PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

Saco-Indonesia.com - Seorang paranormal Malaysia menyebut bahwa pesawat Malaysia Airlines MH370 yang dilaporkan hilang, tidak jatuh atau dibajak teroris seperti asumsi orang selama ini. Menurutnya, pesawat tersebut masih tergantung di atas perairan Laut China Selatan dekat dengan wilayah Vietnam.

Paranormal yang dikenal dengan sebutan Mahaguru Ibrahim Mat Zin itu menyebut pesawat tersebut berada di alam misteri karana disembunyikan oleh makhluk halus. Ibrahim Mat Zin yang sudah berpengalaman lebih 50 tahun sebagai dukun berkata, karena berada di alam jin itulah pesawat yang membawa 230 penumpang itu tidak bisa ditemukan hingga saat ini.

"Oleh itu, semua rakyat di negara ini harus berdoa agar pesawat yang hilang muncul kembali," ujar Mahaguru Ibrahim Mat Zin seperti dikutip dari media Malaysia, Utusan.com, Selasa (11/3).

"Kita berharap dengan usaha ini, pesawat itu akan muncul dalam masa terdekat selewat-lewatnya minggu ini," kata Mat Zin yang datang ke Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur (KLIA) bersama lima muridnya itu.

Editor : Maulana Lee

Sumber : Kompas.com

Salah satu amal istimewa di bulan puasa adalah umrah di bulan Ramadhan. Keutamaannya menyerupai ibadah haji. Diriwayatkan dalam Shahihain, dari Ibnu Abbas Radhiyallahu ‘Anhuma, Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam bersabda kepada seorang wanita Anshar, “Apa yang menghalangimu untuk ikut berhaji bersama kami?” Ia menjawab, “Kami tidak memiliki kendaraan kecuali dua ekor unta yang dipakai untuk mengairi tanaman. Bapak dan anaknya berangkat haji dengan satu ekor unta dan meninggalkan satu ekor lagi untuk kami yang digunakan untuk mengairi tanaman.” Nabi Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam bersabda,

فَإِذَا جَاءَ رَمَضَانُ فَاعْتَمِرِي ، فَإِنَّ عُمْرَةً فِيهِ تَعْدِلُ حَجّ

“Maka apabila datang Ramadhan, berumrahlah. Karena sesungguhnya umrah di dalamnya menyamai ibadah haji.” Dalam riwayat lain, “Seperti haji bersamaku.” Lalu apa maksud dari hadits di atas?

Para ulama berbeda pendapat tentang orang yang akan mendapatkan keutamaan yang tersebut dalam hadits. Paling tidak ada tiga pendapat utama: Pertama, hadits ini khusus untuk wanita yang diajak bicara oleh Nabi Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam. Di antara ulama yang berpendapat dengannya adalah Sa’id bin Jubair dari kalangan Tabi’in. (lihat fathul Baari, Ibnul Hajar: 3/609)

Sandaran pendapat ini adalah hadits Ummu Ma’qil, beliau berkata: “Haji adalah haji dan umrah adalah umrah. Sungguh Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam telah mengatakan hal ini kepada-ku; aku tidak tahu apakah itu khusus untuk-ku, -yakni: ataukah untuk manusia secara umum-.” (Diriwayatkan oleh Abu Dawud, no. 1989, hanya saja lafadz hadits ini lemah. Dilemahkan oleh Syaikh Al-Albani dalam Dhaif Abi Dawud)

Pendapat kedua, Keutamaan umrah ini bagi orang yang berniat haji lalu tidak mampu mengerjakannya. Kemudian ia menggantinya dengan umrah di Ramadhan. Sehingga ia mendapat pahala haji secara sempurna bersama Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam karena terkumpul dalam dirinya niat haji dalam pelaksanaan umrah.

