Adam Dickter's blog

Early in my career at The Jewish Week, I had a chance to ride with Chaim Deutsch through the streets of Flatbush in his Shomrim Patrol car as he searched for car thieves, drug dealers and other wrongdoers in the mostly tranquil, heavily Orthodox neighborhood.

It was an uneventful night, as is often the case, but the Shomrim, working closely with the police, have taken their share of miscreants off the streets.

 President Obama has taken some heat for his reshaping of NASA's goals, essentially abandoning the been-there-done-that emphasis on the moon for the more dreamy-eyed vision of a manned landing on Mars within just 15 years.

The first thing you notice in the shul at Haym Solomon Nursing Home is that the room is almost empty but for the holy ark, some bookshelves and a movable bima. 

I present below, in its entirety and without further comment, former mayor Ed Koch's latest essay on the tensions between the White House and Israel. In it, he concedes that some will call him alarmist, but finds some parallels between the administration's treatment of Israel and the Roman siege against Jews at Masada.

When I was a kid, I'd  often spend the Sunday before Passover with other yeshiva kids packing up boxes full of matzah, eggs, grape, juice, gefilte fish and other staples to help the needy observe Passover.

Voters in Brooklyn's 44th Council District will go to the polls on Tuesday to fill the vacancy that was created when SImcha Felder was named deputy comptroller under John Liu. The winner will either by David Greenfield or Joseph Lazar, and in either case would be the third consecutive Orthodox Jew to represent the district, which includes all of Borough Park and much of Flatbush, and probably has more Jews, most of them Orthodox, than many U.S. cities.

Voters in Brooklyn's 44th Council District will go to the polls on Tuesday to fill the vacancy that was created when SImcha Felder was named deputy comptroller under John Liu. The winner will either by David Greenfield or Joseph Lazar, and in either case would be the third consecutive Orthodox Jew to represent the district, which includes all of Borough Park and much of Flatbush, and probably has more Jews, most of them Orthodox, than many U.S. cities.

JTA’s Ron Kampeas has an excellent piece out today on the effect of social media on organized Jewish communal life as personified by one William Daroff, the Washington director of Jewish Federations of North America, who is the one person I know that probably pushes up against Twitter’s maximum hourly output.

Is Israel a Jewish state or the state of the Jewish people?

That’s the question that faced voting representatives at this week’s conference of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Many voted in favor of amending the language of a 2008 JCPA resolution in support of a two-state Mideast solution to remove the words Jewish state. The motion, which was not carried, was sponsored by the JCRC of St. Louis.