Community Corner

Met Council, America’s largest Jewish tzedakah dedicated to fighting poverty, distributed a record 2,016,982 pounds of kosher food to struggling mishpachos ahead of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkos this year, the largest Rosh HaShanah food distribution ever in America.

As we approach Rosh HaShanah, we prepare to stand before Hashem on the days when we proclaim Him as King and turn to Him in tefillah for the coming year.

As Rosh HaShanah approaches, the team at Emet Outreach reflects on a year filled with learning, relationships, leadership, community, and continued spiritual growth. “Rosh HaShanah gives us a chance to appreciate how much can happen in a year,” said Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg, Emet Co-Founder and CEO. “We’ve seen students take meaningful steps in their Jewish lives, deepen their connection to Torah, and become part of a growing community. We enter 5787 deeply grateful to our students, educators, staff, and partners, whose commitment makes it all possible.”

Rabbi Andrew Markowitz, president of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County and mara d’asra of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, swabbed to be a kidney donor through Renewal after receiving a question of one of his alumna students from Naaleh High School for Girls, who had just matched to be a kidney donor. “Am I mechuyevet (obligated) to donate my kidney?” she asked him.

The Coalition for Jewish Values, representing over 2,500 traditional Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, does not typically respond when a Hollywood figure says something hateful about Jews or Israel. In the current environment, that happens almost like clockwork. But when a group of Jewish individuals, equipped with little knowledge of Jewish history or the nature of anti-Semitism, misuse their own Jewish identity to deny obvious bigotry, we feel it incumbent upon us to set the record straight.

MTA welcomed students back for the 5787 school year with a renewed sense of energy, growth, and excitement for the year ahead. The new school year brings new faces, expanded opportunities, and several new roles designed to strengthen the academic, spiritual, and student-life experience at MTA.