New York

 Lately, when clients show up on Fridays at the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush for help with social services, they are asked to come back on Monday.

“We’re running with a skeleton crew,” said the agency’s director, Rabbi Yechezkel Pikus. “There’s no one around to help them [on those days].”

Two very different events marked the month of July for Jews in New York this summer. The first was the performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and now headed for Broadway. The second was Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in upstate Rhinebeck. I wasn’t at the second (alas!), but I did attend the first.

The Anti-Defamation League continued to weather harsh public reaction to its position against the Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the 9/11 attack this week.

CNN host and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria, citing the group's mosque position returned the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize that was bestowed on him by the ADL in 2005, along with the $10,000 prize, saying “I cannot in good conscience hold onto the award or the honorarium that came with it and am returning both.”

If you’ve had enough of kosher Chinese food or shwarma, there’s a new option for lunch: waffles. 

A new food truck, Quick Stop Kosher, is traveling around Manhattan offering kosher-certified sandwiches, omelets, sushi, blintzes and waffles. This week the truck is parked on 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue, outside the Jewish-owned B&H Photo. 

 There are plenty of Jewish neighborhoods around New York where the community tends toward a certain religious outlook, a predominant level of observance or a majority ethnic leaning.

And then there is Riverdale. Leafy and elegant, its stately Tudors and postwar high-rises perched along the banks of the Hudson, this corner of the northwest Bronx is cherished by residents for its religious and ethnic diversity — both within and outside of the Jewish community.