Local

The media was abuzz this week with the arrest of Jordan Burnette and the 42 charges he was hit with for vandalizing synagogues throughout the Riverdale section of the Bronx. But much of the coverage missed the fact that New York’s bail reform laws sent the suspect right back onto our very streets, leaving New York essentially out of control.

In a letter sent last week, Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) denounced J Street for employing “an anti-Semitic double standard.” It rejected as slanderous charges made by the long-controversial organization against Morton Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and accused J Street, rather than Klein, of demonstrating ugly bias.

On Sunday, June 6, at 1:00 p.m. (New York time) – 8:00 p.m. Israel time – the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills will hold a virtual Memorial Tribute to its founding rabbi, Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld zt”l, who passed away in December 2020. Rabbi Schonfeld, an erudite man, who was at home in many worlds and known around the world, built the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills from a minyan in the basement of the Saperstein home into a bustling shul with multiple minyanim. He built Kew Gardens Hills into a center of Orthodox Jewish life and ensured the viability of Jewish life in Queens by founding the Vaad Harabonim of Queens. Despite his involvement in local, national, and world affairs, he had a close relationship with each of his congregants. Many people, now parents and grandparents, remember the post cards he sent them at camp or the calls he made to them while they were learning in Israel. He never failed to visit his congregants in the hospital, and awed the patients sharing their rooms when he went over to their beds to speak with them about their illnesses and problems.

Around 1 a.m. on Tuesday, April 27, NYPD Highway Patrol 3 Officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43, was killed when he was violently struck and thrown over 100 feet by a passing vehicle as he was diverting traffic from a previous fatal collision on the Long Island Expressway in Fresh Meadows, in a portion of the 107^th police precinct. Tsakos’ death marks the first line-of-duty death for the NYPD this year. He was a 14-year veteran of the NYPD and leaves behind his wife Irene, a six-year-old daughter, and a three-year-old son. “They will never see their father again because somebody did the wrong thing, and we have to understand, every day our officers go out looking to do the right thing. But here’s a good man who won’t be home. Just so much pain,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In sefer T’hilim (35:1-3), David HaMelech cries out: “Hashem, strive with those who strive against me, battle my foes. Grasp a shield and encircling armor, and rise to my assistance. And arm Yourself with a spear and bar the way before my pursuers; say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”

On Tuesday, the leadership of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU), the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization, issued the following statement in the wake of five violent attacks on synagogues in the Bronx in the past few days, including a new attack on the Riverdale Jewish Center on Monday: