Queens Jewish Link
Connecting the Queens Jewish Community 
Rabbi Shay Schachter will be joining Yeshiva University as a full-time Torah Studies faculty member on YU’s Beren campus, beginning in this role at the end of August 2022 with the start of the Fall semester.
Rav Noach Isaac Oelbaum, mara d’asra of Khal Nachlas Yitzchok in Kew Gardens Hills, related that there is no real way to choose which area to focus on to be maspid Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l, as he was all encompassing. A resident of Los Angeles who learned with Rav Chaim over 60 years ago in the Lomza yeshivah in Petach Tikvah brought a remez from a pasuk on why Rav Chaim was niftar at Parshas Tzav. “Chok olam l’dorosam”: Chok refers to Rav Chaim, whose Torah will live on forever.
“Ashreichem!”
That was the enthusiastic way HaGaon HaRav Yisrael Neuman, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva, Beth Medrash Govoha of Lakewood, began his brief address to a massive crowd of some one thousand talmidei chachomim at Dirshu’s testing site in Lakewood last week.
“I am very excited about this program because it combines both yedias haTorah with learning b’iyun in a way that will tremendously enrich any participant.” Those were the words of HaGaon HaRav Dovid Cohen, shlita, Rosh Yeshivas Chevron about the new Dirshu Chaburas HaShas program, said at a pivotal meeting attended by HaGaon HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva of the Slabodka Yeshiva, and Rav Dovid Hofstedter, shlita, Nasi Dirshu together with senior members of hanhalas Dirshu.
In a world where beauty is often misunderstood, it’s important to understand the deep spiritual nature and purpose of this powerful and fundamental concept. To do so, let us trace the spiritual concept of beauty back to the creation of man, before Adam HaRishon’s sin.
There was a man who visited his friend in a far-off town once a year. When he arrived one year, he was shocked to find a towering tree in his friend’s backyard, standing well over 60 feet tall. Most puzzling, though, was the fact that just last year there had been no trace of such a tree, not as much as a small sapling. Perplexed, he asked his friend, “I was here just a year ago, and this tree wasn’t here. What happened?
