At her wedding table, Jenny turns to her new husband Ifthikar and says to him, “I don’t know how I lived for 43 years without you.” Jenny looks through the veil of a traditional Jewish bride. Ifthikar smiles and says something too softly to hear in his Pakistani accent. They were married in their friend’s living room in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.

On the fireplace, portraits of famous rabbis in beards and black hats are arranged like family photos. In preparation for the event, women have placed chocolates in the shape of swans on the table. An older woman asks the singer of the band if he too would be interested in meeting a nice Jewish girl to marry. She may happen to know someone.

Jenny and Ifthikar did not simply meet at an Orthodox wedding, however. “When I first met him,” Jenny told me a few weeks ago, “I set his ring tone to this shrill noise so I wouldn’t answer because I was dating a rabbi. He would call every night, though. I called him ‘Itchy’ because he got under my skin.” “I knew he was the one for me,” she says.

Jenny moved to Brooklyn a little under a year ago from Florida after slowly becoming more religious over the past ten years. Ifthikar, or Yitzi as Jenny refers to him as, was born in Pakistan to a Syrian Jewish mother and first moved to America 33 years ago. They share a storefront on the section of Coney Island Ave. known as Little Pakistan out of which Jenny publishes a weekly newsmagazine for Orthodox women and Ifthikar runs a car service. And oh right, they are also both attorneys. They met when Jenny was selling ad space for her magazine.

Their businesses serve both the Jewish and the Pakistani residents of Midwood. To hear Jenny explain it, the arrangement sounds natural. “Muslims pray roughly the same number of times a day as we do,” she says. “They don’t eat pork. Women cover their hair. They wear a different scarf but it’s the same idea.”

If you ask shopkeepers along Coney Island Avenue how business is doing they will say that since 9/11 and since the arrest of the man who tried to bomb Times Square, business is not so good. Ask Jenny about the Orthodox and she will tell you about the two times this month that she has been verbally assaulted about her faith. But if she tells you this story she will laugh at the end and proudly say how Ifthikar chased one of the men out of the store.

“We need to defend each other,” she says, “and forget about this little scrap of land on the other side of the world.”

During the wedding ceremony I and three other men hold up the corners of the huppah, a prayer shawl that is held above the couple. Underneath the huppah are the bride, groom, rabbi, two witnesses, and several women. No one in the room is sitting. They crowd behind and to the sides of the rabbi as close as they can get.

A wedding is beautiful, the rabbi says, because the space below the huppah is filled by the divine presence at the moment of union. And if you combine and rearrange the letters in Jenny’s and Ifthikar’s Hebrew names, he says, you get the Hebrew word for “whole.”

After the ceremony the men dance in one room and the women in the next. Orthodox men take Ifthikar by the arm and by the hand and they dance around him in concentric circles. They grab his arms and form chains. They pile their yarmulkes on his head like school boys teasing a friend.

It is a mitzvah, a good deed, to make the bride and groom smile on his wedding day. They sit Ifthikar and Jenny down in a chair and pretend to polish their shoes with their ties, bringing them water to rehydrate, trying to make them smile.

But before the men and women are led off to separate rooms they are together under the huppah crowded with their guests. Behind the folds of her dress, Jenny and Ifthikar are holding hands.

In a small brick house in Midwood, the blinds are shut but the lights are on. A long, black umbrella leans against the closed door and a reporter waits in a car outside. Inside, the Hakimisefat family meets with their lawyer.

Police charged Eric Hakimisefat, 16, with criminally negligent homicide, reckless driving, and operating a vehicle out of class, police said, following a fatal car accident yesterday that killed his 13-year old passenger, Sarah Erdan. Hakimisefat was travelling at twice the speed limit when he lost control of his vehicle, sideswiping a tree and demolishing the brick porch at 1620 E. 23 St. The latter charge follows since his junior driver’s permit requires that a parent or guardian be present if he is driving.

