Sergey Kadinsky

There are 49 days of counting between Pesach and Shavuos, the period known as S’firas HaOmer. There are 50 states in the union. Following up on the popularity of our Chol HaMoed travel guide and my other job teaching American history at Touro College, I am sharing this guide, which combines Jewish observance with Americana.

When Ayelet Mottahedeh’s oldest daughter was transferred out of the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County to a school that had the resources to fit her educational needs, she told her mother how much she missed the yeshiva experience. “She wanted to be back at HANC,” the West Hempstead mother said.

When my family immigrated to New York, we experienced elements of Jewish American culture that were fading from the scene. We vacationed at The Pines Resort in the Catskills shortly before its closing, and having spent many of my after-school hours at the public library, I fell in love with the quick one-liners of the comedians who performed at The Pines in its heyday.

Having become unfortunately accustomed to the majority of non-Orthodox Jews neglecting their heritage, the trailer to the Netflix film You People, directed by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and co-written by Barris and Jonah Hill, seemed promising as a romantic comedy between a Jewish man and his Black girlfriend, with hip-hop music playing in the background.

I’ve never taken the groundhog’s shadow seriously, especially when late March gave us cold rain and wind with temperatures that were hovering close to the freezing mark. At the same time, there are signs of optimism in the cherry blossoms blooming next to the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows, a long-neglected World’s Fair structure that is undergoing a restoration: better weather, reopened museums, and restored landmarks. If you’re home for Pesach or visiting family members in the suburbs, there’s plenty to see around the city and its vicinity.

There are more than a thousand Jewish families in West Hempstead, and among those known in all its shuls are Ann & Mark Koffsky and their three children. This past week, they offered comfort and mourned together with them following the tragic death of their daughter Adira, 18, in Jerusalem last Wednesday. She was killed when a 76-year-old driver lost control of her car, which then rolled towards Koffsky, killing her, a passenger in the car, and injuring the driver.