Ibnu Rajab dalam Lathaif al-Ma’arif berkata: Dan ketahuilah, orang yang tak mampu dari satu amal kebaikan dan bersedih serta berangan-angan bisa mengerjakannya maka ia mendapat pahala bersama dengan orang yang mengerjakannya. –lalu beliau menyebutkan contoh-contohnya, di antaranya-  beberapa wanita tidak bisa berhaji bersama Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam. Maka saat beliau kembali, para wanita bertanya tentang sesuatu yang bisa mencukupkannya (menyamai) dari haji tersebut. Beliau bersabda: ‘Berumrahlah di Ramadhan. Karena sesungguhnya umrah di Ramadhan  menyamai ibadah haji atau haji bersamaku’.” Selesai. Ibnu Katsir dalam Tafsirnya juga menyimpulkan yang sama (I/531)

Pendapat ketiga, Pendapat madhab empat dan selainnya, bahwa keutamaan dalam hadits ini bersifat umum bagi setiap orang yang berumrah di bulan Ramadhan. Umrah di dalamnya menyamai haji berlaku bagi semua orang. Tidak khusus hanya untuk person-person atau karena kondisi tertentu. Hal ini seperti yang disebutkan dalam kitab Radd ak-Mukhtar (II/473), Mawahib al-Jalil (III/29), al-Majmu’ (VII/138), al-Mughni (III/91), dan al-Mausu’ah al-Fiqhiyah (II/144)

Pendapat yang paling mendekati kebenaran adalah pendapat ketiga. Bahwa keutamaan tersebut berlaku bagi siapa saja yang berumrah di bulan Ramadhan. Hal ini didukung oleh beberapa alasan berikut ini:

    Hadits tersebut bersumber diriwayatkan dari sejumlah sahabat. Al-Tirmidzi berkata: “Dalam bab ini bersumber  Ibnu Abbas, Jabir, Abu Hurairah, Anas, Wahb bin Khanbasy.” Dan mayoritas riwayat mereka tidak disebutkan kisah wanita penanya.
    Praktek kaum muslimin sepanjang masa dari kalangan sahabat, tabi’in, para ulama dan shalihin. Mereka sangat semangat melaksanakan umrah di bulan Ramadhan untuk mendapatkan pahala ini.

Penghususan keutamaan ini untuk mereka yang tidak mampu melaksanakan haji pada tahun tersebut terbantahkan dengan jawaban berikut ini: Sesungguhnya orang yang benar niat dan semangatnya lalu mengusahakan sebab-sebabnya yang kemudian ada sesuatu yang menghalanginya, maka Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala akan mencatat untuknya pahala amal melalui keutamaan niat. Maka bagaimana Nabi Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam mengikat pahala dengan amal tambahan, yakni mengerjakan umrah di Ramadhan. Padahal niat yang jujur dan benar sudah cukup untuk diberikan pahala.

Makna Umrah di Ramadhan menyamai Haji

Keutamaan umrah di Ramadhan yang menyamai haji memiliki beberapa makna: Pertama, tidak diragukan lagi bahwa umrah di Ramadhan tidak mencukupkan seseorang dari kewajiban haji. Maknanya, siapa yang sudah umrah di Ramadhan tidak lantas ia terbebas dari kewajiban mengerjakan haji yang wajib.

Maksud dari hadits adalah penyamaan pahala, bukan penyamaan dalam pelaksanaan perintah. Jadi, samanya di sini adalah kadar pahala antara umrah di Ramadhan dan pahala haji. Bukan dari jenis dan bentuknya. Dan tidak diragukan lagi bahwa haji lebih utama daripada  umrah ditinjau dari jenis amal.

Maka siapa yang sudah umrah di Ramadhan maka ia mendapatkan pahala sebanyak pahala haji. Hanya saja dalam pelaksanaan ibadah haji terdapat keutamaan, keistimewaan, dan kedudukan yang tidak didapatkan dalam umrah. Seperti doa di Arafah, melempar jumrah, menyembelih hewan kurban, dan selainnya. Walaupun keduanya sama dalam kadar banyaknya pahala, namuan keduanya tidak sama dalam pelaksanaan dan jenis ibadah. Ini seperti keterangan Ibnu Taimiyah saat beliau menjelaskan hadits yang menyebutkan bahwa surat Al-Ikhlash menyamai sepertiga Al-Qur’an.

