Letters
Memories of Fair Lawn
Very interesting and informative article by Mr. Brody re the Radburn section of Fair Lawn’s origins of antisemitism. When we decided to move to Fair Lawn from New York City, I mentioned it to a friend, a colleague in the pharmaceutical industry. Leo was an Irish Roman Catholic and, yes, a good friend who lived in Fair Lawn. His response to me was that “You’ll like Fair Lawn because there is A ROSE-IN-BLOOM on every corner.” That was August of 1968. We knew that and it was a major determinant for the move. In fact, there was one Reform temple and three Conservative synagogues. We were still one year away from Congregation Shomrei Torah, our first Orthodox shul.
A neighbor who just turned 80, was born in the same house he is now living in, just a few doors from ours, tells me that when he was very young, at the corner of our street, mounted on a telephone pole, there was a sign that read that this was a restricted area and that no Jews or “blacks” were allowed.
Irving Gerber
Fair Lawn
Another view of Radburn
Bob Brody’s cover story “How perfect was it? A Jewish writer looks back at life in Radburn’’ argues that Jews were “systematically excluded’’ from residency in Radburn from its opening in 1929 until the 1950s. In fact, some of Radburn’s very first residents were Jewish, including the families of Abraham Platt, Robert Cohen, and Maurice Pine. In 1942, William Elbow, a Jew, was elected president of the community’s governing board.
No one would argue that Jews, in Radburn or any other suburb, did not face discrimination. But Brody grossly oversimplifies a complex situation, which involved an influx of urban residents, Jewish and otherwise, after World War II, and the social tensions that resulted when they moved into what had been open space around the model suburb. And there is no evidence that Clarence Stein, Radburn’s famous co-planner, ever countenanced discrimination against Jews before severing his association with its developer in the early 1930s.
Rick Hampson
Fair Lawn
Dysfunction as strategy?
Mr. Smukler’s breathless praise of Donald Trump’s actions in Iran is not analysis. It is hero worship. He claims it is not political, yet applauds Trump for launching military operations as if they were a gift to civilization. If he is going to cheer this loudly, he should simply put on a MAGA hat and stop pretending to be objective. He reads less like an analyst and more like a Trump supporter in disguise.
While he glorifies war and panic, some of us remember that real leadership does not rely on chaos and brinkmanship. Kamala Harris would have freed the hostages and confronted the threat of Iran through diplomacy and alliances, without dragging the world toward catastrophe. Instead, we are left with endless instability abroad and cruelty at home, from reckless foreign policy to the chaos unleashed by ICE.
This is not strength. It is dysfunction dressed up as strategy.
Dan Cohen
Some suggested new words
May I suggest some new necessary vocabulary?
1) Genosliming: The act of slandering, as genocide, the careful military action to rescue hostages and eliminate savage terrorists while providing the enemy population with food and medicine. It also serves to trivialize the Holocaust and diminish the term into uselessness, except for painting a target on anyone sympathetic to Israel as a supporter of genocide. It is as deeply offensive as using a certain epithet that rhymes with “bigger.”
2) Crap-Artheid. The description of any and all Israeli attempts to defend themselves from a cruel and implacable enemy as “Apartheid” despite having no resemblance to the former S. African regime.
3) The NASTies: These comprise the right wing spreaders of Jew hate, the New Anti-Semitic Trash. Full of shabby “wisdom” and stale conspiracy theories, they achieve some political following by blaming the Jews for all their failings. Much of their voodoo version of history is shared with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mullahs — the “M&Ms”
Yours with shared regrets for the necessity of these definitions, and several more.
Charles Reisen, MD
South Orange
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