New York

For more than a decade the semi-underground haven known as Chulent has served as the second home for young dropouts from New York’s fervently Orthodox communities.

Now, ironically, Chulent itself is homeless.

The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it will dole out more than $6 million in New York State to improve security at potential civilian terrorist targets, an increase of 40 percent over last year.

About 94 percent of the money will go to Jewish institutions here, around the same percentage of the national total of $19 million, said David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, who helped local Jewish agencies submit the grant applications.

There's a first for everything, and every first deserves something - but what?

Most New York Jews probably don't remember their first visit to South Florida, aka the "sixth borough". However, no matter how many times my family heads to South Florida to visit my parents, my twins Jacob and Sophie find some new "first" to delight in.

As an incoming sophomore at Brandeis University, an editor for a campus newspaper, a prospective business, psychology, undecided major and an active Jewish student on campus, my professional, extracurricular and Jewish worlds rarely overlap. But this summer, as one of 41 Jewish college students in the Collegiate Leadership Internship Program (CLIP), I am challenging myself to ask, “Why not?”

 Note: In the third installment of “Aliyah Journal,” we report on three New Yorkers — one married couple and one single woman — who are leaving successful careers to start over in Israel.

 She worked in Mayor Bloomberg’s office. He was a New York City cop.

Their lives couldn’t be more “New York” — until the Serkins decided to fulfill their dream of making aliyah.

Search for “beef” and you’ll find listings for two restaurants and four butchers. Search for “bacon” and you’ll get no results.
Doesn’t sound like Google? It’s not.

Torah scrolls from the New York area are writing new chapters in the lives of Israeli soldiers and of a struggling Ethiopian congregation in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh.
From the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), which has donated dozens of Torah scrolls over the years, to the East Midwood Jewish Center, which made its maiden Torah run two weeks ago, this is the summer of the celebratory dance with Torah held high, a trans-Atlantic act of kindness, many times over.

He was a distant cousin — literally; he 6,000 miles away in Israel, she on the Upper East Side.
But Katy Mayerson, 13, had grown close to Noam Mayerson over her many trips to Israel to see family.
“I really, really liked him and everybody liked him,” Katy said of her cousin. “I don’t know one person who didn’t — he was really smart and nice and loving, and there wasn’t really any bad aspect about him.”