Letters
Please get out of the street
I am a card-carrying member of the Tribe, and I live in a predominately Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Teaneck.
Yes, I do drive on Shabbat and on holidays, and I do not pretend otherwise. My neighborhood has many young families, but I have become one of those people who already have raised my children and are astounded by the attitudes of my neighbors.
We are living in an area with several parks in walking distance of our homes. One is just a block away.
My children never played in the street. They did not ride bicycles in the streets until they were at least 12. They did not have soccer games in the street or walk in the center of the road. That was a given.
Young children should be forbidden to play in the road. This is not the country. This is a busy town with traffic coming from all sides. Leaving a 6- or 7-year-old to watch toddlers is not OK. There is the threat of drivers turning corners without looking, in their large vans and cars. No young child should be expected to watch out for toddlers and smaller youngsters.
That having been said, I simply do not understand the concept of parents staying inside their homes or even schmoozing on their lawns when their children are playing in the road. There is no excuse for it. It is irresponsible of all of you and disrespectful to those who are not Jews, or those who must drive through the neighborhood. Pretending that everything is safe is not a good idea. It is not.
Walking four and five abreast on the street also is not OK, even for adults or those walking with elders or children. It is disruptive to those who use the streets for vehicles. We have sidewalks. And if there happens to be none on a particular block, call the municipality.
Sandra Steuer Cohen
Teaneck
A Holocaust survivor remembers 9/11
That morning, I was working at my desk, in the telephone building, across the street from the World Trade Center North Tower. That’s when it happened. My building shook twice.
Several years earlier, a bomb had exploded in the North Tower basement, and my building shook only once.
This time, I took the elevator down to the ground floor. In the street, I looked up and saw the tail of the plane protruding from the North Tower. I then feared an explosion would follow, and a large spread of debris would cover the entire neighborhood, including the street where I was standing. I hurried back to my office to retrieve some personal belongings and my packaged lunch, and proceeded to head to the 38th Street telephone building.
While I was walking uptown, a wartime recollection came to mind: a German airplane flying overhead, looking for FFI partisans, in the country village of Ardeche, France, where I was living at the time with Mme Chifflet, who was hiding me. Her son, Mr. Marcel Chifflet, had arranged to have a trench dug outside our house, just it case it should be damaged by bombing. I remember Mme Chifflet watching the plane and screaming: “ Attention. Il pique!” In the end, nothing happened to the house, nor to us.
Mme Chifflet’s name is at Yad Vashem.
I continued walking north, while all traffic was headed south. By the time I reached the 38th St office, the World Towers were no longer. The expected building explosion never happened.
Marcel Kozuch
Paramus
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