Community Corner

It is just past midnight on a Tuesday in Kew Gardens Hills. The house is finally quiet, and upstairs, the children are asleep. A father sits at his kitchen table, the glow of his laptop illuminating a spreadsheet of next month’s tuition and camp payments. His phone buzzes: a Charidy link dropped into a family WhatsApp chat. Then, another buzz: a voice note forwarded through a community group from a respected rav in Eretz Yisrael. Before Shabbos, his phone will be flooded with emergency campaign statuses. After Shacharis, local businessmen will be discreetly approached.

Just days before tens of thousands would flood Fifth Avenue in a sea of blue and white, a packed social hall at the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills became the setting for a different kind of mobilization. Co-hosted by Arutz Sheva–Israel National News and Chazaq, the gathering brought together Israeli ministers and local activists to address the growing global campaign of misinformation targeting Israel and the Jewish people. Guests entering the hall were greeted by an archaeological exhibit showcasing discoveries from Judea and Samaria, reinforcing the day’s focus on the Jewish connection to the land.

Governor Kathy Hochul formally signed New York’s new Buffer Zone Bill before more than 600 elected officials, clergy members, and communal leaders gathered Sunday morning at Met Council’s Annual Legislative Breakfast at Cipriani 42^nd Street. The breakfast, held annually before the Israel Day on Fifth Parade, has become one of the premier gatherings of Jewish communal leadership and public officials in New York.

Avrumie Itzkowitz Hy”d was my personal friend – someone I was privileged to daven alongside on the Yamim Nora’im at the Agudath Israel of Kew Gardens Hills. Throughout the year, his steady place of t’filah was Rav Noach Isaac Oelbaum’s Khal Nachlas Yitzchok, where his presence was part of the daily rhythm of the k’hilah.

Just days after Bagels & Co. was vandalized during Shavuos in what police are investigating as a possible hate crime, more than 300 people gathered outside the popular Union Turnpike café to deliver a message of support, solidarity, and Jewish pride. Israeli and American flags waved proudly above the storefront as a crowd packed the sidewalk at the corner of 188th Street. The event drew community leaders, elected officials and their representatives, rabbis, activists, students, NYPD personnel, and Queens Shmira members, reflecting the broad support Bagels & Co. received from across Queens.

 Walk past 71-12 Park Avenue today, and you will see a massive development site. The Park Avenue in question is not Manhattan’s famous boulevard, but a modest Queens street tucked between Parsons Boulevard and 71^st Avenue. For years, this parcel was simply an empty lot to the families pushing strollers past it. But land in Queens has a long memory. This site, the future home of a residential project known as Utopia Living, tells a much bigger story: old wetlands, postwar housing, union electricians building their own neighborhood, Orthodox Jewish institutions taking root, and the modern pressure to find a place to live in a city where housing remains historically tight.