Headline: Vandals tip tombstones, trash graves
Are we in Eastern Europe? The former Soviet Union? No, no, this took place right here in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Nathan Reiss of Congregation Etz Ahaim said Sunday’s vandalism at the Poile Zedek Cemetery came days after a similar incident was discovered on Thursday. Families of the buried will have to pay for all this damage. Many of these families are descendants of immigrants from Salonika and Turkey, hard-working people who became model American citizens. Read more about some of the families in Voices of Etz Ahaim. Others are Holocaust survivors, such as Menachem Simcha.
My husband said it will cost $200 and up just to repair one headstone. Some are not repairable. 499 headstones toppled.
Finally, the police is now calling this a bias crime. See the comments on Dov Bear.
“To say it was premeditated is an understatement,” said Poile Zedek administrator Caryn Lipson. “It had to be hours and hours of work by several people.”
From the Star Ledger:
Jack Oziel picked his way through the ruins of the vandalized Jewish cemetery yesterday, surveying hundreds of headstones toppled like dominos or lying in crumbled heaps.
He managed to locate the fragments of a granite Star of David that had marked his father’s grave lying on the grass. His mother’s tomb had cracked in half. And everywhere else Oziel looked, he saw more headstones of family and friends knocked down.
“I knew them all. I buried all these people. Now they are all in pieces,” Oziel, 91, said with red eyes as he surveyed the damage at the Poile Zedek Cemetery in New Brunswick.
And I know Jack Oziel. So I feel like I know all of those people buried there, too.
How can this be prevented? A surveillance camera? And who would do something so nasty?
Last week I had a pleasant experience with a local techie. I had some problems with my laptop, and not only did Mike Beberman of Cyber Knights in New Brunswick fix the problem, he also performed diagnostics on my laptop. And he and I chatted about our mutual sadness at the demise of the local ‘Y’ and our favorite New Jersey kosher restaurants, neither which are located in Highland Park (Lin’s Chinese of Manville, New Jersey and Mosaica in or near Union, New Jersey).
He told me he would like to be known as the guy you call for computer problems, just like you might have one guy who fixes your car.
So if you live in Central New Jersey and have a computer problem, try Cyber Knights at:
(732) 227-0932
Lori at Lori’s Earth Friendly Products has been hard at work redesigning her home page. Who says the mom and pop store is gone? Sometimes you just have to know where to look. Lori is a local Highland Park resident who has been selling juice with fiber for kids and other kosher, healthy products from her internet website for many years (and that’s just her part-time job!).
Bought some coffee last week from Lori’s, and I’ve been enjoying every drop of the fresh coffee I’ve made with it.
Hear ye, hear ye! What was your favorite Highland Park story of the year?
The Highland Park Mirror is asking you to vote on your favorite story of the year. Cleverly, these are called the Readers’ Joyce Awards. Must have something to do with Joyce Kilmer.
So, what was your favorite story? The top story for me was the library budget cuts. But I was tempted to vote for the closing of the ‘Y’. All my children attended nursery school there, and we enjoyed swimming in the pool. Now there is no pool in Highland Park! When the Aguda dug a big hole for its new building last summer, some of us remarked how it was about the right size for a community pool. RPRY now has a beautiful outdoor pool for the day camp; couldn’t we women have a women’s hour in the summer, even if it’s just once a week?
