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Bronx runner wins Atlantic City Marathon, Press of Atlantic City

A 22-year-old man, Ahiyut Endhie, from the Bronx has won Sunday’s 53rd Atlantic City Marathon, according to the Press of Atlantic City.

Endhie clocked two hours, 26 minutes, 28 seconds to finish the 26.2-mile race ahead of 900 other full marathon runners. Nearly 3,500 people entered four races including 3.1, 6.2, 13.1 miles and the full marathon.

Lansdowne, Pa., resident Sheila Klick was the women’s winner in 2:56.06.

 

Posted in Newswire0 Comments

Feds seek to solve impasse over Bronx bridge, NY Daily News

A Bronx bridge project, which has languished for years due to a legal fight between Amtrak and New York State’s Department of Transportation, could finally become a reality,  thanks to the intervention of the federal government.

According to the NY Daily News, the bridge over an Amtrak rail line will eventually connect two new waterfront parks located in Hunts Point and West Farms Square. It will serve pedestrians and cyclists in the area.

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-South Bronx) asked the the U.S. Department of the Interior to broker a meeting between the state transportation office and Amtrak, which has reportedly refused to cooperate with the project, now costing taxpayers $150 million.

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Former math teacher gets things done in Bronx schools, NY Times

With his 40 years of experience in education – starting as a math teacher in 1971 — Bob Cohen, 59, of the New York Department of Education is transforming some of the most troubled schools in the Bronx, according to NY Times.

Cohen has risen to the most important job of his life, as leader of Cluster One, Network 104, which consists of 31 schools in the Bronx – one of the city’s 60 school networks. In 2008, when he first assumed his post as an advocate for principals in New York’s education bureaucracy, Cohen had two schools on the list of persistently failing schools and thus in danger of being closed. Today, P.S. 230 went to an A from an F, and I.S. 313 to an A from a D.

Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor of the Education Department, said that what makes Cohen good is that he knows the system and is “humble enough to realize his job is supporting the work of principals and teachers in classrooms.”

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Aspiring rapper slain near Soundview

Police said they have no suspect in the slaying of Taiwon “Ty” Turner who was remembered by friends and relatives as “The King of Cypress Avenue.” (TED REGENCIA/The Bronx Ink)

Taiwon “Ty” Turner was an aspiring rapper who listened to Dr. Dre and Jay-Z, his favorite artists.

“He was very kind, very quiet, he was just a wonderful kid,” Sonia Taylor said of her nephew, who was gunned down on the grounds of the Sotomayor public housing complex near Soundview on Sunday evening, Oct. 9. “It’s a waste, it’s a waste.”

A cousin remembered his smile, and his partying spirit. “He treated me like a sister,” said Crystal Willis, 16, a cousin from Harlem, who gathered with other relatives near the scene of the shooting at 1060 Ave.

Police said they received a 911 call saying a male was shot around 8:18 p.m. on Sunday. Two residents of the nearby apartment building said they heard three gunshots shortly before police arrived.

Turner received gunshot wounds to his chest, police said. He was transported to the Jacobi Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Not including this pre-Columbus Day murder, the 43rd precinct has reported 11 homicides so far this year through Oct. 2. To date, that is up 37.5 percent from last year’s eight murders. On Sept. 25, 22-year-old Anna Ramlochan was killed one block away from where Turner was gunned down.

Earlier in the afternoon at the Mott Haven neighborhood where Turner lived in South Bronx, a separate makeshift memorial was set up outside his apartment building at the corner of East 141st Street and Cypress Avenue. A shirt in his favorite color, red, bore messages written in black: “I love you Baby Boy with all my heart – Buffy,” one mourner wrote. “R.I.P. PlayBoy,” read another.

As a group of mostly middle-aged and elderly women sat nervously nearby, an unidentified man shouted angrily, promising revenge for the victim. The brief commotion attracted dozens of onlookers. Shortly after, two police officers in a squad car showed up and the crowd dispersed.

Among those in the crowd was Jesse George, 27, who had known Turner for six years. George said Turner was “kind of a loner” who “played no games.” He urged the police to find and arrest Turner’s unidentified killer.

At the time of the incident, Turner was supposed to watch a football game with his uncle and neighbor Mel Mosely, said the latter’s wife Sonia Taylor. He never showed up. Taylor also wondered why Turner had not played his favorite rap music Sunday night. The morning after, Taylor heard the news of her nephew’s death.

“I just stopped crying a little while ago,” said Taylor, adding that Turner’s passing reminded her of her own son’s slaying in 1991.

“I’ve been doing some mourning in a little while,” Taylor said of Turner. “His beats is always gonna be on my mind,” she said, adding that at the time of his death, Turner was writing his own rap lyrics and composing some music.

Turner is survived by his parents. According to Taylor, the victim also left a son and a pregnant wife.

“It’s very hard,” Taylor said. “It’s a mess.”

