Community Corner

On Friday, the leadership of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (the Orthodox Union), the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization, expressed its horror over the brutal attack of a Chabad rabbi on a street outside of a synagogue in Boston, Massachusetts, on Thursday. The Orthodox Union condemned the attack, an apparent act of anti-Semitism, and called for greater action by elected officials and society at large to aggressively combat the ongoing and alarming rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

Residents of Kew Gardens Hills and Forest Hills have been subjected to the harassment of Alexander Anthony Soto for many months. The 50-something-year-old would regularly torment passersby as he stood at busy intersections holding high a handmade sign reading, “Jews pay police to kill children.” The signage depicted his convoluted conspiracy theory and suggested an array of proof to his assertion. Back on April 13, I personally responded on behalf of Queens Borough Safety Patrol-Shmira to the Main Street bus stop just off Jewel Avenue after a call of a disturbance was phoned in. At that time, and in the many that followed, due to the nature of freedom of speech laws, the NYPD has been unable to significantly intervene. Shmira volunteers and NYPD officers would regularly urge the man to carry on his day and eventually he would board a bus. Soto was often seen traveling via an MTA bus, affixing the sign into the window for onlookers to notice as he traveled along the predominantly Orthodox Jewish areas of Main Street towards Jewel Avenue, and Jewel Avenue towards Continental Avenue.

Rav Shimshon Pincus z”l used to teach that the biggest miracle that there is in this world is a person’s ability to change – to break his negative habits and character traits and return to Hashem and his true self. This miracle is greater than the Splitting of the Sea, greater than the manna that our forefathers ate in the desert, and greater than all the other miracles that have been and will be. The strength, determination, and clarity that a person needs to break his evil inclination has a Divine Source, as it says, “The [evil] inclination of a person gathers strength every day, and desires to kill him…and if not for the fact that G-d helps him, he would not be able to overcome it.”

Nearly seven decades after he founded the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, a decade after he retired as the synagogue’s full-time spiritual leader, and six months after he passed away, Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld zt”l was honored in a virtual tribute event this week.

AMIT is holding its annual Yom Iyun, a day of learning for women and by women on Wednesday, July 14, at 9:30 a.m.

The Gluck Beis Midrash Minyan of the Young Israel of Forest Hills conducted its annual exciting basketball tournament on Saturday night, June 19. The program, held in the Bnos Malka Academy gymnasium, attracted eager players for the three-on-three matchups. Each team competed quite hard, but alas only four were allotted playoff slots.