WASHINGTON – As the health-care reform debate heats up, Jewish organizations are siding with the Obama administration on several key points, including the creation of a government-run public insurance option and pushing for measures that would help the rapidly aging Jewish community.

Obama says he backs a public option as vital to expanding access to health care and controlling costs. Many Republicans vehemently oppose the idea, saying it would distort the private marketplace and potentially put insurance companies out of business.

Several major Jewish organizations — including the United Jewish Communities, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and B’nai B’rith International — favor the public option and have embraced the White House’s general focus on adopting a comprehensive plan that provides affordable and accessible coverage for all Americans, especially those with low incomes.

CHERRY HILL, N.J. – Sharla Feldscher couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing last weekend on TV.

“I actually stood there and blinked!” recalls Feldscher.

The Voorhees, N.J., woman was not alone in being startled by the news that a painful part of her South Jersey community’s past was being unearthed. The trigger: the sudden revelation that Len Jenoff had recanted his damaging testimony as a key witness in the trial of Fred Neulander, the Cherry Hill rabbi who was charged and ultimately convicted of arranging for his wife’s murder by Jenoff and an accomplice.

NEW YORK – For Belle Faber, Monday’s sentencing of Bernard Madoff felt surreal.

TV coverage of the event was being projected on a screen in the conference room of the American Jewish Congress, one of the Jewish nonprofits hit hardest by Madoff’s thievery. Faber, development director at the AJCongress for the better part of 25 years, had retreated into her office to watch CNN by herself.

The Madoff flickering across the screen was the same person who had sat across from Faber numerous times in her offices, where Madoff was a one-time board member. Faber even knew Madoff’s wife, Ruth. Recently, Faber came across an old note she wrote to Bernie and Ruth, wishing them a good trip to Florida.

Who could have known then what Madoff was doing?

Burt Ross, the former mayor of Fort Lee, read this statement at Bernard Madoff’s sentencing hearing on Monday.

Your Honor,

My name is Burt Ross and my wife Joan and I lost $5 million because of the criminal acts of Bernard Madoff. Not only have I lost the inheritance of my father, who worked his entire life so that his children and his children’s children could lead a better life, I have lost our retirement accounts and funds in trust for our children. The fact is, though, we are among the fortunate ones because we still have a roof over our heads and food on our table, unlike so many others who have been forced to sell their homes and to pick up the pieces of their lives.

In 2005, Massachusetts philanthropist Harold Grinspoon realized that he could combine two very good ideas.

Grinspoon had already adopted country singer Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library project, distributing books to inner-city children in western Massachusetts.

“Then it occurred to me, this is the ideal project to adapt to the Jewish community,” said Grinspoon, whose project, the PJ Library, is described on the group’s Website (www.pjlibrary.org).

According to Marcie Greenfield Simons, national director of the library project, Grinspoon “thought of the power of parents reading to children and saw that model through a Jewish lens. He transformed it into a program built around instilling Jewish identity and providing parents with books to build the foundation of a Jewish journey for life.”

A British parliamentarian last week concluded a tour of the United States, which included a stopover in northern New Jersey, to raise money for what he called a humanitarian mission to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

The Anti-Defamation League had written to the U.S. Department of Justice in May to urge an investigation into George Galloway’s efforts to raise money here for his Viva Palestina campaign to bring aid to Gaza.

Galloway’s speaking tour brought him to Garfield on June 21, drawing ire from local ADL officials. He continued with a handful of engagements in New York last week, culminating with a large event in Chicago Saturday night.

p>New Brunswick – The Jewish Standard cleaned up at the 2008 Excellence in Journalism Awards ceremony, winning eight awards in six categories. The awards, sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, were handed out at a luncheon at Rutgers University on Sunday, June 28.

Said Standard Editor Rebecca Boroson, “I’m very proud of all the winners — and proud of everyone else on this consistently wonderful staff.”

Two Standard staffers won two awards each: Josh Lipowsky, assistant editor, won a first prize in deadline reporting for “Community musters a minyan so survivor can have Jewish funeral,” about efforts by Chabad of Teaneck to hold a Jewish funeral for a Holocaust survivor who had only one living Jewish relative. Lipowsky won a third in the same category for “Families of terror victims welcome new law,” about a law permitting American families of terror victims to sue foreign sponsors of terrorism.