Ted Comet News Today

(New York Jewish Week) — Just minutes after entering Ted Comet’s grand Upper West Side home for the first time, the tour begins: not of the large, high-ceilinged apartment filled

While the numbers of both Orthodox schools and their students have been steadily increasing, the numbers of both non-Orthodox schools and students enrolled therein have been gradually declining.

From the blog of Michael Feldstein at The Times of Israel

On Sunday, June 4, tens of thousands of people will gather along Fifth Avenue to march in solidarity with Israel, and join together at the Celebrate Israel Parade to support the Jewish state.

"I want to communicate what happened so that people will know.”

A self-professed "good Jewish boy from New Jersey," Rabbi Michael Elkohen had come a long way. In the ultra-Orthodox enclave in Jerusalem where Elkohen now lives, he was often called on to perform marriages, circumcisions and other sacred Jewish rituals. He was even hired to write Torah scrolls, handwritten copies of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, in a task typically reserved for the most devout and highly trained scribes.  But for 15 years, Elkohen was apparently living ...

Good Jewish boy or chief infiltrator? NJ man spent years as fake rabbi in Israel, groups say © Morningstar Missionaries Rabbi Michael Elkohen in an interview recorded for Morningstar Ministries. A self-professed "good Jewish boy from New Jersey," Rabbi Michael Elkohen had come a long way. In the ultra-Orthodox enclave in Jerusalem where Elkohen now lives, he was often called on to perform marriages, circumcisions and other sacred Jewish rituals. He was even hired to write Torah scroll...

A self-professed "good Jewish boy from New Jersey," Rabbi Michael Elkohen had come a long way. In the ultra-Orthodox enclave in Jerusalem where Elkohen now lives, he was often called on to perform marriages, circumcisions and other sacred Jewish rituals. He was even hired to write Torah scrolls, handwritten copies of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, in a task typically reserved for the most devout and highly trained scribes.  But for 15 years, Elkohen was apparently living ...

"Do we let the trauma master us — or do we master the trauma?" he likes to say. The most common advice is to "put the trauma behind you and move on," said Comet, a 96-year-old veteran Jewish communal professional who speaks about the Holocaust to groups around the country. But it is far better to "transmute" that trauma "into creative energy and action," he said, which is precisely what his late wife, Shoshana, did. And if Shoshana — who suffered terrifying experiences during the Holoca...