Community Corner

The Masbia Soup Kitchen Network serves kosher food to the needy, free of charge, throughout the year, with dignity and respect. Every year, during the Passover season, Masbia experiences an increase in demand; this year, with the cost of food still at a historic high, the challenge is even greater.

Right after the first day of Pesach, we enter a seven-week cycle known as S’firas HaOmer (the Counting of the Omer). The 49 days from Pesach to Shavuos really represent a journey of 49 steps to spiritual growth and emotional refinement that help us renew our acceptance of the Torah on an individual level.

Powerful “Hate Ends Now” Exhibit Provides Learning Experience To High School Students And People Of All Ages

Commemorating Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Orthodox Union’s Southern NCSY youth movement has brought its Hate Ends Now Cattle Car: Stepping in and Out of Darkness exhibit to Times Square.

The Chazaq Shaping Lives program held some very successful programming preparing children for the upcoming Passover holiday across their 15 locations. 

We are currently commemorating a period of mourning for the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who perished during this time. The Talmud tells us that this tragic incident occurred because Rabbi Akiva’s students didn’t  accord each other appropriate honor. In turn, it has become the custom for us to try to utilize this time period between Pesach through Lag B’omer to focus on growing in all of our relationships.

Rabbi Mayer Waxman, a 26-year Queens resident serving in his second year as Executive Director of the Queens Jewish Community Council, has been appointed to serve on the Borough President’s General Assembly.