Community Corner

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing more than 1,500 traditional Orthodox rabbis in matters of public policy, Tuesday endorsed the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the United States Supreme Court. “Judge Coney Barrett is a distinguished law school professor and mentor, and has established a splendid record on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit,” said Rabbi Dov Fischer, Western Regional Vice President of the CJV and an adjunct professor of law at two major law schools, who previously clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. “She is an exceptionally qualified jurist with a family commitment, lifestyle, and value system that should inspire all Americans. Barrett is quite worthy of a seat on the United States Supreme Court.”

Please recite Psalms 20, 30, 88, 121, and 130.

Yosef ben Esther Gittel

Chaim Avraham ben Shifrah Zisel

 You can build it very small,

You can build it very tall,

You can build it very large,

You can build it on a barge.

What do Houston, Miami, Brooklyn, The Five Towns and Lakewood all have in common? All of them were cities that participated in Dirshu’s momentous Yom Limud U’Tefillah to commemorate the yartzeit of the Chofetz Chaim and all that he stood for. They joined hundreds of other communities in every continent aside from Antarctica, in a massive demonstration of Jewish unity.

The mother of the Chofetz Chaim was once asked why she thought she had been zocheh to have a son such as the Chofetz Chaim. She could not think of anything she had done to warrant such a son. They pressed her and said you must have done something special. She said the only thing she could think of was before she married, her mother had told her that any free minute she had, e.g., while waiting for the soup to boil or some such opportunity, she should use to say a few p’rakim of T’hilim. This is what she did, and she felt that in the z’chus of the T’hilim she said, she was zocheh to have a son such as the Chofetz Chaim (www.aneinu.com).

The Kew Gardens Hills Shofar Blowing Initiative was the brainchild of neighborhood resident Mark Mittel, who has long blown shofar at local senior centers and a local minyan. With many homebound due to COVID-19 restrictions, Mittel felt there was an obvious solution. “Many in our area can blow shofar; we just needed to arrange a system to alert the community and find members from the neighborhood to rise to the occasion,” explained Mittel, who also stepped in for Jack Meth to lead the 72^nd Avenue shofar blowing.