Ibnu Rahawaih berkata, makna hadits ini, -yakni hadits: “Umrah di Ramadhan menyamai haji.”- seperti yang diriwayatkan dari Nabi Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam bahwa beliau bersabda: “Siapa yang membaca Qul Huwallahu Ahad maka sungguh ia telah membaca sepertiga Al-Qur’an.” (HR. al-Tirmidzi)

Ibnu Taimiyah dalam Majmu Fatawanya berkata, “Telah maklum abhwa maksudnya: umrahmu di Ramadhan menyamai haji bersamaku (Nabi Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam). Karena sungguh ia berkeinginan untuk berhaji bersamanya. Lalu ia terhalang melakukannya. Lalu beliau memberitahukan kepadanya tentang sesuatu yang menyamai kedudukannya. Ini juga berlaku bagi sahabat lain yang kondisinya sama dengannya. Orang berakal tak akan mengatakan seperti yang dipahami orang-orang jahil, bahwa umrah salah seorang kita dari miqat atau dari Makkah menyamai haji bersamanya Shallallahu ‘Alaihi Wasallam. Sungguh sangat maklum, haji yang sempurna lebih utama daripada umrah di Ramadhan. Kalau salah seorang kita mengerjakan haji wajib maka tak akan seperti berhaji bersama beliau. Maka bagaimana dengan umrah!! Maka inti dari hadits, umrah salah seorang kita dari miqat  di bulan Ramadhan seperti kedudukan haji.”

Wallahu Ta’ala A’lam.

Sumber : http://ibadahhaji.wordpress.com

Baca Artikel Lainnya : HIKMAH SAKTI PERDANA TRAVEL HAJI DAN UMROH

saco-indonesia.com, Untuk dapat mengantisipasi kemacetan dan tindak kejahatan saat malam pergantian tahun, jajaran Polres Bogor bersama dengan petugas gabungan lainnya bakal akan menggelar operasi di jalur Puncak, Bogor, Jawa Barat, Selasa (31/12). Razia gabungan tersebut juga sebagai salah satu upaya untuk menciptakan keamanan dan ketertiban masyarakat saat malam tahun baru, khususnya di kawasan Puncak.

"Selain menutup jalur sejak pukul 19.00 WIB Selasa (31/12) hingga Rabu (01/01/2014), kami juga akan menggelar razia besar-besaran dengan sasaran kendaraan yang tak dilengkapi dengan surat-surat alias bodong dan pengunjung yang telah membawa senjata tajam/api, miras maupun narkoba," kata Kapolres Bogor AKBP Asep Safrudin, Jumat (27/12).

Rencananya, razia tersebut juga akan digelar di pintu masuk kawasan Puncak, tepatnya di kawasan Simpang Gadog, Ciawi, Kabupaten Bogor. "Jadi jangan harap pengemudi yang tidak dilengkapi dengan surat-surat kendaraannya bisa masuk dan naik ke kawasan Puncak untuk dapat merayakan malam pergantian tahun," tegas Asep.

Sementara itu, Kasat Lantas Polres Bogor AKP Muhammad Chaniago juga memaparkan titik-titik lokasi pintu masuk kawasan Puncak yang akan dilakukan kegiatan operasi gabungan tersebut yakni perempatan Ciawi, dan selepas gerbang tol Ciawi. "Operasi ini juga akan kami gelar beberapa jam sebelum pemberlakuan penutupan jalur puncak saat malam pergantian Tahun Baru," katanya.

Ia juga mengatakan, selama pelaksanaan libur panjang siswa sekolah yang bertepatan dengan hari raya Natal dan jelang Tahun Baru, arus lalu lintas di jalur Puncak hampir setiap hari telah mengalami peningkatan. "Setiap harinya di musim liburan ini berdasarkan data dari Jasa Marga di Gerbang Tol Jagorawi, jumlah kendaraan yang keluar tol dan masuk ke kawasan puncak sekitar 40 ribu unit, jumlah itu belum ditambah dengan jumlah kendaraan roda dua dan empat yang masuk dari non tol atau via jalur Kota Bogor," katanya.

