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.

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.”

Some Jewish communal officials and observers are wondering what the ramifications of the recent death of Rep. John Murtha could be for the pro-Israel community.

Murtha, a stalwart supporter of Israel who was not Jewish himself, presided over the powerful House Appropriations defense subcommittee, which oversees and allocates every federal dollar spent on America’s military preparedness, including hundreds of millions spent on joint missile defense projects with Israel.

The next subcommittee chair has yet to be announced, and publicly, Jewish insiders expressed optimism about Israel’s financial prospects in the future. Others who offered to speak on background, however, described a delicate dance with lawmakers when it comes to ensuring that joint U.S.-Israel projects are a chief priority.

When Rep. Steve Rothman met late last month with the head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, the two discussed state-of-the-art defense programs that will protect the Jewish state from regional threats while providing the United States with access to superior technology.

Rothman (D-9) sits on the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, which allocates all funding for U.S. military and joint U.S.-Israel defense projects. The Feb. 23 meeting with Arieh Herzog focused specifically on three missile defense programs: David’s Sling, a short-range ballistic missile defense system; the Aarow 2, an anti-tactical ballistic missile system; and the Arrow 3, an upper-tier system capable of stopping longer range missiles. (See With Murtha gone, what are ramifications for Israel?)

“The joint projects I discussed with director Herzog — and have discussed with the highest level of military and intelligence personnel at the highest level of the U.S. government — will not only provide Israel with superior missile defense systems but will also provide the United States with access to that technology at every stage of development for use by American forces and other American allies,” Rothman told The Jewish Standard earlier this week.

David’s Sling, which Rothman said has almost completed full testing, is designed to protect against Kassam rockets from Gaza and Katyushas from Lebanon. Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. and the American defense contractor Raytheon are jointly developing the system. The first live-fire test of the system is expected sometime this year.

Asked about Israel’s Iron Dome system, which the Jewish state developed on its own to protect against Kassam rockets, Rothman said it provides a larger defense radius than David’s Sling, but both would contribute to “Israel’s defensive umbrella.”

The Arrow 2 system is already operational. It is designed to protect against lethal short- to medium-range ballistic missiles, such as those currently located in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

The Arrow 3 system is designed to intercept a future Iranian or other long-range missile that achieves its range by leaving Earth’s atmosphere. Unlike the Arrow 2 warhead, which can explode without directly hitting its target, the Arrow 3 needs to directly strike the offensive missile. This, Rothman said, makes the Arrow 3 a less expensive system than its predecessor since it requires fewer explosives and thus has a smaller payload to carry.

“One of the benefits of the Arrow 3 is it will be cheaper to make and more can be acquired in Israel’s and America’s defensive arsenal for less money, yet [they will] get the job done,” Rothman said.

Israel and the United States have worked on the Arrow project since the late 1980s, and Israel deployed the first Arrow battery in October 2000. The system is a project of Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing. Developers hope the Arrow 3 will be operational sometime between 2012 and 2014, Rothman said.

Rothman and Herzog discussed “every potential threat to Israel’s security, including the Iranian threat,” Rothman said, without going into further detail. The meeting was not a response to any specific threat, Rothman noted, but rather was part of a regular series of meetings he holds with the IMDO.

Israel advocates have criticized President Obama’s policies toward Israel, specifically regarding pressure on the Jewish state to make concessions in the Palestinian peace process. Rothman, however, said that military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries has never been higher than under Obama.

The Union for Traditional Judaism will hold its annual conference on Sunday at its Teaneck headquarters. The confab, themed “Independence Day: The Independent Minyan/Prayer Group Phenomenon,” will include a panel of speakers discussing the role of the independent minyan in the wider Jewish organization world, what the establishment can learn from them, and vice versa.

“We’re poised between what would be called the establishment of the Jewish world and what would be called the cutting edge of the Jewish world,” said Rabbi Ronald Price, UTJ’s executive vice president. “We thought this would be an appropriate topic.”