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I’d like to share my impressions of Germany, to complement Warren Hecht’s article from September 5. Please be forewarned: This essay is part travelogue, part history lesson, and part my personal impressions of Germany. For all those not interested in any of those topics, you can stop reading now.

A barrage of gunfire, with hundreds of rounds fired, concluded around 2:00 p.m. in the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey, on Tuesday afternoon as a deadly shooting left four victims lifeless inside a kosher supermarket, including three frum Jewish members – Reb Shlome Friedman, Mrs. Leah Mindel Ferentz, and Mrs. Chava Gold, according to local Hatzalah volunteers and the JBN Jewish media outlet. Fifteen-year veteran Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals was also deceased, following a probable gun or drug deal gone awry at nearby Bay View Cemetery just after noon. Misaskim founder Rabbi Jack Meyer was on the scene alongside Chesed Shel Emes and NJ State Police Chaplain Rabbi Abe Friedman to ensure proper procedures were followed for the Jewish victims. Two other officers and three others were injured. The suspects were found dead in the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City.

A controversial October vote by the New York City Council to shutter the Rikers Island jail complex has stirred up serious concerns for residents of Kew Gardens Hills and the surrounding areas.

At the White House Chanukah Party on Wednesday, December 11, President Donald Trump hosted Chabad rabbis and rubbed elbows with Jewish-American patriots like Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kraft, Rosalee Glass (a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor), Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer, and Jewish members of Congress.

Travel through the Bronx and one can’t miss the Puerto Rican flags hanging from thousands of windows. Take in a baseball game and notice how many of the players have salsa hits as their walk-up songs. Then there is the biggest parade of them all on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. “New York’s connection to Puerto Rico runs deep,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said to his Puerto Rican counterpart Wanda Vázquez Garced on a visit last week.

The cold temperature did not deter nearly 25,000 people from expressing solidarity against anti-Semitism in a historic rally that began in downtown Manhattan. Billed as the “No Hate, No Fear Solidarity March,” the rally kicked off at Foley Square, with a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, concluding with speeches and performers at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn. “Thousands of New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge today to send a message: We have no tolerance for anti-Semitism and hate,” Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted, with a video of the march.