Dear Friends: On Tuesday, as you certainly know, Zohran Mamdani was elected as Mayor of New York City, with 50.4 percent of the vote. Prior to the election a lot of pressure had been placed on Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to drop out in favor of ex-governor and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo due to fears that they would split the vote and let Mamdani win with a plurality, but as it turned out he won a bare majority. I spent the first eight years of my life in New York City, my father...

: Dear Friends: In the last couple of weeks, the American Jewish community has lost two prominent leaders. They were very different from each other and yet they had at least one major thing in common. On Shemini Atzeret evening, Rabbi Moshe Hauer died suddenly at his home in Baltimore at age 60. Rabbi Hauer was the Executive Vice-President of the Orthodox Union (OU), the main umbrella organization of Modern Orthodox Judaism. He had been a pulpit rabbi in Baltimore for 26 years before taking...

Dear Friends: I have to begin my note to you this morning with some sad news. As you know, our guest High Holiday cantor from Israel, Michael Garmise, had to return home right after Rosh Hashanah because his wife Reva had taken seriously ill and was hospitalized. Sadly, she passed away on Wednesday and her funeral took place in Netanya yesterday morning. Although Mike was only with us for the two days of Rosh Hashanah, I heard from many of you how much you enjoyed meeting him and hearing him...