This post is dedicated to all those people who are wondering what in the world do those terms mean! Let’s start with two: Hasid vs. Litvak. When you hear Litvak, think Lithuania. Think the Vilna Gaon. Lots of Talmud study. Emphasis on who’s the smartest. My family is basically Litvak (except for those who married into a hasidic branch or married yekkes or one who married a Yemenite or one who married an Ethiopian). Another term used is misnagdim, meaning those who oppose Hassidim(the ‘im” makes Hasid plural in Hebrew).
In the late 18th Century the Ba’al Shem Tov started Hassidism in what is now the Ukraine. It was in response to the emphasis on Talmud study of the Litvaks. Instead, the emphasis is on prayer, joy, spirituality. Hassidim follow a rebbe. So today you have the Belzer Rebbe, the Gerrer Rebbe, the Satmar Rebbe (disputed leadership). Chabad or Lubavitch is also Hassidic.
There is a tiny branch of the Bostoner Rebbe here in Highland Park. The Bostoner is the only Hasidic branch named after an American city. All the other Hasidic branches are named after towns in Eastern Europe.
Yekkes are German Jews. Yekkes are known for being very punctual. This is as opposed to general “Jewish time” (an event that starts later than it is called for). The term “Yekke” comes from jacket, and it refers to the shorter, more Westernized jackets worn by German Jews, as opposed to the longer coats of Eastern European Jews.
Sephardi refers to Jews who were kicked out of Spain in 1492. However, it has come to refer also to Jews from Iraq, Iran, India or Yemen who never had ancestors who lived in Spain. That’s why in Israel they are called ‘Edot HaMizrach’ or congregations of the East. Sephardim are from countries like Morroco, Italy, Turkey, Greece (especially Salonika), Libya, Tunisia. Many have moved from those countries to France. We belong to a Sephardi congregation in Highland Park, Congregation Etz Ahaim. Why two thorough-bred Ashkenazim and children joined a Sephardi synagogue is a subject for another post. But we are not the only Ashkenazim there! (Ashkenaz = Germany and has come to mean any Jew from Europe).
I haven’t even begun to cover the history of religious Zionism here or how various Hasidic or Sephardic groups have responded to the modern State of Israel.
We live in a tiny little borough. You can walk from Cleveland Avenue on the North side to Donaldson Park on the South side in about twenty minutes. We pay a lot of taxes to live here. A lot of those taxes go toward the school budget.
The taxpaying in Highland Park is a little lopsided. Many of the people who own larger homes here, some of whom pay 22K in local taxes, do not send their children to public school. There are two yeshivas in this area, as well as a Solomon Schecter school in East Brunswick. On the South side, there are a lot of rental units and tinier homes (as well as some more large and many medium-size homes). Many renters do send their children to the public schools. Because there are few ratables in this town, businesses that pay property taxes, the bulk of the local taxes must come from the homeowners.
One more note: as the Jewish day schools have limited resources for special needs, many of the frum public students are special needs. This is one more pressure on the budget, as special needs are expensive.
It’s Highland Park School Budget time again, and I got the following in my Yahoo local group: (I edited out the private homes and any names…contact me if you live in Highland Park and need the names).
Please join members of the Board of Education and the Budget Task
Force for discussions to be held at the following:
* Tuesday, March 18, @ 7:30 p.m., Irving School Cafeteria
* Thursday, March 20, @ 7:30 p.m., private home
* Thursday, March 27, @ 7:30 p.m., private home
* Sunday, March 30, @ 4:00 p.m., private home
* Thursday, April 3, @ 7:30 p.m., private home
* Monday, April 7, @ 7:30 p.m., River Ridge, 30 S. Adelaide Avenue
* Wednesday, April 9, @ 7:00 p.m., Reformed Church, 19-21 South Second
Avenue in “the Cave”
Bring your questions!
Board of Education Hearing of Final Budget, March 25, 2008, 7:30 p.m.,
Bartle School cafeteria
Vote on the Budget and School Board Elections will be held April 15, 2008.
My intention had been to write about every day anger and how various people handle it. However, a horrific tragedy gave me pause to focusing at present on the every day. I feel fortunate to have wonderful neighbors here in Highland Park of many different backgrounds. But the close neighbors of Sderot, Israel, where people have been under daily rocket threats, celebrated yesterday’s massacre. CELEBRATED! How could one not get angry?
What I would call a “rabbinic” approach by Therapydoc. Listen up, kids, she seems to say. Consider this as another school killing. Let me tell you a story about angels singing at the death of the Egyptians…
A great way to deal with anger… tell a joke. Maybe then someone out there will get it?!!
