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NEW JERSEY JEWISH NEWS
G R E AT E R M E T R O W E S T E D I T I O N A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E J E W I S H W E E K M E D I A G R O U P Vol. LXX IV No. 14 | April 2, 2020 | 8 N I SAN 5780
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William Helmreich, 75, wrote authoritative book on MetroWest community The coronavirus claims a sociologist who studied Jews and their neighborhoods Steve Lipman Special to NJJN
Jewish Family Services remain vital State & Local 4
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Modern plague, ancient story retold Volunteers safely mobilize State & Local 14
State & Local Passover Opinion Calendar LifeCycle Community Touch of Torah Exit Ramp
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New Haggadahs for a very different Passover Steve Lipman Special to NJJN
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he annual seders that commemorate the ancient Israelites’ deliverance from slavery, in which the biblical Ten Plagues play a prominent role, take on special poignancy this year in the shadow of a modern plague, the coronavirus. As families gather (six feet apart) at their Passover tables next week — many in virtual seders
through Zoom technology — they will use a combination of old Haggadahs and new ones that reflect contemporary social and political themes. Here are some members of the new crop. The Promise of the Land: A Passover Haggadah. By Rabbi Ellen Bernstein. Artwork by Galia Goodman (Behrman House) Rabbi Bernstein’s Haggadah is the latest in a series of Passover texts that focus on “the land” rather than the Promised Land. It’s a text for the environmentally and ecologically minded, and it is in step with modern feminism, including in its pages
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ver dinner in a kosher restaurant in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn a few years ago, Dr. William Helmreich, a professor of sociology and prolific author, was telling some friends and fellow academics a few stories about his latest book, “The Brooklyn Nobody Knows” (Princeton University Press), from 2017. The book was his journal of his walks along the borough’s 816 miles of streets. One particular story had caught his attention — about the Theodor Herzl mural. Helmreich, distinguished professor in the City College sociology department and an instructor at the CUNY Graduate School, had discovered a five-story-high likeness of the founder of the modern Zionism movement along the side of a building in Brownsville, the Brooklyn neighborhood that through the 1950s was largely Jewish. The professor told his friends, Linda and Heshy Friedman of Borough Park, professors in the CUNY system, about the incongruity, and symbolism, of an image of a famed Zionist leader displayed prominently in a black neighborhood, said Heshy Friedman. “He was excited” that young African-Americans were inspired by the resilience message of Herzl’s words — “If you will it, it is no dream” — that were part of the artwork, Friedman said of Helmreich, 75, who died at his Great Neck, N.Y., home on March 28 of coronavirus. “He had a lot of interest in a lot of areas.” Helmreich’s specialty areas were race and ethnic relations, religion, immigration, risk behavior, the sociology of New York City, urban sociology, consumer behavior, and market research. “He was an invaluable asset to the history of this community,” said Linda Forgosh, executive
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