Today it is raining in fits and starts in Brooklyn. Cars slow down to see the wrecked porch, others honk when they do. A sign on the mailbox reads “Please put my mail in mailbox of 1618” because access to the owner’s door is covered in rubble.

A newscaster records a tease in front of the home for the 5 o’clock news and asks a group of three teenagers if they have a photo of the deceased or of anyone else involved in the crash. The three teenagers are friends of Erdan’s Orthodox Jewish family. They say they do not have any photos and the newsman leaves with his cameraman.

The wind bites and makes the rain come at you sideways. Neighbors close their doors saying “I don’t know anything about the crash. I swear.” Others say that the Hakimisefats are a nice, quiet family.

A woman dressed in black emerges from the Hakimisefat house. Her lips are pursed and her hands motion that she does not want to talk. Another spat of rain falls as the reporters wait outside.

Sarah Erdan was buried today in accordance with Jewish custom. Jews mourn by sitting shiva – a seven day process starting the day of the burial. Observant Jews follow a series of customs such as wearing a torn garment covering the heart and remaining at home during the full seven days where friends and neighbors visit them. They recite the Mourner’s Kaddish—a prayer praising God, reminding the bereaved not to lose their faith. They are allowed to read the Book of Job.

Hakimisefat’s lawyer leaves the small brick house and picks up his umbrella from beside the door. He is tall with a long face. The family doesn’t have anything to say, he says, “maybe tomorrow.”

By Mariya Karimjee and Michael Keller

Robert McFarlane woke early Monday morning, as he always did. He came to the breakfast table at six, dressed in a red plaid shirt and a beige baseball cap. His daughter prepared him breakfast. And then she went to get his medication.

Eleven months ago Robert McFarlane was diagnosed with dementia. Along with his medication he also has drops for his glaucoma and a range of vitamins that he takes daily. His family—his grandchildren and nephews—live on the same block and decided that being close to home would be best for him. His daughter wasn’t gone for very long. McFarlane was 80 and an active man.

His daughter returned to the table with his medication. But her father was gone.

The police alert would report that McFarlane was wearing beige corduroy pants, a brown crew neck sweater, and tan Timberland boots, but then the alert wouldn’t come for another 24 hours. Until then, his daughter and family canvassed the neighborhood—with no luck. It was a cold day. They worried that he had no food, no water. They talked to neighbors. They made calls. But no one had seen him.

Following his shortened breakfast, McFarlane’s morning was calm. While his daughter was preparing his pills, he was walking down the street, headed for the Broadway Junction subway station. His Brooklyn home lies one block from the entrance and he knew the way to the station well. McFarlane had lived on that street for 40 years. He had been a paratrooper stationed at Fort Bragg. His granddaughter says that he doesn’t like to be confined. When he got to the station he boarded a train, but which one is unknown.

Monday night came and McFarlane had still not been found. The eye drops for his glaucoma sat untouched. His family posted his picture on Facebook. On Tuesday morning the police asked the media’s help, sending out its alert along with a natty-looking McFarlane that appeared on news sites, blogs and across Twitter.

The department conducted a gridlock search, going street by street. A helicopter search yielded nothing. The family tried to inform everyone they knew. In between calls, they waited.

Thirty-seven hours passed. But at some point McFarlane had been seen. To those who saw him, McFarlane would have appeared in his early 70s—a quiet man, inappropriately dressed for the cold day.

Then at around 7 o’clock on Tuesday night, McFarlane was found in Queens. He was trying his house key in strangers’ locks. The police and EMS arrived and noticed the identifying silver medical bracelet on McFarlane’s right wrist.

His memory of those 37 hours is fuzzy. When he left the apartment on Monday morning, he believed he was on his way to his brother’s house on Myrtle Avenue. The police concluded that he had swiped his MetroCard at Christopher Street in Manhattan. He then made his way East to Woodhaven, Queens, where he was found three miles from his home. His stops in between are unknown.