Posted in Bronx Beats, Crime, Featured, North Central Bronx0 Comments

Bronx synagogue welcomes Jewish New Year with a last goodbye

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The conservative synagogue’s sanctuary of wood and stained glass once bustled with a congregation of almost 1,000. (LINDSAY MINERVA/The Bronx Ink)

On a rainy Wednesday night at the start of Rosh Hashanah, Miriam and Herbert Korman struggled up the stairs to reach the lobby of Temple Emanuel at Parkchester in the Bronx. Eight other congregants waited patiently for the couple to arrive inside the almost empty sanctuary of faded wood and stained glass. As he reached the foyer, 91-year-old Herbert Korman groaned with exhaustion.

It was the final time that the Kormans will lead Jewish New Year services at Temple Emanuel. On Oct. 31, Parkchester’s last conservative synagogue will officially close, bringing an end to another chapter of Jewish history in the Bronx.

“I can’t even imagine not having this,” said Miriam Korman, as she nodded towards the two-story sanctuary. “We’ve been members here for over 50 years.”

The 88-year-old congregation president said she is disheartened by the synagogue’s closing, but with her stroke last July and her husband’s fragile health, it’s time to let go.

The synagogue’s closing comes down to a problem of numbers.

Without the Kormans, visiting Rabbi Avi Novis Deutsch could not even assemble the minimum of 10 adult Jews needed to form a minyan, essentially a quorum to open the arc that holds the Torah, and start rituals to pray for a sweet new year. This time, there was more sense of sorrow than sweetness in the air.

“I feel sad,” said Herbert Korman, the temple ritual chairman, as he clung to his walker for support. “I feel very sad. There are no Jews left here so we can’t continue. That’s what has to happen.”

The rabbi’s recitation of the holy text reverberated across the hall, drawing attention to the almost deserted space that once held close to a thousand members. At times leading the service himself from the front pew, Herbert Korman directed the rabbi to read specific holiday passages.

Temple Emanuel, on the corner of Benedict and Pugsley Avenues, was built in 1948. The congregation started in 1942 at a corner store under the No. 6 train, according to Joan Green, a lifelong member whose father helped raise the money to build the imposing red brick structure. At its peak, the temple overflowed during Shabbat service on Saturdays.

Green’s voice crackled as she described her childhood at the temple: attending Hebrew school, joining the Girl Scouts and witnessing bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.

“Everything revolved around here,” said the 75-year-old retired recreational therapist. “We had hundreds and hundreds of families. Parkchester had a lot of Jewish people in those days.”

Green said there were so many kids during her time that the rabbi had to combine bar mitzvahs “because they didn’t have enough Saturdays” to hold individual services.

“It was a home away from home for us,” Green said.

Parkchester once needed at least five synagogues to accommodate all the Jewish families in the area, said Miriam Korman. According to the Bronx County Historical Society, almost half of Bronx’s entire population of 1.26 million in 1930 was Jewish. But as of 2002, there were only 45,100 Jews in the borough of 1.3 million people, according to the Jewish Community Relations Council, a non-profit advocacy group.

At Temple Emanuel, George Serrano, 65, and Sharon Long, 52, are among the youngest members. Serrano said many upwardly mobile families moved to more affluent Riverdale and Westchester County in search of better schools. Other aging members simply died or retired to Florida.

“What happened here is part of the Jewish phenomenon–Jews are moving,” said Deutsch, 40, the visiting rabbi, who had flown in from San Francisco. It was his first visit to New York City and he stayed for only three days. About 20 years ago, the congregation had a steep decline in membership, said Green. With much less money coming in, the temple could then only afford student or temporary rabbis, and the lively musical accompaniment of a cantor and organist was no longer in the budget.

Three years ago, the struggling Temple Emanuel transferred the building’s ownership to the Bronx Jewish Community Council Inc., which helped with its finances and the process of closing down. The Jewish non-profit group sold the synagogue in August to its next-door neighbor, the Bronx Charter School for Excellence, for $875,000, according to city records.

But closing a temple isn’t simple. “You can’t just abandon a synagogue,” said Serrano. “We have to liquidate everything, even the Torahs.” He said one of the five holy scrolls will be donated to a Jewish day school in Rockland County. On Oct. 5, Green will also send a scroll wrapped in a shawl to a synagogue in Oklahoma City.

“The spirit of the synagogue will always be present in the building,” said Serrano. The few remaining members have until the end of October to conclude services and move out before the charter school fills their beloved space. It will then be converted into classrooms and will not be torn down, said the charter school’s finance director, Archie Crawford.

Green, who lives in Co-op City, said she is not ready to find a new synagogue to call home. For now, she will focus on the last services, including the conclusion of Yom Kippur on Oct. 8. “And then we are history,” she said.

“L’Shanah Tova,” (to a sweet year) the Kormans said as they greeted other congregants at the conclusion of the Wednesday service. Then they shuffled out of the synagogue and into the dark, rainy night.

