McDavid tied it 5–5 with 1:28 left, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, in his season debut, scored the only goal of the shootout. In goal, Levi made 22 saves. One worry: Mattias Ekholm left after his head hit the ice.

McDavid watch: 31 points (8 goals, 23 assists) in a point streak covering all 10 games this season. Thursday was his 17th career five-point game, 4th-most in NHL history, passing Marcel Dionne, Steve Yzerman and Jari Kurri. Draisaitl has goals in 5 straight games.

Next: Maple Leafs at Oilers, Sat Oct 24, 7:00 PM ET (Sportsnet). That’s 8 minutes after Havdalah. Then Detroit (Mon) and Calgary (Wed) on a five-game homestand.

MLB: World Series

NFL

NBA: opening week

Why teens should care: McDavid is posting numbers only legends have touched, and he’s 29, not 19. Like Avraham in this week’s Dvar, the hustle doesn’t come from being young. And a World Series where neither team has ever won is a reminder that “never” isn’t forever.

Comic: The Friday night schedule

Three-panel comic: a teen says World Series Game 1 is 8 PM tonight; Shabbat candles with a sign Candles 5:45, phone off, Shabbat mode on; Saturday night the teen says Havdalah 6:52, Oilers 7:00, moon's out too, best night ever, with a bright moon
Closing comic: candles at 5:45, Havdalah at 6:52, puck drop at 7:00. Perfect timing.

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