Community Corner

 Alfons Sperber was only 11 years old when the Nazis marched into Vienna in September 1938, upending his family’s life and the lives of his Jewish neighbors. Great-grandson Eli Siesser was also 11 years old when he first interviewed Papa for his fifth-grade immigration project at Yavneh Academy. Now 97 and a member of the Young Israel of Hillcrest, Sperber shared: “I am so grateful that my story was recorded so that my grandchildren and great-grandchildren can learn from it. I want them to know that in my darkest moments, my faith kept me hanging on. G-d was at my side, protecting me at every turn.”

Simchat Torah is more than the conclusion of one Torah reading cycle and the start of another. It is an invitation to revisit and rethink familiar teachings with a fresh perspective, a reminder that each year offers a chance to approach the text—and our lives—with renewed curiosity and openness, ready to begin again.

The Queens Jewish Link is proud to welcome the newest officers to the 107^th police precinct in Kew Gardens Hills! “The incoming group looks forward to learning our community and serving its residents,” noted Capt. Mo Tsang, 107 Commanding Officer, pictured third from right. Good luck and be safe!

The Talmud teaches: “Welcoming guests is greater than welcoming the presence of the Shechinah” (Shabbos 127).

Great Neck activists husband and wife duo Drora Brody, left, and Dr. Paul Brody, President, Long Island Region, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA); and Stuart Verstandig, immediate past President, Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills (YIKGH), were amongst the attendees at the “Stand Together: Unity, Strength, Resilience” rally at Nationals Park in Washington, DC, held this past Sunday, November 10.

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, thanked the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and its Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC), for the committee staff’s detailed, comprehensive, 325-page report on “Anti-Semitism on College Campuses Exposed,” and called to “clean house” in American higher education. The report determined that “so-called university leaders intentionally declined to express support for campus Jewish communities” lest they offend anti-Semitic faculty and students, ignored their own rules and policies to give anti-Semitic vandalism and harassment a free pass, and often did so due to intervention by faculty to preclude meaningful discipline.