Local

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.

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.

Is West Hempstead Next?

The name of a civic leader was removed from a street last week in Malverne, after a report by school students revealed that Paul Lindner was a Klan leader whose local chapter twice burned an African American orphanage and kidnapped a Jewish business owner in the 1920s.

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.

How do you explain the world’s oldest form of hatred to today’s young audiences? With an author who knows how to combine a narrative with memorable visuals and short visuals. The task was handled ably by Israel B. Bitton, a marketing and advocacy professional who devoted two years to produce A Brief and Visual History of Anti-Semitism, published by Gefen.