Longtime Jewish bakery owner found shot dead in Queens

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🚨 Longtime Jewish bakery owner found shot dead in Queens

• Albert Itzkowitz, a 75-year-old prominent member of his Jewish community in Queens, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds near Kissena Lake on Monday, Yeshiva World News reports.

• Itzkowitz was the longtime owner of the kosher G&I Bakery, a neighborhood staple before it closed down. He also volunteered with the Jewish emergency medical service Hatzalah. The NYPD is investigating his death.

✈️ Israel sending its ‘largest Knesset delegation ever’ to New York parade

• Israel is sending three ministers and 13 Knesset members to the Israel Day parade in Manhattan on May 31 amid tensions with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, reports Ynet. The staunchly pro-Palestinian mayor has repeatedly said he will not attend the parade.

• The office of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who will head the delegation, said he decided to send the Knesset’s “largest delegation ever” as a show of solidarity with Jewish New Yorkers. Ohana’s office accused Mamdani of “many extremist statements regarding the intifada and against the State of Israel” and “the appointment of people with antisemitic backgrounds.”

🗣️ Menin to fast-track new school ‘buffer zone’ bill

• New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin is expected to fast-track a new bill creating buffer zones to insulate schools from protests, the New York Post reported. Mamdani vetoed the council’s previous version of the legislation.

• The School Safe Access bill will narrow the protected zones from “educational facilities” to sites that explicitly serve students, a tweak that is expected to amass more support. Mamdani claimed that the first proposed law, which fell short of a veto-proof majority, could stifle protests at universities, museums and teaching hospitals.

• Similar legislation creating buffer zones around houses of worship passed with a veto-proof majority. The buffer zone laws came on the back of a series of pro-Palestinian protests outside synagogues holding Israel-related events in NYC.

• Meanwhile, activists who support Mamdani’s veto against school buffer zones are protesting outside City Hall today. The rally was organized by The People’s Plan, a coalition that includes the progressive group Jews For Racial & Economic Justice.

📚 Book club remembers Edda Servi Machlin

• The Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn will host a book club event discussing Leah Eskin’s novel “Like Wafers in Honey,” which was inspired by the life of Edda Servi Machlin, from 7-9 p.m. tonight. Machlin was an Italian Holocaust survivor who wrote a definitive Italian Jewish cookbook, “The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.”