Three Englewood rabbis were named last week among “The 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America” by Newsweek magazine, a list topped by Yehuda Krinsky, head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Using what they describe as “unscientific” criteria to award points to contenders, two friends in the entertainment business, Sony Pictures chair and CEO Michael Lynton and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., have published this annual compilation since 2007.
While many of the “winners” have appeared before and are virtually household names in the pantheon of Jewish spiritual and communal leadership, including Englewood’s Shmuley Boteach (#6 and a Jewish Standard columnist), Mark Charendorff (#4), and Menachem Genack (#16), one of this year’s picks may come as a surprise to some.
The president of Cong. Beth Tikvah/New Milford Jewish Center is wondering why the borough’s tax assessor is trying to take away the building’s property tax exemption. The municipal tax assessor denies this is the case and says she is just doing her job by asking the congregation, New Milford’s only Jewish house of worship, to clarify the building’s ownership and whether the owner is profiting from rent paid by a tenant.
Both hope the matter can be resolved amicably, and soon.
The disconnect appears to center on two issues: first, Beth Tikvah’s agreement earlier this year to sell its building to TorahLinks. The sale is yet to go through, but once it does, Beth Tikvah plans to remain in the building through a lease-back of space. Second, Yeshivas Ohr Yosef, a Jewish high school with an enrollment of about 30 teens, has been occupying the synagogue’s bottom floor six days a week since October 2006.
Rabbi Michael Greenbaum will never forget a certain family vacation to Disney World. The Teaneck resident was holed up in a motel room, awash in boxes of index cards he had shipped to Orlando, while his wife, Cindy, took their four young children to the park. It was crunch time for the completion of Greenbaum’s dissertation for a doctorate in education from Columbia University’s Teachers College, which he earned in 1994. The project became the basis for his book, “Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement: Conflict and Growth” (initially published by Global Publications, Binghamton University, 2001). It is, he told The Jewish Standard, “one of the great accomplishments of my life.”
A funny thing happened to a busy rabbi who returned to work after a year on sabbatical. He discovered downtime — surprisingly, even during his regular workday.
There were minutes between appointments, for example. Or perhaps half-an-hour spent waiting to marry a couple. Then there were the hours late at night when he could work on the computer undisturbed.
Two veteran community leaders will serve as officers of the New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations for the upcoming year.
Ruth Cole of Ridgewood has moved up to NJSAJF president-elect for '008-09. Susan Penn of Alpine has been named a member at-large of the Executive/Operations Committee, a position with a one-year term.
Cole has been involved in NJSAJF for a number of years and was in line for the position, said Jacob Toporek, NJSAJF's executive director. She is expected to become president the following year.
Dr. Scott Dubowsky and his assistant, Michal Englander, treat their "wonderful patient" Esther Chai.
Scott Dubowsky had already visited Israel several times when a friend urged him to consider making a different kind of trip — one that would leave a more lasting imprint.
So, Dobowsky, a Tenafly resident with a dental practice in Bayonne, decided to join Dental Volunteers for Israel (DVI), spending the week of June '' to '6 in the organization's Jerusalem Trudi Birger Dental Clinic. It is the only facility in the municipality to provide free dental care to the estimated '00,000 children, 5 to 18 years old, who live below the poverty line. These include olim from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, as well as haredi and Palestinian residents of the city. Dental care is not covered under Israel's national health insurance, Dubowsky told The Jewish Standard; thus, only those who can afford it have access to even the most basic dental hygiene services.
Rabbi Ely Allen delivers a blessing at the construction site for the Salameno Spiritual Center at Ramapo College in Mahwah. Photo by Carolyn Herring
In the late1950s, Anthony Padovano was just a young boy, but his first visit to the Meditation Room at United Nations headquarters made a vivid impression. Created by the late Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish diplomat who was the U.N.'s second secretary general, the small, stark space welcomes all people of good will of any religious faith looking for peace and serenity.
Years later, Padovano was reminded of the Meditation Room by the Parliament of World Religions, a group of religious leaders and thinkers who gather every five years to foster world peace through interreligious dialogue. Padovano has attended these gatherings since 1999, when the parliament was held in Cape Town, South Africa.
Temple Emanuel will relocate to this building, the former Union Reform Church in Franklin Lakes.
Perhaps the congregation's Website says it best: "Temple Emanuel of North Jersey On The Move…"
The Conservative congregation expects to move to a permanent facility in Franklin Lakes by summer, following about a dozen years of nomadic existence between its original home on 33rd Street and Broadway in Paterson and temporary quarters in Oakland, as it sought to establish roots in northwest Bergen County.
Citing the escalating cost of construction, Temple Emanuel leaders recently abandoned plans for a new building on a 15-acre plot in Franklin Lakes the congregation bought for about $1 million, opting instead to enter into contract to buy the Union Reform Church on High Mountain Road there, said Seth Lipschitz, board president. The deal has been financed through a combination of donations, pledges, and proceeds from the $'.'5 million sale in February of the historic art deco Paterson building. The property was sold to a developer who plans to convert the space to medical offices. Services were last held in Paterson about a year ago, said Lipschitz.
I tell Jews, 'Buy two copies of the book: one for themselves and one for their Christian neighbors,'" said Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn about his newly released "The Jewish Connection to Israel, the Promised Land: A Brief Introduction for Christians" (Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, '008).
Simultaneously dedicated "to the millions of Jews throughout the millennia who dreamed of Zion but were never privileged to live there," and "to Christians everywhere who understand the meaning of the Holy Land to the Covenant of Abraham," this slim volume takes readers on the journey that began with the biblical birth of the Jewish people around 1,700 BCE and concludes with Israel's contemporary existential struggle and the Jewish people's ongoing need to defend her.
From left are Music Discovery students Ya'sin Ali, Jonah Bern, Eugene Brown Jr., Joshua Gilbert, Atiya Ali, and Malaika Manning.
Andrew Sargeant is a young man with many dreams. The 10th-grader at Englewood Academies, a public high school program for gifted students in Englewood, wants to design space ships for NASA someday. But, before that, he says, he is determined to run track for the United States at the '01' Olympics. These plans, Andrew vows, won't deter him from keeping up with the flute, which he's been studying seriously in a unique music program for Englewood public school children at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades Thurnauer School of Music in neighboring Tenafly. Perhaps, says Andrew, he would join the college orchestra or play in a chamber group, while majoring in aerospace engineering and training for the Olympics. "Rhythm is a good tie-in with math," he notes.
