by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

December 15, 2009

A 105-year-old congregation that has been without a home for decades is at last putting down permanent roots in Wayside. On Nov. 27, Congregation Sons of Israel held a ground-breaking ceremony for its new synagogue.

The 15,000-square-foot building will be located next to the Hillel Yeshiva school and will house a 350-seat sanctuary, a mikva, a social hall, a chapel, classrooms, and a kosher kitchen.

“We’ve actually been working on this since Rosh Hashana,” said Rabbi Yosef Carlebach, the congregation’s religious leader, explaining that the ceremony was actually a little late. “The foundation has already been dug. They were pouring the cement for the foundation during the ground breaking.”

He said he expects the $3 million structure to be completed by next Sept. 1, which puts it on the same schedule as the $10 million expansion at Chabad House at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, where Carlebach also serves as executive director.

“We’re...using a lot of the same crews and advisory committee,” he said. “We negotiated for both sites and are using the same subcontractors…. Today you need to make every penny count.”

The Orthodox synagogue was founded in 1904 in Asbury Park. In 1952 its members founded the Hillel Yeshiva and helped launch Israel Bonds and United Jewish Appeal, which later merged with other UJA campaigns to became the Jewish Federation of Greater Monmouth County.

However, it was forced to abandon its building in the late 1980s as the city’s Jewish community dwindled and the neighborhood became riddled with crime and drugs.

It has been holding services, religious school, and activities in the Hillel Yeshiva, but a search has been going on for the last 11 years to find a site where the 100-family congregation could rebuild.

After encountering zoning problems for years, Carlebach said, he enlisted the help of Ocean Township Mayor Bill Larkin in his search (Wayside is a section of the township). It was Larkin who suggested the Poplar Place site adjacent to Hillel Yeshiva. “He said to me, ‘Rabbi, the solution is right in your own backyard,’” recalled Carlebach.

During the ceremony, which drew about 150 dignitaries, congregants, and supporters, Rick and Robin Schottenfeld of Monmouth County were recognized for their support; the main sanctuary will be named in their honor.

Carlebach said he expected that with its new home, the congregation will grow. “We’ve merged Chabad spirit within a regular Orthodox synagogue so clearly anyone who walks in will feel welcome.

“This synagogue has a wonderful history with traditions that have been going on 105 years. I still believe to attract new people, especially the unaffiliated, you need to have a very wide and open door.”

 

---

‘Coming home’

When Rabbi Yosef Carlebach of Congregation Sons of Israel invited the director of the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders to the Nov. 27 ground breaking, he thought he was simply extending a courtesy to a government leader.

When Barbara McMorrow received the invitation, she said, she was immediately transported to a special time in her life. “There are miracles every day,” said McMorrow in a phone interview. “You just have to recognize them.”

What prompted her response was a convergence of events that she described as “bashert.”

Carlebach spent the two nights before the ground breaking unpacking his thousands of books. As dawn broke on Nov. 27, he reached for one he didn’t recognize and discovered it was made from bound bulletins from the early 1950s, when the synagogue was in Asbury Park.

He decided to take the book to the ground breaking.

At the site, McMorrow told Carlebach how much it meant to be invited; she told him she had been a student at the original Hillel Yeshiva in Asbury Park and that her parents were leaders of Sons of Israel.

“For me it was such a homecoming,” said McMorrow. “I learned to daven and do mitzvas at the school. We spent a great deal of time in religious studies…. It made us very strong students, but we also had fun.

“I remember every Friday our principal, Rabbi Mermelstein, would a tell a Bible story and leave us with a cliffhanger. It was a great experience.”

That experience also led her to go into teaching, said McMorrow, who retired in 2003 as the first female principal of Howell High School.

She also attended Talmud Torah at the synagogue and was president of its B’nai B’rith Girls chapter.

McMorrow shared other memories — of going to shul with her grandfather, she said, who would “sneak me into the men’s section. Rabbi Carlebach told me that was a grandfather’s privilege.

“Back in the early ’50s it was a small Jewish community, and everyone knew everyone else. You always behaved because everyone knew your parents.”

As she told Carlebach her story, he suddenly remembered the book he had put in his car. It opened to a 1952 bulletin featuring McMorrow’s parents, William and Alfreda Sosnick.

“She started shaking,” said Carlebach. When McMorrow said she would tell her story to the assembled crowd, he asked her Hebrew name and introduced her as “Rivkah.”

“There was not a dry eye in the house,” said Carlebach. “She told the crowd she felt as if she were coming home.”

McMorrow, who is leaving her freeholder post Jan. 7 for health reasons, said, “It was just so astonishing. It was a very special day for me. I felt such a connection. The rabbi asked me to come back, and I think I will be back…. I feel as if I’m on a journey that will take me back to my roots.”

— DEBRA RUBIN

Back to top

Reader Discussion

Leave a Comment

Your Name

Your Email (never published)

Comment

Type the word from the image above into the box below

New Jersey Jewish News welcomes your comments. New Jersey Jewish News reserves the right to edit or remove any comment that is deemed inappropriate, off-topic or otherwise violating the Terms of Service of the New Jersey Jewish News website.

Back to top