The Shofar is proud to report that two shul members, Veronica Kaliski and Cookie Slade, have joined with two other women, Helen Finnigan and Ann Sande, to lead a course designed to help those immigrating to our country study for the Citizenship Test. They’ll review the 100 civics questions and practice reading, writing and speaking English, all of which are included on the test. The eight-session program will meet weekly for 90 minutes at the [...]

George Santos, the 34-year-old New York Republican who has confessed to lying about part of his background, was sworn into the House of Representatives on Jan. 7 amid several investigations into his campaign and calls for him to resign. Santos was elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District covering a part of Queens and Long Island’s North Shore. Santos has faced intense scrutiny after The New York Times published a report indicating [...]

President Biden is expected to name Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as the next White House chief of staff, replacing Ron Klain, who has run Mr. Biden’s White House since the president took office two years ago. Klain has announced that he will step down sometime after the State of the Union address on Feb. 7. An entrepreneur and management consultant, who organized the largest vaccination campaign in American history, Mr. Zients [...]

Award-winning broadcaster Chris Berman, an anchor for ESPN’s “SportsCenter” since 1979 and the face of the network’s football coverage, is a member of the 2023 class inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Other inductees are: Rudi Ball, ice hockey: Represented Germany in the 1936 Winter Olympics. During his career, he won eight German championships and a bronze medal in the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. David Blatt, basketball: Career included playing [...]

Jewish boxer Dmitry Salita will be inducted into the New York Boxing Hall of Fame. He fought professionally from 2001 to 2013 with a record of 35-2-1 and 18 knockouts. An Orthodox Jew, he said that refusing to fight on Shabbos helped give him balance. In 2010, he became a boxing promoter, and in September was named Promoter of the Year.

Steven Spielberg won his third Golden Globe at the ceremony held Tuesday, Jan.10, this time for directing The Fabelmans, a semiautobiographical film about his own upbringing. The Fabelmans also won for best drama, Spielberg’s fourth in that category.

Composer Justin Hurwitz won his fourth Golden Globe, this time for the score of Babylon, about the final days of the silent era of film. In his acceptance speech at the Jan. 10 ceremony, he thanks his parents, Gail Halabe Hurwitz and Ken Hurwitz, and the public schools he attended for offering music classes.

When Josh Shapiro was sworn in as Pennsylvania’s governor on Jan. 17, he took the oath of office on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles, including one that was on the bimah at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue during the 2018 mass shooting that killed 11 worshippers. “The Bible survived without damage, and Tree of Life is honored by its presence at the inauguration,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, spiritual leader of the synagogue. Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s [...]