Community Corner

When Talia Dror was a senior at North Shore Hebrew Academy High School (NSHAHS) in 2020, the school’s website was hacked, and riddled with anti-Semitic slogans and slurs. The incident had a lasting impact on her. She wrote about the experience in her college application, stating she wanted to go into labor and employment law, “because no one should feel unsafe to be able to walk into their school or workplace because of their ethnicity or religion or sexual orientation.” That essay led to her acceptance at Cornell, where she is currently an industrial and labor relations major, now in her junior year. The incident also spurred Dror’s on-campus activism as a student leader with Cornellians for Israel.

“Who will go up to the mountain of G-d, and who will stand in His holy place?” (T’hilim 24:3)

It is time to support your Chaverim, friends, whom you can always rely upon for non-medical emergencies.

Chaverim of Queens and Great Neck members are the unsung heroes who stand on the front lines day and night serving the Queens community, without flair, and with humility and honor, going strong since 2007 with absolute dedication and devotion.

Outrage over the vile and dangerous anti-Semitic riot that occurred on Monday, November 20, at Hillcrest High School in Queens, was expressed at a hastily organized rally hosted by the Queens Jewish Alliance (QJA) at the Board of Education’s offices in Ozone Park this past Monday. While an investigation persists, four teens have been arrested so far, and student suspensions continue for those who orchestrated the student-led riot where youth stormed the hallways hunting a Jewish teacher who had attended a pro-Israel rally at the Kew Gardens Hills Public Library. As now widely reported, an estimated 400 teens at Hillcrest High School flooded corridors for two hours protesting the schoolteacher, who shared a photo of herself online at our neighborhood demonstration far from her school premises. The disturbance forced a lockdown, while the teacher was forced to barricade in an office for her safety. Just weeks prior, at the same school, school safety agents were violently attacked. Their underage attackers received a mere record notation.

Israel is facing her darkest hour in the last fifty years. But she is not facing it alone. Organizations and individuals who care about the Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East are rising up to help its people in this dire time of need. At the forefront is the Israel Heritage Foundation (IHF).

On Monday, Queens College students rallied on their quad in support of Israel. They were joined by professors and Rabbi Shlomo Brukirer of OUJLIC’s campus branch of Hillel. The pro-Israel students were confronted by a boisterous group of Muslim students, but members of the NYPD and campus security were on hand to provide protection.