New York News

Ed Koch Dies At 88

02/01/2013 | Adam Dickter | Assistant Managing Editor

Edward Irving Koch, a quintessential New York Jew who was a passionate defender of Jewish causes and was the city's most famous political figure for four decades, died early Friday morning at New York-Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University. He was 88 and had been in and out of hospitals in recent weeks with respiratory and other problems. The cause of death was congestive heart failure.

What Chutzpah!

02/01/2013 | Thane Rosenbaum | Special To The Jewish Week

Many eras could reasonably compete as the defining Jewish moment of New York City: pushcarts on the Lower East Side, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the CCNY point-shaving scandal, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers’ strike, the Brill Building’s influence on the American songbook, and the garment industry’s styling of American haute couture.

Brooklyn College BDS Brouhaha

01/30/2013 | Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

Students at Brooklyn College are conducting an online petition drive to have an academic department at Brooklyn College withdraw its sponsorship of what many members of the Jewish community consider an anti-Israel forum there next week.

For Jewish Education Reform, A ‘Very Messy Period’

01/29/2013 | Julie Wiener | Associate Editor

Two decades ago, in the aftermath of the 1991 National Jewish Population Survey best known for its findings of higher-than-ever intermarriage rates, the buzzword of American Jewish organization life was “continuity.”

Open Houses Reveal Task Before Harlem Charter

01/29/2013 | Julie Wiener | Associate Editor

On a recent Thursday evening in a sparsely decorated basement meeting room in the JCC in Manhattan, nine parents assembled around a table to hear about Harlem Hebrew Academy Charter School.

South Brooklyn Still Seeking Shelter From The Storm

01/29/2013 | Steve Lipman | Staff Writer

It’s cold and dark down one flight of stairs in the largest synagogue in Seagate. Rabbi Chaim Brikman, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary who has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Kneses Israel in the Brooklyn enclave for two decades, is standing in a corner of the shul’s basement on a recent morning, in front of exposed, dust-covered brick walls and a pile of assorted refuge.