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A sign hangs on Rabbi Haim Alcabes’ home in Kew Gardens Hills and the rooms are nearly empty save for a table with a laptop and a sefer, where he participates and gives shiurim on Zoom. Having lived in Queens for more than four decades, Rabbi Haim and Francine Alcabes are making aliyah, fulfilling their life’s dream.

Amid pressure from within his party and an impeachment looming, Gov. Andrew Cuomo submitted his two-week notice of resignation on Tuesday. “Wasting energy on distractions is the last thing that state government should be doing. I cannot be the cause of that,” the Holliswood native said in a 22-minute live speech at his Midtown office. “The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing, and therefore that’s what I’ll do.”

Rabbi helped launch and maintain popular ‘young families’ shul and community

Four years ago, the basement of the Yeshiva of Central Queens experienced a quiet Shabbos for the first time in many years. Kehilas Ishei Yisrael had disbanded after Rabbi Shmuel Marcus, and many of its members followed him to the Young Israel of Queens Valley. A sizable number of young families seeking to maintain the minyan in that space adopted a new name. Kehilah Torah Temimah was then founded, and secured this site with Rabbi Elan Segelman as its rav.

With housing values in West Hempstead approaching the prices of Queens, young families are branching out in all directions across the suburban landscape. Fortunately, earlier generations of rabbis envisioned the growth of the community far beyond Hempstead Avenue, the town’s main road.

This past Sunday, nearly 600 people gathered in Battery Park under red and white banners, chanting for democracy in Belarus. They sang popular protest songs, collected donations for the legal defense of political prisoners, and heard Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya speak as part of her first visit to America.

With the hot summer weather, layers of clothing are shed, and the world is reopening, as the pandemic loses its grip on society. It’s perhaps a fitting time for Netflix to release My Unorthodox Life, the latest example in a genre of books, documentaries, and now a reality show, about formerly Orthodox Jews. “It’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago I was living in an extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and then I packed up and left,” Julia Haart said. “You can say that we have a very interesting life.”