The minaret and the satellite dish offer a sharp contrast between centuries of tradition and belief, and the promise and perils that lie ahead in the Middle East.

Building on that image, Avi Melamed — Jerusalem native, former Israeli intelligence officer, scholar of Middle Eastern studies, and teacher — spoke Tuesday night about the ferment in the region.

In a presentation sponsored by UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey at its offices in Paramus, Melamed spoke of a deep identity crisis in the Arab Muslim world, citing increasing political unrest, the influence of radical Islam, and the tension between Sunnis and Shiites as major factors.

The 40-year-old Glen Rock finalist in Redbook Magazine’s national “Hottest Husband” contest is also one of the only Jews among the 22 lucky guys. A Jewish hottie? Well, his wife certainly thinks so; she’s the one who nominated him.

“I’d like to go on the record that this is extremely embarrassing for me,” Bryan Kule told The Jewish Standard. Nevertheless, he added, “I’m flattered that my wife thought enough of me to put me in there.”

Kule said she told him about the nomination after she was informed that he made the finals.

From the outside, Space Odyssey is a plain building in an out-of-the-way corner of Englewood south of Route 4 reminiscent of its origins as a warehouse.

Open the door and you enter a stellar fantasy world of high-tech playthings, where youngsters can safely romp in a controlled environment while their parents wait for them in a comfortable lounge setting.

“Sometimes dreams do come true,” said Elvira Grau of Cresskill, who took a vision, added a lot of hard work and turned that unused building into a cosmic-themed family entertainment venue, and by the way, a multi-million dollar business. As she did so, the Jewish immigrant from Ukraine became a poster person for American-style success.

What’s in a name? A lot, say the leaders of Teaneck’s Holy Name Hospital, which this week announced a change in title.

On Tuesday, hospital administrators said the facility will henceforth be known as Holy Name Medical Center — a change that will better promote its purpose to the community, according to medical center leaders.

“Holy Name has evolved in so many ways that the term ‘hospital’ is no longer applicable to who we are and what we do,” said Michael Maron, Holy Name’s president and CEO, at a ceremony marking the rebranding. “It’s more than a hospital. The people inside the walls are much greater than the bricks and mortar.”

Pundits and politicians have taken recently to comparing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion.

No less a figure than President Shimon Peres, one of Ben-Gurion’s foremost disciples, is the latest Israeli leader to offer the accolade.

The reason is simple: Like Ben-Gurion, Fayyad is building institutions of statehood.

In the 1920s, the Jews of Palestine under the single-minded Ben-Gurion established institutions for what they called the state-in-the-making: the Haganah, with the idea of a single armed force; the Histadrut Trade Union, with a department for workers’ rights, a sick fund, a bank, and the Solel Boneh construction company; and the Jewish Agency, dealing with immigration, schools, and hospitals.

Alan Gross has been about communications all his life: The call-mom-everyday son, the family newsbreaker, the message guy for Jewish groups, the get-out-the-vote enthusiast for candidate Barack Obama, the technology contractor who helped the U.S. government bring the world’s remotest populations into the 21st century.

Now, however, Gross, 60, of Potomac, Md., has been languishing for three months in a Cuban high-security prison and his rare conversations are monitored by Cuban officials.

“He spoke with my sister-in-law on a few occasions with someone standing by him,” Bonnie Rubinstein, his sister, told JTA in an interview Monday. “He was guarded, he tried to impart that he was OK.”

I start Passover food shopping by buying six dozen eggs, but it’s never enough. Inevitably I return to the store at least twice, buying two or three more cartons of eggs each time. Matzoh garners most of the attention in Passover fare because of the unleavened bread’s prominent role in the Exodus story. Eggs, however, are the unsung heroes, working behind the scenes, enhancing nearly every recipe consumed during the holiday’s eight days.

Without fanfare, eggs perform the binding and heavy lifting usually accomplished by flour, the silky powder ground from cereal grains that are forbidden during Passover. With great prowess, eggs hold together the ingredients that go into Passover kugels, matzoh brie, and matzoh farfel casseroles. When egg whites are whipped to a frenzy with electric beaters, they increase in volume six to eight times, lending structure and leavening to many baked goods.