Good morning, New York. It’s 2/2/22, which sounds like something our bubbe would say right after “Kinehora!“
Caught: The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force has arrested the person accused of punching a Hasidic man in the nose early on Saturday, Jan. 22 in Crown Heights. Babyson Dumervil, a 24-year-old from Brooklyn, has been charged with assault.
Building abundance: The Shefa School — a Jewish day school serving students with language-based learning disabilities — is living up to its moniker, which means “abundance.” On Tuesday morning, the school community celebrated the beginning of construction for a new campus at 17 West 60th Street (see photo, above). The new building will increase its capacity to 350 students. Get the details here.
They’re history: Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, North America’s first Jewish congregation, controls Rhode Island’s Touro Synagogue, America’s oldest synagogue. In a simmering landlord-tenant dispute, the Manhattan synagogue wants to replace the board of the congregation that meets at the national historic landmark in Newport. Andrew Silow-Carroll reports for The Jewish Week.
Meeting the mayor: Mayor Adams told New York Jewish leaders that he wants to hit “reset” with the NYPD, and build back public support for the city’s police. The mayor gave a briefing Tuesday to the annual Assembly of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, pledging, “We are going to make sure every [hate] crime is investigated and as fast as possible, [and] make an apprehension.”
- Read how Adams’ plan to address gun violence in the city is running into pushback from progressives and police reformers.
Left, out: New York Jewish Agenda, the progressive group, condemned Amnesty International’s report accusing Israel of practicing apartheid against Palestinians. NYJA rejects the report’s “blustery and accusatory language” and “its selective recitation of the history that led to Israel’s creation.”
Sammy’s Law: The state Senate Transportation Committee passed a traffic safety law named after Samuel Cohen Eckstein, a 12-year-old Jewish boy killed in 2013 by a driver on Prospect Park West. “Sammy’s Law,” introduced by Manhattan’s State Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, would allow New York City to lower speed limits to 20 mph citywide and as low as 5 mph on streets with traffic calming measures. (PoliticsNY)
PEOPLE & PLACES
Bennett Golub, the founder of the BlackRock, Inc. financial management firm, was named the next president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. On July 1 he will succeed Cheryl Fishbein.
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Hear the story of Izmir, a long-overlooked Ottoman Jewish community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dina Danon is associate professor of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University and author of “The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History (Stanford University Press, 2020). Sign up here for this American Sephardi Federation event. Noon.
Study the conflict between the Hasidim and Mitnagdim with Dr. David Fishman, professor of Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Register here. 8:00 p.m.
