New York News

The Lubavitcher rebbe is alive. And while some panic at anyone talking like that, the fact is that since the rebbe’s 1994 death, more than 400 Lubavitcher couples have gone out into the world as his emissaries, establishing 370 centers on every continent, in every time zone.Including emissaries — shluchim, as they’re called — who had gone out before his death, the rebbe lives on in 3,500 of his best and his brightest. They operate with an international budget of $400 million.

In the lobby of Rubin Hall, the Yeshiva University dormitory through which Joshua Bender surely exited on his final journey, alongside a photocopy of his student card duplicated in poster-size is a printed Torah lesson.
“The Talmud states that Rabbi Akiba’s students did not show honor to one another,” it says. “The Talmud [doesn’t say] they did not act honorably, implying that they were disrespectful. But they did not show honor, meaning they did not exert themselves in order to show honor.”

Elie Wiesel, who until now has scrupulously stayed out of politics, endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday at a press conference here in which the two criticized the Palestinian Authority for continuing to publish anti-Semitic school textbooks that promote the hatred of Jews.

In a move to address its graying population, the city has for the first time teamed up with a non-profit agency to develop housing for middle-income seniors. The Jewish community's major anti-poverty group won the contract to build a 515-unit apartment building on Staten Island that includes an assisted-living component.
"I predict the demand will be enormous,"said William Rapfogel, executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. "We have many people who have expressed interest: in the city, Westchester and Long Island."

It was after 5 p.m. and almost all of the television cameras, newspaper reporters and photographers had left the waterfront Bellport, L.I., home of Regina Seltzer last Wednesday when Rep. Carolyn McCarthy called from Washington to extend congratulations after Seltzer's apparent upset primary victory over Rep. Michael Forbes.
"How's it going?" asked fellow Democrat McCarthy.
"I think you know how it's going because you went through this once too,"Seltzer said, referring to McCarthyís own 1996 upset victory over Republican incumbent Dan Frisa.

Even as the some of the major donors of community-based Jewish day schools gathered for the first time this week to discuss ways to increase funding, several admitted in interviews that the amounts they could raise would be a pittance compared to what school vouchers could provide.
"Vouchers can make a bigger difference than if UJA-Federation doubled its allocation" to day schools, said Alec Ellison of Rye, a supporter of the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester.

Two Jewish incumbents survived challenges in Tuesday's Democratic congressional primaries, while in a stunning upset, a Long Island representative with a strong pro-Israel record appears to have been ousted, and a Jewish Democrat has been nominated to succeed Republican Senate candidate Rick Lazio.

Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and their heirs who have unpaid Swiss bank accounts stand to get the bulk of the $1.25 billion settlement ($800 million) under a plan revealed this week.
The balance of the funds would be given to those who served as slave laborers, refugees refused entry in Switzerland, and those whose assets were looted by the Nazis: but not their heirs.

Even as American Jewish leaders were saying for the first time they would be receptive to a private meeting with visiting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to press for the release of 10 Jews convicted of spying for Israel, they organized a press conference here Monday at which the state's top political and Jewish leaders hammered home the same message.

An Israeli court has issued a temporary injunction barring the Foreign Ministry from removing its consul general in New York, Shmuel Sisso, pending a hearing. Sisso went to court after learning from his wife of the planned removal. She had heard it on Israel radio while vacationing in Israel. "I had been informed by the Foreign Ministry that I was staying," said Sisso.
"They had completed 99 percent of the paperwork, and they had already paid my children's tuition for the coming school year."