_________________ WANTAGH ________________
HERALD $1.00
Fundraiser helps law enforcement
Foundation receives students
Wantagh F.D. battles blaze
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Vol. 70 No. 4
JANUARY 20 - 26, 2022
Wantagh BOE president opens family pizzeria By iRYNA ShkURhAN newsroom@liherald.com
Iryna Shkurhan/Herald
ANthoNY, ViNcENt AND Liz Greco in their first brick-and-mortar pizzeria.
The Grecos are no strangers to the pizza business. Since 2016, the Wantagh family has operated Pies-on Wheels — a food catering business run out of a 1946 Chevy 250. The truck was revamped with a built-in brick oven. With it, the Grecos cater a variety of events, ranging from corporate functions to bat mitzvahs and weddings. Their popularity led them to be featured on News12 in 2018. This month, owners Liz and Anthony Greco and their son
Vincent opened their first-ever brick-and-mortar location, in Massapequa, called Pies-on Broadway. At the grand opening, on Jan. 7, community members stopped by to try the family’s signature thin-crust pies. One of their most popular ones, Liz said, is topped with mashed potato and bacon, with dollops of potato sprinkled with bacon bits. Another fan favorite is the four cheese white truffle with mushroom pie, which the Grecos perfected over the summer. They prefer to focus on pies over slices, because of their sigContinued on page 12
Chabad Center for Jewish Life expansion is under way By JoRDAN VAlloNE jvallone@liherald.com
The Chabad Center for Jewish Life, also known as the Chabad of Merrick-BellmoreWantagh, recently raised over $500,000 in five days. The donated funds will be used to expand the chabad’s school building, which serves its Jewish Early Learning Center preschool, a Hebrew school and a summer camp. The campaign — “Building a Dream: Investing in the Future” — went live online at www.chabadjewishlife.org, on the morning of Dec. 9. Five days later, the community had raised $518,888. Expanding the preschool had
been under discussion for a while, but because the chabad operates as a nonprofit, the funding had to be donation-based. With over 100 children on a waiting list for the school, a handful of donors approached Rabbi Shimon Kramer and his wife, Chanie, the JELC director, and offered to triple any donations received from the community. “The directors and teachers of the preschool are all on the front lines, doing a fantastic job,” Rabbi Kramer said. “The only way we could expand was if the community could contribute and help. Some donors came forward and wanted this to be a community event.”
The names of the donors and matchers were kept confidential, out of courtesy, but Kramer added that almost every parent in the school gave something to the campaign. Though the expansion will make it possible for roughly 100 more students to attend the preschool, the chabad’s Hebrew students will also use the added space in the afternoons during the week and on Saturday mornings. During the summer, it will be available to the summer camp. This is not the first expansion of the preschool, Chanie Kramer explained. The program started with four children in 2008, and it
operated out of the Kramers’ home. “We’ve had many expansions,” Chanie said. “The first big step was moving it out of the house.” The chabad opened a tworoom preschool at its Hewlett Avenue location in 2015, and added two more classrooms and a multipurpose room in 2018.
The multipurpose room now serves as a temporary classroom. “Right now we have no proper multipurpose room,” Kramer said. “It’s really important to get this done as soon as possible.” Plans for the expansion were in the works before the fundraising campaign even began. The original goal was to raise Continued on page 13