Alexandra Casser began putting on t’fillin daily as a sophomore in Rutgers.

“T’fillin make davening Shacharis [morning service] more immediately relevant, since you are able to see that your actions respond to an explicit command in the text,” says the Demarest native. “There’s great satisfaction in being able to see that you are fulfilling a mitzvah described in the central text of Judaism.”

Now, Casser wants to make it easier for other women who want to try observing the mitzvah of t’fillin.

Englewood resident Dr. David Arbit has spent much of his adult life hearing about the Shoah.

“My father-in-law is a survivor,” says the physician, who practices in Fair Lawn. “At every bar- or bat mitzvah, he would get up and speak about his experiences.”

Now, however, Arbit can add many more firsthand accounts to those he already knows. As the physician designated by the March of the Living program to accompany this year’s honorees — some 16 former U.S. servicemen who were among the first to arrive at Europe’s many concentration camps during World War II — the doctor says he now has both new information and detailed verification of his father-in-law’s stories.

Last Sunday morning, 500 people came to the Jewish Center of Teaneck (JCT) to celebrate the life of Arthur Joseph.

Joseph, who moved to Teaneck in the 1950s and became a bedrock first of the town’s nascent Jewish community and then the Bergen Jewish community that followed, died in January at the age of 85. He was buried in Maryland. Sunday’s event — a presentation and brunch — provided an opportunity for area residents who could not attend his funeral to honor his memory.

Joseph made his fortune as a broker of apples and other fruits. When he retired, he decided he had to go back to work so that he could continue to fund myriad commitments to his community.

“What bear in children’s literature is commonly depicted wearing a brown raincoat and a yellow hat? How many layers is the earth’s atmosphere? What would the volume of a cylinder be if it had a height of 10 and a radius of 6 pi?”

That is just a random sampling of the questions Team TABC faced on the most recent segment of the MSG Varsity’s The Challenge Quiz Show, a network on Cablevision. TABC — Torah Academy of Bergen County — is located in Teaneck.

The TABC team has advanced farther in this year’s competition than ever before, said team coach Manny Landau. Since participants are sworn to secrecy until the show is aired, he cannot divulge the final outcome, he said.

A musical pacifier, mittens and gloves with tissue pockets, a cleat guard — all these nifty novelties and more were displayed by their fourth-grade inventors at The Moriah School of Englewood’s Invention Convention on April 24.

Starting just after the January break, teachers guided the 45 pupils, working in pairs or threes, in deciding on their inventions. They brainstormed a need collaboratively, thought of possible solutions, designed the solutions on paper, and then built prototypes, said Robin Wexler, associate principal for general studies in the Lower School.

“Throughout our exciting Invention Unit, we hope to have stimulated the imagination of our children, and provided a channel in which to unleash their creative juices,” Wexler said. “It is our role as educators to show students the importance of integrating reading, writing, math, art, science and technology skills, as well as to emphasize the significance of becoming creative, divergent, and independent thinkers.”

A Jewish educator elementary school teacher in the New York area has been arrested on charges of possessing child. pornography.

Evan Zauder, a sixth grade teacher at the Modern Orthodox school Yeshivat Noam in Paramus, N.J., was arrested after the FBI reportedly raided his Manhattan department and discovered on his computer hundreds of images and videos of boys engaged in sex acts. His bail hearing is set for Friday. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a maximum fine of $250,000.

If leadership means to see a problem where no one else does, and then take the initiative to solve it, Ben Sagerman is definitely a leader.

The 17-year-old high school junior loved the experience of outdoor prayer he experienced at the Union for Reform Judaism’s Camp Eisner — and wanted to make that experience possible for his fellow congregants at Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge.

So he built an outdoor sanctuary, a small ampitheater, in an empty space on Avodat Shalom’s property.

A grassroots petition urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for a minute of silence at this year’s London games in memory of the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics in 1972 already has attracted more than 20,000 signatures. The response so far has surprised even those most passionate about it.

“This is on a big scale and a different way than we could pull it off,” said Ankie Spitzer, widow of Andrei Spitzer, the fencing coach who was held hostage and murdered on Sept. 5, 1972, along with 10 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation to the Munich games.

“It’s heartwarming. I just read the petition [the online comments], and it’s marvelous,” Spitzer said in a telephone interview from Israel, where she lives. “I usually have words, but in this case, it’s very special.”