The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), more popularly known as the Orthodox Union (OU), is one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. It is best known for its kosher food preparation supervision service. Its circled-U symbol, a hechsher, is found on the labels of many commercial and consumer food products.

The OU supports a network of synagogues, youth programs, Jewish and Religious Zionist advocacy, programs for the disabled, localized religious study programs, and some international units with locations in Israel and formerly in Ukraine.

It is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. Its synagogues and their rabbis typically identify themselves with Modern Orthodox Judaism.

The OU was founded in 1898, and serves about 1,000 synagogues and congregations of varying sizes. The need for a national Jewish Orthodox rabbinical organization in the early twentieth century was recognized by a number of groups. The Union of Orthodox Rabbis was the most powerful rabbinical body at that time and many of its members saw great value in establishing the early Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

Rabbi Kalman Topp is an American rabbi, educator and author, currently serving as the Senior Rabbi of the Beth Jacob Congregation of Beverly Hills.

A native New Yorker, Topp was raised in Kew Garden Hills. After graduating from the Yeshiva University's Sy Syms School of Business, he attended Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary for his ordination and the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education for a Master's Degree in secondary education.

Prior to receiving his ordination, Topp worked for Osem Foods International in Petach Tikvah, Israel, in its finance department. After achieving his master's degree, he taught Jewish studies at various schools in New York and New Jersey, including the Frisch School and the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns and Rockaways.

Before joining Beth Jacob, he served as Rabbi to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Young Israel of Woodmere in Woodmere, NY. In August 2009, he joined Congregation Beth Jacob of Beverly Hills as Senior Rabbi.

In May 2008, Rabbi Topp was appointed by the Nassau County Legislature to serve as a Human Rights Commissioner in Nassau County on a multi-racial commission that investigates human rights complaints, promotes tolerance and fights all types of discrimination in the county

Nir Barkat (Hebrew: ניר ברקת‎; born 19 October 1959) is an Israeli businessman, politician and mayor of Jerusalem.

Nir Barkat was born in 1959 and raised in Jerusalem. His father, Zalman, was a professor of physics at the Hebrew University. He served in the Paratroopers Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces for six years (1977–83), as well as reserve duty, and reached the rank of Major.

Barkat received his bachelor degree in computer science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

Barkat is married to his wife Beverly and is the father of three daughters.

Barkat started his career in the hi-tech industry by founding a software company called BRM in 1988, which specialized in antivirus software. Later the company became an incubator venture firm that invested in several companies such as Check Point and Backweb. He later helped found the social investment company IVN.

Barkat entered politics in January 2003 when he founded the party Yerushalayim Tatzli'ah ("Jerusalem Will Succeed") and ran in the Jerusalem mayoral race, gaining 43% of the vote and narrowly losing to Uri Lupoliansky. He became head of the opposition on the city council, until the 2008 election.

Christine Callaghan Quinn (born July 25, 1966) is a Democratic politician and the current Speaker of the New York City Council. The third person to hold this office, Quinn is the first female and first openly gay speaker.

In 2007, the New York Post named Quinn the third-most powerful woman in New York, after Hillary Rodham Clinton and Diane Sawyer. She was rated one of the "Forty Under Forty" by Gotham Magazine.^{[citation needed]}

Quinn was born in Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1988. She served as head of the Housing Justice Campaign for the Association of Neighborhood and Housing Development. Quinn entered politics to manage the City Council campaign of Thomas Duane in 1991, after which she was Duane's Chief of Staff for five years. She later became the Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, and was appointed a member of the NYC Police/Community Relations Task Force by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

She resides in Chelsea with wife, Kim Catullo. The couple married on May 19, 2012. Her former partner, Laura Morrison, is Chief of Staff to State Senator Tom Duane.

Simon Wiesenthal, KBE (December 31, 1908 – September 20, 2005) was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter.

After four and a half years in the German concentration camps such as Janowska, Plaszow, and Mauthausen during World War II, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazis so that they could be brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, in order to gather information for future war crime trials. Later he opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna. Wiesenthal wrote The Sunflower, which describes a life-changing event he experienced when he was in the camp.

Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on September 20, 2005, and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel on September 23. He is survived by his daughter, Paulinka Kriesberg, and three grandchildren. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, located in Los Angeles, is named in his honor.