New York City

During an academic conference in Boston last month, Sasha Toperich, a multilingual native of Bosnia-Herzegovina, presented a speech on recent political developments in the Balkans.
That was appropriate — Toperich is a diplomat.
Toperich also gave a concert during the two-day conference.
That, too, was appropriate — he’s a concert pianist.

Entering a Borough Park public school early Tuesday, David Tilis was emphatic about his pick for president.
“I’m Jewish, so it has to be [George W.] Bush,” said Tilis, 21, a mortgage broker en route to casting his vote for the Republican incumbent. “I don’t understand how any Jew could vote for [Sen. John] Kerry. Yasir Arafat is for him.”

Alan Rubin has always worn a kipa, but he says it’s bigger these days. His wife, Debi, has always dressed modestly, but she says she dresses more modestly these days.
The couple has always found time for their five children, but they say they find more time these days.
These days are the six months since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Rubins, who live in Elizabeth, N.J., say they have been on a spiritual journey since 9-11, a path that will end this summer in Jerusalem.
The Rubins are making aliyah — because of 9-11.

For 24 hours this week, the Cambria Heights neighborhood of Queens became one of New York City’s biggest Jewish areas.Some 50,000 Jews visited the neighborhood on Tuesday.
That day — Tammuz 3 on the Hebrew calendar — was the 13th yahrtzeit of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch chasidic movement.
Buried next to Rabbi Yosef Schneersohn, his predecessor and cousin, Rabbi Schneerson is interred in a covered plot of the Old Montefiore Cemetery, the Ohel, which has become a pilgrimage site since 1994.

Liviu Librescu, a secular Jew in rural Virginia, received a hero’s welcome — and an Orthodox funeral service — in Brooklyn last week because of the kindness of strangers in Borough Park’s haredi community.

Timisoara, Romania — Among the nearly 200 Jews who attended the pair of seders in the Jewish community building here last week were members of the local community, a visiting family of Israelis and one man with New York City roots.
Rafael Schwartz lived in Brooklyn and New Jersey for nearly 20 years.

Timisoara, Romania — As a child Luciana Friedman attended the community seders here each year with her parents and grandparents.
As a young adult, she comes with her husband. And she comes as a leader of an emerging part of the city’s small Jewish community.

Chapel Hill, N.C. — With 11 minutes left in the first half of a recent University of North Carolina home basketball game against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, the giant TV screens above the Dean E. Smith Center flash the image of a graying, bespectacled septuagenarian Jew from the East Bronx.

If early voter turnout figures are any indication, thousands of Jewish voters not excited about Gov. George Pataki stayed home rather than vote for Democrat H. Carl McCall or Independence Party candidate Thomas Golisano.
Preliminary returns show a steep drop in turnout in heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York City last week, compared to the last statewide race.