By Sergey Kadinsky

With the hot summer weather, layers of clothing are shed, and the world is reopening, as the pandemic loses its grip on society. It’s perhaps a fitting time for Netflix to release My Unorthodox Life, the latest example in a genre of books, documentaries, and now a reality show, about formerly Orthodox Jews. “It’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago I was living in an extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and then I packed up and left,” Julia Haart said. “You can say that we have a very interesting life.”

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.

The countercultural ice cream company, famous for “punny” flavor names, took a dip into Middle Eastern politics on Monday in a tweet announcing its boycott of Israel. “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We also hear and recognize the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners.”

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 a cast holding up his left arm, Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky, 41, of Boston, spoke in Hebrew at a rally against anti-Semitism on Sunday in Washington. “I was born in the Soviet Union, in the city of St. Petersburg; I remember how even as a young child I experienced terrible anti-Semitism. Never in my darkest dreams did I imagine that I would experience it here in the United States.”

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.