Community Corner

On Tuesday evening, March 26, the community gathered at Congregation Beit Eliyahu in Fresh Meadows to hear an uplifting shiur by Rabbi Benzion Klatzko, renowned speaker and Founder and Director of Shabbat.com. Rabbi Klatzko began by praising Chazaq for their incredible accomplishments, especially in brining Jewish children from public school to yeshivah. He mentioned the terrible numbers of Jews lost to assimilation and intermarriage, and he compared these statistics to Jews murdered during the Holocaust. He said, “Chazaq is pulling Jewish kids off the cattle cars, bringing them back to Yiddishkeit and klal Yisrael.”

With a heavy heart, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization, welcomes the return of the remains of a Brooklyn-born Israel Defense Forces soldier who has been missing since Israel’s 1982 war against terrorist-backed Syrian forces in Lebanon.

New York NCSY leadership visited MSH this week to run a pre-Pesach Yom Iyun. The day started with interesting and interactive break-out sessions with topics that included: Imagination – led by Rabbi Yossi Schwartz, Something to Say at the Seder: A tour through time and place – led by Rabbi Jacob Bernstein, The Timebreakers: running out of time – led by Rabbi Manu Hass, Free-conomics: Does it pay to be free? – led by Ziona Isaacs, and The fire you never saw, the root of redemption – led by Mrs. Leora Lesher. The students learned new insights into the chag, the Seder, and more.

This Pesach 5779, a much-anticipated book by Rabbi Ben Zion Shafier – noted author, veteran educator, and founder of The Shmuz – will line the shelves of Jewish book stores across the country.

Yeshiva Har Torah students, staff, and mothers participated in a group hair donation this past week. The donated ponytails will now be delivered to Zichron Menachem in Israel to make wigs for children with cancer. All participants were treated to haircuts donated by the DeFranco Spagnolo Salon in Great Neck and the school’s PTA, gift bags courtesy of Sarit Ebrani and Talia Levy of Manot4Chai, and flowers from Metro Florals. All told, the PTA collected about two dozen ponytails to donate.

Thursday, April 4, may have been an ordinary day for most people, but for the children at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, it was an extraordinary day. When the students of Shevach High School heard about an opportunity to run a carnival in the hospital in order to cheer up the children there, they immediately jumped at the opportunity. As with all chasadim conducted by the Shevach girls, this too promised to be greatly rewarding.