Message From The Publisher

Much has happened over the past week in our community. Being a publisher for the BJL makes me feel like a doctor with his finger on the pulse of the community. Did you hear the monumental news? Chazaq raised over one million dollars to continue its amazing life changing work for jewish public school students! We have an amazing community which supports these kinds of causes. Of course, it is easy to focus on the unfortunate reality; our community needs help in so many ways. However, this reality also brings out the best in us and lets us join together to make things happen.

From my vantage point, it is clear that our community is growing. It is on the way to becoming more integrated, more cohesive. I can see it in the stories that we cover for the BJL and even in the ads that request space in our paper. A quick peek through the paper will cover points from New York to Canada, and they amazing thing is that so much of it involves the Bukharian community. Today, the Bukharian community can be found making nest all over America like never before. We have many families in Colorado, Arizona, Florida, and all over the tri – state area and beyond.

We therefore live in an exciting time for the Bukharian community and in an exciting time for the Jewish people at large. Who would have dreamed that within our lifetimes we would see the American Embassy relocated to Jerusalem? For the first time in modern American history, American Jewish children born in Jerusalem will now have Jerusalem, Israel as their place of birth on their passport. How many White House administrations have come and gone on the broken promise to recognize the eternal capital of the Jewish people? Like I say, we are living in exciting times.

Of course, there is always the danger of some enemy of the Jews hanging around. Today, Iran (again) wears that mask. It is scary to imagine such a malicious and conniving amassed so close to Israeli the Israeli Golan, but Hashem watches over our nation. No matter how you slice it, we live in unusual times. But I have no doubt that as a people; we can move through anything and continue to grow closer to each other and our destiny.

By Avraham Yakubov