In his home on Wednesday afternoon, he appeared calm and did not remember much about the time he was gone. “I’ve been travelling,” he says.

In his kitchen, he searched in the refrigerator for juice. He had spent a night in the hospital suffering from dehydration, explained his granddaughter Christina Pendergast. There were signs that he had been mugged. She pointed out his swollen lip and said that his cash was taken. He had bruises on his legs but his MetroCard was not taken.

He sat quietly as he waited for his granddaughter to bathe him. His granddaughter said that this was the first time McFarlane had left the house like this and that the family will decide what to do so that it doesn’t happen again while still having him live at home.

McFarlane was ready for his nap. “My bed ain’t wet,” he said. He wanted to climb on in.

Fresh from its appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court last week, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas brought its signature brand of protest to Brooklyn yesterday where it encounters opponents of its anti-Jewish and anti-gay rhetoric.

The church, which triggered a national debate around the limits of free speech after their widely vilified protest at a Marine’s funeral brought them before the U.S. Supreme Court held rallies Monday in front of Jewish schools and synagogues in Brooklyn and a gay rights center in Manhattan. Protesters prepared for them along the way.

The protestors arrived early to the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva on 1310 Ave. I in Brooklyn. Police set up barricades for both groups: the church members, and a group of roughly 75 to 100 Orthodox Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the area.

Jeff Garret, an Orthodox resident who was giving self-defense advice before the protest, said that it was important “to show that Jews came and that this won’t happen again. As compared to World War II when not enough Jews did things.”

Only four church members were on hand. They carried signs reading “Jews Killed Jesus,” “God Hates Israel,” and “God is your enemy.” One church member wore a bloody American flag and the flag of Israel around her waist, carrying a sign that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

The church members sang songs that were inaudible under the chants of “Nazi Scum Will Die.” When asked if the church identified itself with the Nazi party, one member replied, “We are not a political organization.” He wore a “Dunder Mifflin” T-shirt and carried two signs that read “Your Rabbi is a Whore” and “144k Jews Will Repent,” a reference to a verse in the Book of Revelation.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the largely Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, also protested earlier in the day outside the Chabad Lubavitch of Kensington, a Jewish center and synagogue on Ocean Parkway. At that protest, he broke through the police barricade and attempted to grab the signs held by one protester, Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, the church’s founder. When “people carry signs into your community like ‘Your Rabbi is a Whore,’ you don’t close your eyes,” he said later in the day at the protest on Avenue I. A woman who asked to be identified only as Stefanie and who came from her home in Sheepshead Bay spoke emotionally at the end of the protest. “They have no decency these people,” she said, “I’m a Christian and I can’t stand it. It’s not embarrassing; it brings shame.”

The protesters, however, were not a unified group. Binyamin Jolkovsky, publisher of the Jewish World Review, an online Jewish magazine, thinks that such a vocal protest “embarrasses the Orthodox Jewish community by lowering it down to the level of the people protesting.” He came to the protest to spread his point of view, he added, saying that the church “messed up their research. The Orthodox Jewish community is generally pro-life, pro-family, and in favor of God in the public square,” he said, much like religious Christian communities.

These ideological similarities, however, did nothing to assuage the anger of the protesters. The crowd chanted “Go To Hell” and other slogans and consistently heckled the church members during the half-hour protest. One protester held up a Jewish book saying, “This is the Bible,” while another draped himself in the Israeli flag. One protester threw a beverage onto a church member and a group of Orthodox teenagers threw a plastic bottle. The sizable police force on hand was quick to respond.

At the end of the protest, the four church members got in to the red mini-van that had dropped them off. As the car tried to make its way through the crowd of people surrounding it, one protester hit the hood of their car with an unidentified object, leaving a sizable dent.

Protesters ran after the car as it left heading West on Avenue I. One mini-van carrying at least three Orthodox protesters drove down the avenue with its side door still open while a fourth person jumped in. The car went off following the church members’ car.