Posted in Bronx Beats, Bronx Neighborhoods, Bronx Tales, Featured, Multimedia, North Central Bronx, Slideshows9 Comments

Parkchester senior assaulted in his lobby

Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the man who assaulted Jose Rodriguez (above) last Thursday afternoon. (Photo by Ted Regencia)

An 81-year-old Parkchester resident was knocked down and punched inside the front door of his apartment building Thursday afternoon by a young male assailant who tore off the senior’s jewelry and emptied his pockets of cash.

Police released security video footage from the building at 1555 Unionport Road that showed the attack lasted less than a minute. The elderly victim, Jose Rodriguez, sustained minor injuries, including multiple bruises.


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The footage shows Rodriguez, who was returning home at around 4 p.m., opening the door to his building, when a man wearing a towel draped over his head grabs him from behind.

The mugger then held Rodriguez in a chokehold and shoved him into the lobby, where he began hitting him in the face. Once Rodriguez fell to the floor, the teen tore the towel from his head and continued beating and kicking.

Rodriguez, who has dark bruises on his face from the attack, said he has lived in Parkchester for 35 years, and this was the first time he had been assaulted.

“I don’t feel safe,” said Rodriguez, who was born in Puerto Rico. “You don’t feel safe in any part of the world.” Rodriguez said he did not get a good look at his attacker. His younger sister, Luisa Rodriguez, said she was saddened by the incident.

Other neighbors commented that the area had become dangerous only recently. Police report that over the past two years, robberies in Precinct 43, which includes Parkchester, have risen 3.3 percent.

“I’ve seen all kinds of stuff happening in the last couple years,” said Ronald Smith, 69, a retired social worker. “I’ve been here eight years and it’s getting worse and worse.”

Smith said security in the area was not enough. “I’m checking when I go out at night to see who’s behind me,” he said. “I’m checking to see who’s on the elevator with me. You learn to be cautious. These little incidents make you that way.”

In August, a 64-year-old man was assaulted and mugged by three assailants while entering his building in Fordham Heights, 3 miles away.

Police are asking anyone with information about Rodriguez’s attacker, who they believe is in his late teens, to report to the website nypdcrimestoppers.com. All tips are anonymous.

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Crime0 Comments

Jews and Palestinians find a separate peace in Hunts Point

Israeli and Palestinian shop owners along Southern Boulevard have no problem getting along. (Photo by Ted Regencia)

On one corner of Southern Boulevard and 163rd Street, a 25-year-old Palestinian refugee stirred chicken kebabs over a hot fryer in his halal cart, contemplating the tensions between his country and Israel being reignited this week in the United Nations General Assembly.

Down the block in Hunts Point where Musab Abusbeih peddled his $5 kebab and shawarma specials, Jewish and Palestinian-owned businesses operate peacefully side by side.  Abusbeih believes that if only the warring parties learned to talk like the merchants of Hunts Point peace might be attainable.

“We don’t even fight about parking on this block,” said Ron Levy, a former Israeli soldier.  “And everybody fights about parking in New York City.”

Downtown in United Nations headquarters last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sought official statehood recognition from the General Assembly. Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu opposed Palestine’s unilateral declaration of statehood, saying a two-state solution can only be achieved through a negotiated settlement, which would include Hamas dropping its call for the destruction of Israel.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama urged Abbas to drop his bid until peace talks resume. The Palestinian leader rejected his plea.

And the stalemate appeared impassable. “If Israel, Palestine, and the U.N. want to see how to live in harmony they should look at this block,” said Levy, who believes in the Palestinian Authority’s right to its own state. “Here, Palestinians and Jewish people get along very well.”

The 60-year-old, who now works at Pay-Less Electronics, said he came to the U.S. in the 1970s after becoming weary of all the fighting in Israel. The former Israeli soldier said he found some peace in the South Bronx.

John Zib, a Jewish manager of Sweet Girl clothing store in Hunts Point, said he was not aware of the impending vote in the U.N. “But I know that on this block most of the stores are owned by Jewish people,” said the 25-year-old businessman. “There are also Palestinian owners and we have no problems with each other.”

A Palestinian Christian who owns Seham Discount, northeast of Hunts Point, said his family was forced to abandon its home near Jerusalem when war broke out following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. “They took my father’s land,” said George Ishaq, 71. “Everything they took.”

Ishaq and his family were eventually exiled in Jordan, where he lived for a long time until he moved to New York City around 10 years ago.

Asked whether he is willing to go back, Ishaq said, “I can’t live there while it is occupied.” It is for that reason that he is supporting the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Ishaq, however, said that his experience being a Palestinian refugee does not affect how he relates to Jewish people, whom he often interacts with regularly in business.

“It is normal,” Ishaq said. “We buy from them, they sell to us.” Besides, he said, the business setting “is not the place to talk about politics.”

Posted in Bronx Neighborhoods, Featured, Southern Bronx, The Bronx Beat0 Comments

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