Finally, getting back to Highland Park, as I originally meant this to be a blog about Highland Park, I just want to mention with sadness and some anger that Michelle Reasso will be leaving the Highland Park Public Library. At whom do I direct the anger? It can’t be at Mayor Meryl Frank; she gave the library a large donation recently. And not at the other librarians. And not at the taxpayers of Highland Park, we pay too much already. So I’ll direct it at the ridiculous politicians of Trenton who messed up the State budget. Michelle deserves her own post, so I’ll write one soon.
A friend today asked me to feature her blogs (yes, she has four and considering a fifth) and her business. So here are her blogs (you can tell her I sent you):
Her art on t-shirts, mugs, magnets, posters and more can be found on CafePress.com.
Another Highland Parker is reportedly working on a “lose weight, eat healthy” book. The diet is what I would call “steak and salad”: red meat is encouraged over chicken, vegetables should be plentiful. Absolutely no white flour or sugar, and no fruit. You can eat cheese on the diet. But milk is a no-no. I wonder if anyone could stick to this. Anyway, when it becomes a real book, I’ll write more.
One of my hobbies is, while I am driving around this bitty borough of ours, to note political lawn signs. During local elections, many lawns here have signs. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noted the national election lawn signs going up. My block now has one Obama sign and two Hillary signs.
A few weeks ago I saw one Hillary Clinton sign and several Obama signs in all of Highland Park. As of this past weekend, however, that changed: now there are quite a few of both. On Sunday, our mayor, Meryl Frank, held a meeting with Senator Robert Menendez called: “Hillary Clinton:the best choice from a Jewish Perspective” (which I would have liked to attend, but life with three kids makes such things difficult). So Meryl is publicly supporting Hillary.
We don’t do signs on our lawn. I once put a political sign on our lawn for a local election. My husband and I decided we were not doing that again. For one, we like our neighbors, no matter how they may vote. And for two, I got an unpleasant phone call as the result of putting up the sign.
I have not seen any political lawns signs on any of the Orthodox Jewish homes here. (No, I take that back…I did see one Hillary sign.)
No Republican signs. I do know of at least one Highland Parker who is planning to cast his vote for McCain.
The signs merely reflect the most vocal people here in our borough. Someone once said: “just because a person is the loudest in the room does not mean that he/she is right.”
From the Jewish State (local Central New Jersey newspaper):
According to a statement issued by Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan’s office the teens’ “alcohol-fueled vandalism” came from teenage boredom, not anti-Semitism. Kaplan said this means while the teens will still face vandalism charges in Family Court, they will not be prosecuted on the more serious charge of committing a hate crime.
and, on the civil suit filed against the teens:
The cost of reconstruction is currently estimated to be between $500,000 and $1 million. While adjudication of a juvenile is not a matter of public record, [Attorney Gerald] Gordon said, punitive-damage civil judgements remain in effect until they are paid. This would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the teens to get credit cards as adults and also damage their future credit reports.
The story in the Gemara (thank you to Olomeinu, a children’s magazine) is Mar Zutra’s goblet was stolen. He saw a man wiping his hands on someone else’s garment without permission. He then knew that that was the thief, for he saw that this man had no respect for the possessions of others (Bava Metzia 24a).
UPDATE: On the Main Line has the Olemeinu cartoon along with analysis of such cartoons. If you don’t take Olemeinu too seriously, it’s humorous.
We certainly can’t control how others raise their children. It seems like the best we can do is make it difficult for non-respecting people to get credit cards.
When I first blogged about the cemetery vandalism in New Brunswick, I wrote Are we in Eastern Europe? I am pleased to say we are not. What is the difference? Here in Central New Jersey, not only is the Jewish community reacting with shock to the recent vandalism, but there is also condemnation from the general community.
From today’s Daily Targum, the Rutgers student newspaper:
“It is one of the most dramatic events you [can] see in a physical sense,” said Rutgers University Student Assembly treasurer Yonaton Yares, a School of Arts and Sciences student.
RUSA unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to get students involved in the site’s repair.
Members of the assembly said such a resolution was necessary in order to make a statement on behalf of the student body that such acts are unacceptable.
“[The resolution] shows that Rutgers University doesn’t tolerate that kind of crime, because we don’t want to destroy our diversity,” said College Avenue Council Vice President Yelena Shvarts, a Rutgers College junior.
The key to preventing such acts from occurring in the future is to become opinionated, said RUSA recording secretary Kathryn Jenkins, a Douglass College student.
Yares said this incident has brought together members of Rutgers Hillel.
“We have decided to say that Rutgers students – Jewish, non-Jewish, black, white or Latino – all care about this,” he said.
RUSA hopes the assembly can generate the same solidarity among students that the University community demonstrated during the Don Imus controversy last year to prevent future acts from occurring.
