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Put on a happy face
No housing on Howard Hughes tract
Author’s book chronicles how people define their mood
New owner agrees to follow township master plan
By Madeleine Maccar
Atlantic Realty has no plans to build houses on the Howard Hughes tract. That’s what the developer, who purchased the 558-acre property last year, is telling West Windsor Township officials. Atlantic purchased the tract— the former American Cyanamid site—from the Howard Hughes Corp. for $40 million in October. Before its sale, the tract was the subject of an ongoing lawsuit by Howard Hughes against West Windsor, challenging its zoning. The developer was pushing a plan to build a mixed-use project with up to 2,000 residential units, retail businesses and commercial offices. The township has long been opposed to any residential on the site, which is located at the corner of Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road. The property is one of the largest contiguous undeveloped parcels on the East Coast and has sat vacant since 2004. Mayor Hemant Marathe said that he met with officials from Atlantic after the sale to discuss their intention for the property. “We had a very open and positive meeting with them,” Marathe said. “They know that we are not looking for any new housing, because I believe we have too much to begin with, See HOWARD HUGHES, Page 7
After 365 consecutive days of interviewing everyone from friends and family to neighbors and strangers, Elisabeth Oosterhoff is endearingly selfaware and just a little uncomfortable being the subject of the conversation. The 17-year resident of West Windsor, Norwegian native and global traveler who has lived all over Europe might have launched her at-least-one-a-day “happiness dates” a decade ago to collect fodder for her book The Many Faces of Happiness, but the instincts that helped her conduct hundreds of soul-baring interviews in 2010 come bubbling back to the surface all too easily as she jokes about dominating the conversation. “I feel like we’re talking about me too much!” she laughs. Oosterhoff published The Many Faces of Happiness this past November, and the work is especially relevant this month— the International Day of Happiness is celebrated on March 20. The newly minted author, who worked on the book on and off for about a decade, has traveled a long and winding road to bring her labor of love to the light of day. Born of an idea she See OOSTERHOFF, Page 10
By Bill Sanservino
Adena Blum (far right) with her husband, Sean, and sons, Jonah and Ari. Blum has been named as the new senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Chaim in West Windsor.
A new rabbi for Beth Chaim Blum appointed to replace recently retired rabbi Eric Wisnia By Michele AlPerin Congregation Beth Chaim in West Windsor will have a new senior rabbi starting on July 1. Associate rabbi Adena Blum has been selected to replace rabbi emeritus Eric Wisnia, who retired last year. Wisnia served the congregation for 42 years, followed by now-serving interim rabbi Brian Beal. A resident of Robbinsville,
Blum grew up in Lawrence Township, where her parents still live. She’s also not far from her childhood synagogue, Har Sinai Hebrew Congregation in Trenton, where Wisnia, then a cantor, ignited her passion for Judaism as she worked with him on her bat mitzvah. “He saw my interest and aptitude, and he leaned into that,” she says. “We had all kinds of conversations about Jewish history, life and tradition.” Wisnia also taught her how to read Torah and to lead a Jewish prayer service. “I internalized what he taught me,” she recalls. And that came in handy when faculty member
Rabbi Lauren Levy at the Lawrenceville School asked her to do bar mitzvah tutoring for the younger siblings of Jewish students whose families were not affiliated with a synagogue, which became another spur to her own learning. After her confirmation at Har Sinai at the end of 10th grade, Blum was wondering about the next step on her Jewish path when by happenstance a friend told her about the Jewish Community High School of Gratz College held at Shir Ami synagogue in Newtown, Pennsylvania. She decided to go, and the school gave her not only another See BLUM, Page 8
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