As residents of a state that is often the butt of comedians' jokes, New Jerseyans need a morale boost now and then.

That is just what they got last Wednesday night at the YM-YWHA of Union County, in a talk that offered a rapid rundown of the accomplishments that set the state apart.

Marc Mappen, executive director of the New Jersey Historical Commission, regaled a gathering of around 50 people at a talk cosponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women's Union County Section and the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest.

Titled "There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos," Mappen's talk drew history buffs and would-be buffs. Most were senior citizens, who were able to provide a personal angle to Mappen's anecdotes.

"Why are people so contemptuous of our nice little state?" he asked. When you hear that New Jersey is the setting for a joke, "you know something really stupid is going to happen." Even Rodney Dangerfield didn't give Jersey any respect, he said.

But the state also happens to have been home to some very clever people, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison among them. It has been the setting for the invention of all kinds of things – like Teflon, the submarine, the drive-in cinema, Streptomycin, and bar codes, to name a few.

Mappen's commission is charged with increasing public understanding and appreciation of the state's heritage. He is the author of two books, Jerseyana: The Underside of New Jersey History and Murder and Spies, Lovers and Lies: Settling the Controversies of American History. He is also the coeditor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of New Jersey.

Mappen reminded his audience that New Jersey was the setting for the biggest media spoof in history – Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938. Five people in the audience actually remembered the show about an alien invasion that triggered panicked reaction from those who had missed the introduction mentioning that what they were to hear was a drama, not a news report. But only one of those five, Pat Brown, admitted that as a 15-year-old she was scared stiff.

"I was terrified – until we realized what it was," she recalled with a giggle.

Focusing on the present, Mappen pointed out that contrary to its blue-collar image, New Jersey has the highest median annual income in the nation – around $56,000. If it were a country, it would be the richest in the world per capita after the United States and Luxembourg.

And despite its "Garden" label, and its lack of major cities, it has the highest population density, higher than either India or China. By way of illustrating the state's "eye-popping diversity," he pointed out that it also has 2,500 types of moss and more forested areas and more horses per square mile than any other state, relative to its size. Mappen also said that New Jersey has 29 professional theater companies.

In a salute to the NCJW, Mappen highlighted a number of distinguished Jewish women who called New Jersey home. They included philanthropist Caroline Fuld, whose brother Louis founded Bamberger's Department Store and who, in her own right, helped fund the work of Newark's Beth Israel Hospital and Hadassah.

Hannah Silverman was one of the leaders of the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913. And Ida Cohen Rosenthal applied her marketing genius to the Maidenform brassiere, invented by Rosenthal's sculptor husband, William, and their partner, Enid Bisset.

In the spirit of combining fun and seriousness, the NCJW offered a "hands-on" way to express support for a very serious issue, the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Those present were invited to don rubber gloves and make painted handprints on a banner calling for action. It will be added to similar banners from NCJW sections all over the country and displayed in Washington, DC, to convey just how many people support the organization's demand that the Bush administration impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.

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