“When someone goes on the radio and attacks our women’s basketball team, they don’t just attack those women. They attack the entire Rutgers community,” said RUSA chair Jim Kline, a Rutgers College senior. “The same goes when you attack the Rutgers community and what it stands for.”
Surveyors are beginning to assess the damage done to the site in an attempt to estimate the amount that repairs will cost.
A week after the incident, four teenagers were arrested and charged for committing the vandalism, though the acts were not deemed anti-Semitic by authorities, according to The Associated Press.
But Kline said the acts are upsetting to the Jewish community.
“I think our voice as the student body lends an olive branch to the Jewish community. It allows students to enter into this dialogue about racism, sexism and, in this case, anti-Semitism,” Kline said. “It’s important to have these conversations now that we live in this bubble where we can openly discuss ideas and thoughts.”
Somehow I think there is a connection to the film I viewed by a Franklin Township student yesterday. Sonal Thawani’s film “Take a Stand Against Violence,” a 6-minute piece showed the positive action taken by her community’s youth in response to the recent violence in her township. It was heartening to see in Sonal’s film that many people in her community wanted to see a stop to the violence. Likewise, we all would like cemetery desecration to stop as well.
My main thought is it is easier to teach a five-year old to respect property, respect the dead, and respect others than a 17 year old. And as both cemetery desecration and violence against one’s peers reflect poor anger management, some kind of positive channeling is needed at a young age. I hardly profess to have answers, but I am good at asking the questions.
Accused vandals sued over Jewish cemetery destruction
A Rutherford resident whose parents’ gravestones were desecrated in a New Brunswick Jewish cemetery this month has filed a lawsuit against the four teenagers charged with causing the damage to nearly 500 headstones.
Mark Elfant is a member of Congregation Poile Zedek with familial ties to the congregation dating to the 1800s. Gerald Gordon, Elfant’s lawyer, said he is seeking monetary damages from the accused teenagers, their parents and anyone else involved. Damage has been estimated between $500,000 to $1 million.
“We’re not going to let them off the hook,” said Gordon, whose mother ran the cemetery for 30 years and who is handling the case pro bono. “The money we get will go to a fund for the restoration, security and perpetual care of the cemetery.”
Elfant’s mother, Ann Elfant, cared for the cemetery for five decades. His father, Morris Elfant, played a key role in creating the cemetery association. And his grandfather, Benjamin Elfant, was a founder of the congregation in the late 1800s.
Caryn Lipson, administrator at Congregation Poile Zedek, declined to comment.
“He is acting as a private citizen,” Lipson said. “This has nothing to do with the congregation.”
The commenters to the article all want to see something done. The idea that a 17 year old can commit such an act and walk away scot-free is bizarre.
We have a new borough council member in Highland Park: Padraic Millet. Padraic says he is stepping up to do his civic duty. Best wishes to you in this endeavor.
Story from Home News Tribune:
By TOM CAIAZZA
STAFF WRITER
HIGHLAND PARK — The Borough Council appointed a new member to replace departing council member Fern Goodhart on the same night Mayor Meryl Frank was sworn in for an unprecedented third term.
Padraic Millet, a committee member for borough Democrats who is a facilities administrator for Rutgers University, was sworn in as councilman during Monday’s council reorganization meeting. Millet, 49, was chosen over two other candidates selected by the Democratic Committee as possible replacements for Goodhart.
Millet, a borough resident for 14 years, has several years’ experience serving on the Zoning Board and the Democratic Committee. He said civic duty was his reason for standing as a candidate.
“Now I’m stepping up to do my part,” he said.
Millet, who will use his construction background to head up the borough’s Code Enforcement Committee, said his desire to be a councilman is simple.
“I live on a quiet, dead-end street on the south side of town,” he said.
“It’s worth working to keep.”
As she begins her third term as mayor, Frank views her November election as a confirmation that the public approves of the groundwork set over the last eight years.
“I think the message was loud and clear,” Frank said, “that the people like the way the community is going, and they want to continue it.”
She said the third term may not consist of the sweeping policies that have defined her first two terms in office but will involve efforts to ensure that work continues.
“This third term is a confirmation that we are on the right track,” she said.
Millet replaced Goodhart, the winner of an uncontested re-election bid in November. She resigned to take a year-long fellowship in Washington, D.C., with the American Health Association. Goodhart plans to move to the Washington, D.C., area for the year and will be unable to conduct her duties as councilwoman.
We live in a tiny little borough. You can walk from Cleveland Avenue on the North side to Donaldson Park on the South side in about twenty minutes. We pay a lot of taxes to live here. A lot of those taxes go toward the school budget. 
Yesterday, I started posting about 
One of my hobbies is, while I am driving around this bitty