News

Three weeks after the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing City University faculty, passed an anti-Israel resolution that urged the nation’s largest urban public university to boycott Israel, an anonymous letter authored by NYC Educators for Palestine, seeks to do the same for the city’s public schools.

For three days last week, the West Hempstead community celebrated the new building of Bais Torah U’Tefilah (BTU) at 401 Hempstead Avenue. It began on Thursday evening with the first Minchah minyan that was followed by Rabbi Eytan Feiner as the guest speaker. “Hashem trusts us even when we don’t necessarily trust ourselves. He trusts us to turn this mikdash m’at into a place of k’dushah,” said Rabbi Uri Lesser, mara d’asra of BTU. “There are too many nissim that happened over the past year that show HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted this.”

If last week’s in-person Primary Election Day results provided a hazy depiction of the next City Council members to represent Queens, last Friday’s release of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) results by the New York City Board of Elections secured the tallies of the frontrunners.

With the ranked choice vote being used for the first time in citywide races, it is too early to declare a winner in the races for mayor, comptroller, and public advocate. Across the five boroughs, there are 5,901 voting precincts where Tuesday’s ballots are counted, along with absentee and early votes submitted ahead of time. Also in play are the second and third choices of voters that could determine the outcome if there is no candidate with the majority of the votes. We may have to wait until the middle of July to know the next mayor of New York.

Among the alphabet soup of organizations representing the Jewish population of New York, there are a few that originated in a time when consensus existed despite the religious and political divides. Rabbi Michael Miller of the Jewish Community Council of New York (JCRC-NY) is respected across the Jewish spectrum for his pro-Israel advocacy, outreach to elected officials, and combating anti-Semitism.

Cultural institutions are reopening as pandemic restrictions have eased, and there is a sense of novelty to walk their halls after more than a year of virtual exhibitions and online lectures. On a recent drive through Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I was curious to see whether the Eldridge Street Synagogue had reopened to the public. Along with the Jewish Museum, the Center for Jewish History, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, this building is one of the leading landmarks of Jewish culture in New York.