Suffolk County Legislator Catherine Stark, First Legislative District of New York, has named Rabbi Gadi Capela of our shul the Jewish-American Person of Distinction for 2025. Rabbi Gadi is being cited for his leadership at Congregation Tifereth Israel and in the Greenport community, his tenure as president of the East End Jewish Community Council, and for his interfaith work on Long Island.

The event will be held on Wednesday, May 7, at the H. Lee Dennison Building, 100 Veterans Memorial Highway in Hauppauge, from 6 to 8 p.m. Members of the synagogue are invited to attend by responding to an invitation that will be forwarded to the shul and distributed to all members.

‘We Are From Here’

“We Are From Here,” the film produced by Rabbi Gadi, will be air on JLTV.

Here is a link to the film:

https://app.frame.io/reviews/7ab98fc2-93c5-44ac-bf23-206adb805e55/3f8a8bcd-aee1-4ada-8e2c-b6a1d1e1f154

Here is a link to the film commercial:

https://app.frame.io/reviews/8f700530-6d25-4da2-b6cf-882776b96cbe/c7d36856-a6ef-4447-a52e-23049bd9a20a

Shul member Roberta Garris was the subject of a half-page article in the March 27 issue of The Suffolk Times. Reporter Julie Lane wrote about Roberta’s passion for quilting, and how she has turned that pastime into statements to promote peace.

During the AIDS epidemic, she created a quilt to represent those losing their lives to the disease. More recently, she developed a theme based on the killing of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 250 Israelis by the militant group Hamas.

“Asked if her quilts are for sale, Ms. Garris said she couldn’t imagine putting a price on them, trying to figure the hours of research, fabric choices, development of designs, cutting and quilting, and the special moments and emotions she has creating them,” Julie Lane wrote.

Mike Huckabee is not Jewish, but he makes the Jews In The News column this month because of the new position he now occupies. The former Arkansas governor was confirmed recently by the U.S. Senate as the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel. The 53-46 vote installed a staunch supporter of Israel in a key Mideast post. However, Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, told lawmakers during a hearing last month that he would “carry out the president’s priorities, not mine,” he said.

President Donald Trump has nominated Yehuda Kaploun, a Miami businessman, to serve as the administration’s new special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. The announcement was celebrated by leaders of the Orthodox Union, but criticized by Jewish lawmakers, citing “inaccurate and disqualifying” remarks by Kaploun in connection with the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, having accused Democrats of refusing to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Kaploun holds a rabbinical degree and is part of Chabad, the Hasidic Orthodox movement also known as Lubavitch.

When Alan Garber, the Jewish physician and economist who now leads Harvard, wrote a letter to the community about why the country’s oldest university would not agree to the Trump administration’s demands, he spoke not just about academic freedom, but also about moral boundaries and identity.

“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard,” he wrote. The Trump administration antisemitism task force immediately announced it would freeze $2.6 billion in funding to Harvard over its refusal to adopt the sweeping set of federal requirements.

Garber’s stance aligns him with other Jewish university presidents now navigating a volatile political landscape. Christopher Eisgruber of Princeton recently pushed back on the administration’s efforts to monitor campus discourse. MIT’s Sally Kornbluth and Wesleyan’s Michael Roth also have issued statements warning that free expression and academic independence are at risk.

Just hours after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family began Passover with a Seder in his official residence, an arsonist torched the room where they had celebrated. Arrested was 38-year-old Cody Balmer, who allegedly scaled a security fence and set fire to the Harrisburg, PA. home, where Shapiro, his wife and four children had celebrated the holiday earlier that night.

At a news conference, the Jewish governor said that the attacker would not deter him from practicing his faith. “If he was trying to terrorize our family, our friends, the Jewish community who joined us for a Passover Seder in that room last night, hear me on this: We celebrated our faith last night proudly… No one will deter me or my family or any Pennsylvanian from celebrating their faith openly and proudly.”

Jared Isaacman is Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of NASA. Isaacman, 44, is the billionaire CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company he started at age 16 in his parents’ basement in New Jersey. He is also a pilot and a commercial astronaut with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In 2021, Isaacman self-funded a three-day SpaceX mission to space called Inspiration4, marking the first space flight manned by civilians rather than government astronauts, and the first private astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. A confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled.