Community Corner

Main Street came alive with music and dancing during Chol HaMoed Sukkos, as thousands gathered near Haym Salomon Square for the Fifth Annual Queens Unity Sukkos Concert and Simchas Beis HaShoeva.

Did Jewish families really celebrate Shabbos every week? That was the question a Catholic woman from Topeka, Kansas, asked HaRav Yaakov Bender shlita during a flight home from Los Angeles. Her astonishment became one of several stories the Rosh HaYeshivah shared during the Kew Gardens Hills Rosh Chodesh Yarchei Kallah on September 17, illustrating the joy of Jewish life and the values children absorb at home.

A flyer taped to a wall at Flushing High School is among 68 antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents documented in Queens public schools by United Jewish Teachers (UJT). As this newspaper prepared to go to press, UJT President Moshe Spern shared a photograph of the flyer and spoke about the continued harassment of Jewish students and employees.

Family, friends, rabbanim, and community members packed Beth Gavriel in Forest Hills on Tuesday evening, September 15, for the official launch of Rabbi Yaniv Meirov’s new book, Ohr Chazaq on the Parsha: Powerful Torah Lessons for Life. The evening of Torah, music, dancing, and a buffet celebrated a project whose roots reach back more than 20 years, to Rabbi Meirov’s days as a teenager sharing weekly Torah thoughts with the community.

Drivers using MTA bridges and tunnels can now receive fines through a new automated work-zone speed enforcement program. Mobile cameras may photograph vehicles traveling more than 10 miles per hour above the posted limit while construction or maintenance crews are present.

This article focuses mostly on the frum Jews whose lives were lost or forever changed by September 11, but that focus is not meant to diminish the lives of the thousands of others who were killed, the responders who risked everything, or the families and communities that continue to live with the consequences. Every person lost that day had a family, a story, and a life that deserves to be remembered.