Ia juga menjelaskan, kemacetan yang telah terjadi di jalur Puncak juga mengakibatkan tidak seimbangnya antara volume kendaraan dengan kapasitas ruas jalan. "Kepadatan yang terjadi saat natal dan malam tahun baru dikarenakan banyaknya kendaraan yang keluar masuk penginapan serta tempat wisata di wilayah Kecamatan Megamendung dan Cisarua," tandasnya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

saco-indonesia.com, Jenazah seorang tenaga kerja wanita asal Kota Binjai, Sumatera Utara telah ditemukan nelayan dalam kondisi yang telah membusuk di dalam peti jenazah yang terapung di perairan laut Bagansiapiapi Sinaboi Provinsi Riau.

"Ketika ditemukan, kondisi mayat sudah membusuk di dalam peti mati dan terapung di laut," kata salah seorang keluarga korban tenaga kerja wanita (TKW) asal Binjai itu, Sri Nilawati, di Binjai, Senin.

Sri Nilawati juga menjelaskan bahwa adiknya itu, Anita Purnama Boru Huahuruk yang berusia (35) tahun , yang juga merupakan warga Jalan Bintara Kelurahan Satria Kota Binjai, yang bekerja di Malaysia sejak beberapa waktu yang lalu.

Mayat adiknya itu pertama kali telah ditemukan oleh nelayan dalam keadaan yang sudah membusuk di dalam peti dan terapung di laut di perairan Bagansiapiapi Sinaboi Provinsi Riau.

TKW yang telah meninggal dunia dengan kondisi mayat membusuk ini telah diketahui berkat informasi yang telah diterima dari polisi Airud Riau yang telah menghubungi mereka.

"Dari situlah kami dapat mengetahui bahwa adikku itu sudah meninggal dunia dalam keadaan membusuk di dalam peti mati," katanya.

Ditemukannya mayat adiknya itu berkat adanya buku paspor, cincin, kalung emas dan nomor hp di dalam dompetnya.

Sri Nilawati juga menjelaskan bahwa korban rencananya di Malaysia bekerja di rumah makan, namun sesampainya di sana ternyata menjadi pembantu rumah tangga.

Korban pergi ke Malaysia pada bulan Agustus 2013 lalu, melalui sebuah agen penyalur tenaga kerja ke luar negeri. "Namun kami tidak mengetahui perusahaan yang memberangkatkannya," katanya.

Sementara itu salah seorang adik korban lainnya, Faisal, juga menyatakan saat dirinya sampai di Bagansiapiapi Sinaboi untuk menjemput, kondisi mayat sudah tidak bisa dilihat karena sudah busuk, namun pihak keluarga yakin itu mayat Anita, karena terdapat tato bunga mawar di pundaknya dan indentitas lainnya.

Kemudian mayat yang dibungkus plastik di dalam peti jenazah itu dibawa pulang untuk segera dikebumikan. Kini keluarga belum tahu apa penyebab kematian korban hingga mayatnya bisa dibuang dan terapung ke laut.

Keluarga juga berharap kepada pemerintah untuk segera mengungkap kematian korban, karena pada saat dia pergi dari rumah dalam keadaan sehat, kata Faisal.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

The 6-foot-10 Phillips played alongside the 6-11 Rick Robey on the Wildcats team that won the 1978 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball title.

HOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.

So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.

Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.

He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.

It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.

But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.

China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining.

But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.

“So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon.

With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said.

Australia, a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness.

“We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense.

“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”

That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters.

“The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily, a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.

Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three.

Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names.

In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed.

In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.

China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009.

“The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.”

Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years.

To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft, outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice.

China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave.

Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site.

“China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica.

Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.

But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon.

Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators.

But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.

Ms. Turner and her twin sister founded the Love Kitchen in 1986 in a church basement in Knoxville, Tenn., and it continues to provide clothing and meals.

Ms. Pryor, who served more than two decades in the State Department, was the author of well-regarded biographies of the founder of the American Red Cross and the Confederate commander.

