This week past: The Jewish Star Flashback

2002 — A report headlined “Putting the kibosh on getting sloshed” featured local teens describing known “hot spot” shuls and asserting that Simchat Torah drinking was more widespread a problem than most adults imagine.

2003 — This week’s lead, “Teen makes aliyah alone; Woodburgh resident leaves for a year, no intention of returning,” refers to HAFTR grad Jonathan Mosery, who left the Five Towns at age 18. In the summer of 2014, he would be a ministry of defense spokesman during Operation Protective Edge. “Everything they teach us in school about our past and who we are comes to life in Israel,” Mosery told The Star 11 years ago.

2004 — A front page column views “the Marines through Orthodox eyes.”

2005 — Local rabbis reflected on the passing of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. He “transformed darkness into light,” said Rabbi Zalman Wolowik of Chabad of the Five Towns. Dr. Rafael Medoff’s related column was titled, “Nazi-Hunting wasn’t always politically correct.”

2006 — Police charged an Elmhurst man with “deception and distraction” involving a series of tire slashings in Cedarhurst, Lawrence and Woodmere, intended to distract victims while their valuables were stolen.

2007 — “Rasperries for Iranian dictator” is The Star’s lead. Mayer Fertig reports: “The entire student body of Machon HaTorah, comprising HAFTR High School and Rambam Mesivta, as well as 11th and 12th graders from HANC, fanned out across Manhattan on Monday …to give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hosts at Columbia University a piece of their minds.”

2008 — There’s good news on page 1: “A match made in heaven …from a HAFTR blood drive to kidney donor.”

2009 — “This ain’t your bubbe’s cookbook,” crows The Star, reporting on a new kosher cookbook for the iPhone.

2010 — Thirteen-year-old Sarah Erdan, a freshman at Shalhevet High School in Brooklyn, lost her life when a speeding minivan in which she was a passenger crashed into a house on E. 23rd St. The driver was an unlicensed 16-year-old.

2011 — Key points of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations are featured on page one. “Netanyahu speaks,” reads The Star’s headline. “But is the world listening?”

2012 — Prime Minister Netanyahu again addressed the United Nations, warning, among other things, about Iran’s nuclear weapons progress.

2013 — Catholic-linked Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre provides a Shabbat room for food, rest and prayer that’s stocked by a Five Towns grocer. The hospital’s chief administrator is Dr. Aaron Glatt, assistant rabbi of the Young Israel of Woodmere.