Tzedakah boxes and thermometers measuring donations adorn the halls of Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, reminders of the synagogue’s ongoing campaign to raise money for an orphan of the Rwandan genocide.

The synagogue committed last July to raising $4,500 to sponsor a child in the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, a joint project of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Rwandan government, and other U.S. and Israeli partners to aid orphans of the 1994 massacre. The village is modeled on the youth villages of Israel set up decades ago for orphans of the Holocaust.

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.

Vice President Joe Biden denounced a decision to authorize new Jerusalem housing starts as “undermining the trust” that he needs to advance peace while in Israel.

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden said in a statement issued Tuesday, the second day of a visit that had been aimed at underscoring the closeness of the U.S.-Israel relationship. “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

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.”

Days before the most recent meeting of the board of governors, the body that oversees the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky, its relatively new chairman, declared that the agency’s traditional mission had outlived its usefulness.

“It’s not enough to speak about aliyah,” Sharansky told a delegation of American Jewish leaders. “It’s almost prohibited for the head of the Jewish Agency to say so, but it can’t be our goal [just] to bring more Jewish people to Israel.”

Days before the most recent meeting of the board of governors, the body that oversees the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky, its relatively new chairman, declared that the agency’s traditional mission had outlived its usefulness.

“It’s not enough to speak about aliyah,” Sharansky told a delegation of American Jewish leaders. “It’s almost prohibited for the head of the Jewish Agency to say so, but it can’t be our goal [just] to bring more Jewish people to Israel.”