Community Corner

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.

As his country is hit with horrors unseen since World War II, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky used Holocaust terminology in his virtual speech to the Knesset last Sunday.

The student body of the Yeshiva of Central Queens extends far beyond its namesake area, with dozens commuting from eastern Queens, Great Neck, and West Hempstead, among other neighborhoods. This past Sunday, one second grader from Howard Beach had a birthday party at her local Chabad, where I learned about the story of a Conservative temple that was transformed into a kiruv center.

Last Sunday, while a group of Yeshiva University students and faculty were boarding a flight to Vienna to assist Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion, their school hosted two speakers tasked with narrating accounts of despotic regimes, so that their crimes are not repeated in our time. Too late for that, as homes, schools, and hospitals are deliberately targeted by Russia in its effort to demoralize Ukrainian resistance.

More than 200 young families reunited this past Shabbos at a hotel in Fairfield, New Jersey, to host Rabbi Moshe Fhima, the director of the Yad Yisroel yeshivah in Pinsk, Belarus. For the past 27 years, under the leadership of the Karlin-Stolin chasidic community, Jewish life was revived in Ukraine and Belarus.

Many young couples have made the move from Queens to West Hempstead seeking space and a backyard. In the coming months, Rabbi Yaakov Abramovitz, a native of Kew Gardens Hills and a regular columnist at Queens Jewish Link, will be leaving his post as an Assistant Rabbi at Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills to take up the same title at the Young Israel of West Hempstead.