WASHINGTON — During a training course on defending against knife attacks, a young Salt Lake City police officer asked a question: “How close can somebody get to me before I’m justified in using deadly force?”

Dennis Tueller, the instructor in that class more than three decades ago, decided to find out. In the fall of 1982, he performed a rudimentary series of tests and concluded that an armed attacker who bolted toward an officer could clear 21 feet in the time it took most officers to draw, aim and fire their weapon.

The next spring, Mr. Tueller published his findings in SWAT magazine and transformed police training in the United States. The “21-foot rule” became dogma. It has been taught in police academies around the country, accepted by courts and cited by officers to justify countless shootings, including recent episodes involving a homeless woodcarver in Seattle and a schizophrenic woman in San Francisco.

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael

Judge Patterson helped to protect the rights of Attica inmates after the prison riot in 1971 and later served on the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.

Ms. Plisetskaya, renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s, but her life was shadowed by Stalinism.

Even as a high school student, Dave Goldberg was urging female classmates to speak up. As a young dot-com executive, he had one girlfriend after another, but fell hard for a driven friend named Sheryl Sandberg, pining after her for years. After they wed, Mr. Goldberg pushed her to negotiate hard for high compensation and arranged his schedule so that he could be home with their children when she was traveling for work.

Mr. Goldberg, who died unexpectedly on Friday, was a genial, 47-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built his latest company, SurveyMonkey, from a modest enterprise to one recently valued by investors at $2 billion. But he was also perhaps the signature male feminist of his era: the first major chief executive in memory to spur his wife to become as successful in business as he was, and an essential figure in “Lean In,” Ms. Sandberg’s blockbuster guide to female achievement.

Over the weekend, even strangers were shocked at his death, both because of his relatively young age and because they knew of him as the living, breathing, car-pooling center of a new philosophy of two-career marriage.

“They were very much the role models for what this next generation wants to grapple with,” said Debora L. Spar, the president of Barnard College. In a 2011 commencement speech there, Ms. Sandberg told the graduates that whom they married would be their most important career decision.

In the play “The Heidi Chronicles,” revived on Broadway this spring, a male character who is the founder of a media company says that “I don’t want to come home to an A-plus,” explaining that his ambitions require him to marry an unthreatening helpmeet. Mr. Goldberg grew up to hold the opposite view, starting with his upbringing in progressive Minneapolis circles where “there was woman power in every aspect of our lives,” Jeffrey Dachis, a childhood friend, said in an interview.

The Goldberg parents read “The Feminine Mystique” together — in fact, Mr. Goldberg’s father introduced it to his wife, according to Ms. Sandberg’s book. In 1976, Paula Goldberg helped found a nonprofit to aid children with disabilities. Her husband, Mel, a law professor who taught at night, made the family breakfast at home.

Later, when Dave Goldberg was in high school and his prom date, Jill Chessen, stayed silent in a politics class, he chastised her afterward. He said, “You need to speak up,” Ms. Chessen recalled in an interview. “They need to hear your voice.”

Years later, when Karin Gilford, an early employee at Launch Media, Mr. Goldberg’s digital music company, became a mother, he knew exactly what to do. He kept giving her challenging assignments, she recalled, but also let her work from home one day a week. After Yahoo acquired Launch, Mr. Goldberg became known for distributing roses to all the women in the office on Valentine’s Day.

Ms. Sandberg, who often describes herself as bossy-in-a-good-way, enchanted him when they became friendly in the mid-1990s. He “was smitten with her,” Ms. Chessen remembered. Ms. Sandberg was dating someone else, but Mr. Goldberg still hung around, even helping her and her then-boyfriend move, recalled Bob Roback, a friend and co-founder of Launch. When they finally married in 2004, friends remember thinking how similar the two were, and that the qualities that might have made Ms. Sandberg intimidating to some men drew Mr. Goldberg to her even more.

