Revisit Weequahic
“WEEQUAHIC MEMOIRS” will be at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange until Aug. 27. It will then be on display at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany from Sept. 9 to Oct. 11.
Each Wednesday through Aug. 20, JHS curator and outreach director Linda Forgosh will lead guided tours of the exhibit from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. At the Aidekman campus, she will guide tours of the exhibit on Wednesdays, Sept. 17 and 24 and Oct. 8, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.
On Thursday, June 26, at 7 p.m., Richie Roberts, the Weequahic High School graduate whose work as a undercover narcotics detective inspired the 2007 film American Gangster — which starred Denzel Washington and, as Roberts, Russell Crowe — will be on hand for a screening of the film at the West Orange JCC. Admission is $10.
Also at the West Orange JCC, on Monday, Aug. 11, at 12:30 p.m., writer Barry Lenson will discuss the work of his late father, artist Michael Lenson, whose mural “The History of the Enlightenment of Man” adorns a wall at Weequahic High School.
June 26, 2008
In an evening packed with laughter and nostalgia, past residents of Newark’s Weequahic section gathered in West Orange to remember one of America’s most notable Jewish neighborhoods.
Former “Indians” smiled with recognition at the high school athletic jackets, restaurant menus, vintage street signs, and old photos — one from the Weequahic High School Class of 1950 senior prom includes novelist Philip Roth — on display in “Weequahic Memoirs,” an exhibit making its first stop at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange.
And while the exhibit, sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, celebrated the Jewish Newark that was, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and others spoke at the June 18 grand opening about the predominately African-American city it is today — and efforts to bridge past and present.
Hal Braff, copresident of the Weequahic High School Alumni Association, reminded Booker, who was the featured speaker, of the cheer once heard at Weequahic High School games: “Ikey, Mikey, Jake, and Sam. We’re the boys who eat no ham. We play football, we play soccer. We keep matzos in our locker.”
“Believe it or not,” he told the mayor, “that is part of the culture of your city, a culture that is disappearing, evaporating, and in many instances, aging.”
In his remarks, Booker told his predominantly Jewish audience that “the power of the Weequahic neighborhood has not died. It still endures.”
As he toured Weequahic after a power outage the previous week, Booker said, he encountered a woman who told him hers was the first black family to move onto her street.
“She talked about the glory of the neighborhood and her pride in the black community and the Jewish community in Weequahic,” said the mayor. “She told me she still believes — despite the difficulties in the ’70s and the ’80s — that such days are still in our grasp.”
Casting aside planned remarks, Booker said he would “prefer to speak from my heart,” and proceeded to compare his “roots in a black church and a black family” to his “being blessed” in adulthood by his opportunity “to study Judaism at length.”
During his year as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England, Booker studied and became friends with Chabad Rabbi Shmuley Boteach — who has since become a well-known author and TV personality — then carried his interest in Jewish culture through his law school years at Yale University.
Opening night attendees examine old high school jackets and vintage street signs from Weequahic.
Booker said he was pleased that those principles have helped forge a link between Weequahic’s past and present residents, “be they still living in Newark or spread out in a diaspora, be they swinging canes or swinging golf clubs, these Newarkers — still connected to their city, still connected to their history, still involved, still active, still keeping alive the calls and the songs of Weequahic High School — they will help us as a city to heal, to grow, to manifest God’s justice here on earth.”
Much of the connection between today’s Weequahic residents and those of yesterday has been through the alumni association that Braff helped form in 1997.Providing links between the Jewish and African-American communities and the current student body, the association offers scholarships and other assistance to those who “frankly, did not have the advantages and opportunities we had,” Braff told his audience.
“It is a great relationship,” he said. “What distinguishes a Jew if it is not that he or she reaches out to help people who have not had the opportunity we’ve had? If we don’t do that, I guess we’re like all the other people who don’t do that,” he said.
‘Joy and hard work’
One person who embodies much of the connection is 95-year-old Hilda Lutzke, who taught English at Weequahic High School between 1937 and 1975.
Lutzke received a standing ovation from the audience.
She called her career “38 years of joy and hard work,” even as she remembered times tinged with tragedy. During World War II, life was “more serious and somber. Some students dropped out to enlist. Soon we were hearing of former students who were killed. It was really very sad,” she recalled.
She mentioned more sad moments during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, “when people I knew lost their teaching jobs” through the infamous communist witch hunts.
At the June 18 opening of “Weequahic Memoirs,” Newark Mayor Cory Booker said the suburban Jewish connection to Weequahic will help his city to survive.
Photos by Robert Wiener
Earlier, Linda Forgosh, JHS curator and outreach director, told the audience it had taken her two years to plan the program and collect the material on display.
“All we had in our archives were two Jewish community population surveys, a few personal collections, and two copies of Weequahic High School’s yearbook, The Legend,” she said.
“Everything else is courtesy of individuals who have held on to their Weequahic memories,” which were stashed away in such faraway places as Berkeley, Calif., and Tempe, Ariz.
“Since there are no formal histories of Weequahic, we relied on your stories and memories to help us put the pieces together,” she said.
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