Local congressmen stress concern for Israel

For the last 13 years, Rabbi Ron Hoffberg has been on a journey that was meant to last a week.

“There was an emergency situation,” he said. “They needed someone in Prague in a hurry, just for a week. That week turned into a year, and that year into 13.”

Hoffberg, spiritual leader of the Masorti (Conservative) community in the Czech Republic, has found that time both exciting and challenging. He will speak about his experiences — and the area he serves — when he visits the Fair Lawn Jewish Center/Congregation B’nai Israel this weekend as scholar in residence.

The table will be smaller when the board of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey next meets.

But the hope of the architects of the plan that slimmed the federation’s governing board is that what it lacks in numbers it will more than make up for in effectiveness.

With 108 members, “our board of trustees was too large to be effective,” said David Goodman of Paramus, the federation’s outgoing president. “When you have 100 people sitting in the room, you can’t really do a lot.

“It was also too much of an administrative burden on the staff,” he added.

The Moriah School in Englewood is laying off 19 faculty and staff members as its leaders focus on “tuition sustainability and sustainable excellence” in the face of declining enrollment.

The school projects its enrollment to shrink slightly next year to 790 students from its current 804. But that is a significant fall from its peak enrollment of 1,000 back in 2000.

The decrease in enrollment comes as newer Orthodox schools, including Yeshivat Noam and Ben Porat Yosef, both in Paramus and both founded in 2001, continue to grow — those two schools have more than 1,000 students between them.

A firebomb attack on a synagogue in Rutherford is being investigated as an attempted homicide and a hate crime, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli announced on Wednesday.

“You’re looking at 40 to 50 years in prison,” said Molinelli, addressing the “person or persons who are doing this act” at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.

“Turn yourself in and end this now,” he said. “We will ultimately solve this crime and make arrests.”

Around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, several Molotov cocktails were thrown at Congregation Beth El, an Orthodox synagogue on a quiet residential street in Rutherford. One entered the second floor bedroom of the congregation’s rabbi, Nosson Schuman, and ignited his bedspread.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Rep. Anthony Weiner resigned and apologized in the wake of a scandal in which he lied about sexually explicit exchanges on social media outlets.

“I am here today to apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment that I have caused,” Weiner (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference Thursday at a home for the elderly in Brooklyn where in the past he has announced his intention to run for office.

WASHINGTON – From accolades like “compelling” to accusations like “Auschwitz borders” to radio silence, to label the Jewish response to President Obama’s speech on Middle East policy as diverse understates matters.

The very breadth of the Middle East policy speech — 5,600 words and covering the entire Middle East and decades of history — helps explain the wildly divergent responses from Jewish groups and opinion shapers, even among some who are otherwise often on the same page.

One could as easily pick out points for Israel — slamming the Palestinian Authority’s pact with Hamas as well as its bid for unilateral statehood — as one could the demerits — for many, the most explicit endorsement of the pre-1967 lines as the basis for future borders by any American president.