Over the next decade, Mr. Goldberg and Ms. Sandberg pioneered new ways of capturing information online, had a son and then a daughter, became immensely wealthy, and hashed out their who-does-what-in-this-marriage issues. Mr. Goldberg’s commute from the Bay Area to Los Angeles became a strain, so he relocated, later joking that he “lost the coin flip” of where they would live. He paid the bills, she planned the birthday parties, and both often left their offices at 5:30 so they could eat dinner with their children before resuming work afterward.

Friends in Silicon Valley say they were careful to conduct their careers separately, politely refusing when outsiders would ask one about the other’s work: Ms. Sandberg’s role building Facebook into an information and advertising powerhouse, and Mr. Goldberg at SurveyMonkey, which made polling faster and cheaper. But privately, their work was intertwined. He often began statements to his team with the phrase “Well, Sheryl said” sharing her business advice. He counseled her, too, starting with her salary negotiations with Mark Zuckerberg.

“I wanted Mark to really feel he stretched to get Sheryl, because she was worth it,” Mr. Goldberg explained in a 2013 “60 Minutes” interview, his Minnesota accent and his smile intact as he offered a rare peek of the intersection of marriage and money at the top of corporate life.

While his wife grew increasingly outspoken about women’s advancement, Mr. Goldberg quietly advised the men in the office on family and partnership matters, an associate said. Six out of 16 members of SurveyMonkey’s management team are female, an almost unheard-of ratio among Silicon Valley “unicorns,” or companies valued at over $1 billion.

When Mellody Hobson, a friend and finance executive, wrote a chapter of “Lean In” about women of color for the college edition of the book, Mr. Goldberg gave her feedback on the draft, a clue to his deep involvement. He joked with Ms. Hobson that she was too long-winded, like Ms. Sandberg, but aside from that, he said he loved the chapter, she said in an interview.

By then, Mr. Goldberg was a figure of fascination who inspired a “where can I get one of those?” reaction among many of the women who had read the best seller “Lean In.” Some lamented that Ms. Sandberg’s advice hinged too much on marrying a Dave Goldberg, who was humble enough to plan around his wife, attentive enough to worry about which shoes his young daughter would wear, and rich enough to help pay for the help that made the family’s balancing act manageable.

Now that he is gone, and Ms. Sandberg goes from being half of a celebrated partnership to perhaps the business world’s most prominent single mother, the pages of “Lean In” carry a new sting of loss.

“We are never at 50-50 at any given moment — perfect equality is hard to define or sustain — but we allow the pendulum to swing back and forth between us,” she wrote in 2013, adding that they were looking forward to raising teenagers together.

“Fortunately, I have Dave to figure it out with me,” she wrote.

A lapsed seminarian, Mr. Chambers succeeded Saul Alinsky as leader of the social justice umbrella group Industrial Areas Foundation.

Mr. Lechleider helped invent DSL technology, which enabled phone companies to offer high-speed web access over their infrastructure of copper wires.

UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling?

What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in the fighting, dooming the latest diplomatic overture on Syria.

Diplomacy is often about appearing to be doing something until the time is ripe for a deal to be done.

Now, with Mr. Assad’s forces having suffered a string of losses on the battlefield and the United States reaching at least a partial rapprochement with Mr. Assad’s main backer, Iran, Mr. de Mistura is changing course. Starting Monday, he is set to hold a series of closed talks in Geneva with the warring sides and their main supporters. Iran will be among them.

In an interview at United Nations headquarters last week, Mr. de Mistura hinted that the changing circumstances, both military and diplomatic, may have prompted various backers of the war to question how much longer the bloodshed could go on.

“Will that have an impact in accelerating the willingness for a political solution? We need to test it,” he said. “The Geneva consultations may be a good umbrella for testing that. It’s an occasion for asking everyone, including the government, if there is any new way that they are looking at a political solution, as they too claim they want.”

He said he would have a better assessment at the end of June, when he expects to wrap up his consultations. That coincides with the deadline for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks.

Whether a nuclear deal with Iran will pave the way for a new opening on peace talks in Syria remains to be seen. Increasingly, though, world leaders are explicitly linking the two, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, suggesting last week that a nuclear agreement could spur Tehran to play “a major but positive role in Syria.”

