Sergey Kadinsky

The future of the country rested not only on Michigan and Pennsylvania, but also congressional districts where polls could only predict a tossup. New York’s Fourth District on the south side of Nassau County was one such example. While Donald Trump carried the majority of Long Island’s vote, in this district his party’s incumbent Rep. Anthony D’Esposito lost to Democrat Laura Gillen by 1.7 percent. Truly every vote mattered.

On the upstate map, there are places such as Gilboa and Bethel, named by Christians for whom the Catskills scenery was reminiscent of the Holy Land. In a valley next to State Route 28 is the village of Fleischmanns, named for a Jewish industrialist who pioneered Jewish settlement in these mountains. Knowing little about its history, I only knew it as a spot on the map and, on my recent family vacation, curiously departed from the main road to drive through it.

In the course of this year’s presidential election, as was the case in the past two elections, hyperbolic and patently false statements shared by Donald Trump receive their 15 minutes of coverage but without any harm to his poll numbers. These stories fade away and then another story emerges.

The story of Estee Ackerman’s rise to table tennis stardom began in West Hempstead when she was seven and her father Glenn sought to provide his children an alternative to electronics by installing a table in his basement. Since then, she’s beaten Rafael Nadal at the game at age 11, and appeared in Jewish and secular media for her refusal to play on Shabbos.

Among the shuls where readers can find the international HaMizrachi magazine of the Religious Zionism movement is the Young Israel of West Hempstead, whose members are closely following Israel’s war against Hamas. Last Sunday, one of the voices in this movement, Rabbi Moshe Taragin, spoke at the shul to introduce the documentary Serving on All Fronts, on the participation of Yeshivat Har Etzion and Migdal Oz students in this war.

At the moment when I was writing this column, social media and traditional news outlets are focusing on Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice for running mate as she runs to succeed incumbent President Joe Biden. Had this sentence been written a year ago, let alone a week ago, it would seem preposterous to read.