It could hardly come soon enough. Now in its fifth year, the Syrian war has claimed 220,000 lives, prompted an exodus of more than three million refugees and unleashed jihadist groups across the region. “This conflict is producing a question mark in many — where is it leading and whether this can be sustained,” Mr. de Mistura said.

Part Italian, part Swedish, Mr. de Mistura has worked with the United Nations for more than 40 years, but he is more widely known for his dapper style than for any diplomatic coups. Syria is by far the toughest assignment of his career — indeed, two of the organization’s most seasoned diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, tried to do the job and gave up — and critics have wondered aloud whether Mr. de Mistura is up to the task.

He served as a United Nations envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before that in Lebanon, where a former minister recalled, with some scorn, that he spent many hours sunbathing at a private club in the hills above Beirut. Those who know him say he has a taste for fine suits and can sometimes speak too soon and too much, just as they point to his diplomatic missteps and hyperbole.

They cite, for instance, a news conference in October, when he raised the specter of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995 during the Balkans war, in warning that the Syrian border town of Kobani could fall to the Islamic State. In February, he was photographed at a party in Damascus, the Syrian capital, celebrating the anniversary of the Iranian revolution just as Syrian forces, aided by Iran, were pummeling rebel-held suburbs of Damascus; critics seized on that as evidence of his coziness with the government.

Mouin Rabbani, who served briefly as the head of Mr. de Mistura’s political affairs unit and has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, said Mr. de Mistura did not have the background necessary for the job. “This isn’t someone well known for his political vision or political imagination, and his closest confidants lack the requisite knowledge and experience,” Mr. Rabbani said.

As a deputy foreign minister in the Italian government, Mr. de Mistura was tasked in 2012 with freeing two Italian marines detained in India for shooting at Indian fishermen. He made 19 trips to India, to little effect. One marine was allowed to return to Italy for medical reasons; the other remains in India.

He said he initially turned down the Syria job when the United Nations secretary general approached him last August, only to change his mind the next day, after a sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

Mr. de Mistura compared his role in Syria to that of a doctor faced with a terminally ill patient. His goal in brokering a freeze in the fighting, he said, was to alleviate suffering. He settled on Aleppo as the location for its “fame,” he said, a decision that some questioned, considering that Aleppo was far trickier than the many other lesser-known towns where activists had negotiated temporary local cease-fires.

“Everybody, at least in Europe, are very familiar with the value of Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura said. “So I was using that as an icebreaker.”

The cease-fire negotiations, to which he had devoted six months, fell apart quickly because of the government’s military offensive in Aleppo the very day of his announcement at the Security Council. Privately, United Nations diplomats said Mr. de Mistura had been manipulated. To this, Mr. de Mistura said only that he was “disappointed and concerned.”

Tarek Fares, a former rebel fighter, said after a recent visit to Aleppo that no Syrian would admit publicly to supporting Mr. de Mistura’s cease-fire proposal. “If anyone said they went to a de Mistura meeting in Gaziantep, they would be arrested,” is how he put it, referring to the Turkish city where negotiations between the two sides were held.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains staunchly behind Mr. de Mistura’s efforts. His defenders point out that he is at the center of one of the world’s toughest diplomatic problems, charged with mediating a conflict in which two of the world’s most powerful nations — Russia, which supports Mr. Assad, and the United States, which has called for his ouster — remain deadlocked.

R. Nicholas Burns, a former State Department official who now teaches at Harvard, credited Mr. de Mistura for trying to negotiate a cease-fire even when the chances of success were exceedingly small — and the chances of a political deal even smaller. For his efforts to work, Professor Burns argued, the world powers will first have to come to an agreement of their own.

“He needs the help of outside powers,” he said. “It starts with backers of Assad. That’s Russia and Iran. De Mistura is there, waiting.”

A 214-pound Queens housewife struggled with a lifelong addiction to food until she shed 72 pounds and became the public face of the worldwide weight-control empire Weight Watchers.

By VINDU GOEL and QUENTIN HARDY

Mr. Goldberg was a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was married to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.

Dave Goldberg Was Lifelong Women’s Advocate