by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

July 30, 2009

Freeholder Jack Schrier looked up from his corner seat at the conference table as Khadijah Wallace was winding up her success story.

Wallace is a 24-year-old resident of a halfway house who, after overcoming drug addiction, is working at the Employment and Training Services at Morris County’s Department of Human Services.

She thanked the county government for providing her with a second chance.

“I thank you distinguished ladies and gentlemen for the opportunity to speak to you,” she told the Board of Freeholders at its July 22 meeting in Morristown. “I hope that someday I can sit at this table.”

As he heard those words, Schrier rose and offered Wallace his seat. She accepted the offer with a smile.

“I wanted to let her try it out,” he explained as he sat in his Morristown office after the meeting. “I am very impressed with what she did and I thought it would create a mood, which is something I like to do. It was good for her, and I thought it was a way of encouraging her by putting a brighter light on her than she had put on herself.”

To Schrier, it was also an act of faith.

“Being Jewish means being involved in life,” he said. “That young lady was someone who needed help, and Jews have traditionally been brought up to be helpful to those who need it.”

For more than 30 years, Schrier has been active in politics. He now serves at both the county level and in the local government of his hometown of Mendham, where he has been a mayor and committeeman.

On June 29, he helped arrange a meeting of county officials and Jewish leaders to discuss areas of cooperation (see sidebar).

‘Never close the door’

Schrier’s involvement with the MetroWest Jewish community is relatively recent. It began in 1997, when Schrier, an ardently conservative Republican, had a conversation with his friend Roger Jacobs, an active Democrat from West Orange. Jacobs is former chair of the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.

The two men made an agreement. “I encouraged Roger to become more involved in Morris County, and Roger encouraged me to get more involved in the Jewish community,” Schrier said.

Somewhat reluctantly, Schrier took a seat on the CRC board. “I did it with the understanding that I can’t make the meetings [but] I would give it whatever attention I can. It is a good place for me to keep abreast of the Jewish community and be helpful whenever I can.”

Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Schrier grew up in Newark’s North Ward and graduated from Barringer High School. He attended three colleges before obtaining a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

“I became an executive in my own advertising agency. The degree in chemistry was very valuable,” he joked.

He began his political life as a Democrat. “When you come out of a Jewish household during the Depression, where else are you going to go?” He voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960, but noted quickly that his views “became more conservative over time.”

In 1977, shortly after Schrier and his family moved to Mendham, he was enlisted in a heady local issue. “The freeholders had wanted to build a county jail in Mendham Township across the road from Lewis Morris Park. That energized me.”

He sprung into opposition by creating an organization called the Committee for a Sane Jail Site. “The freeholders backed off, and I felt really good,” he said.

His plain speaking attracted voters, who elected him to the Mendham Township Committee, then to two terms as its mayor. Since 1999 he has also served as a county freeholder; he directed the board in 2004 and 2005.

Schrier said he “would never close the door to higher office,” then promptly issued a caveat: “I would never go up against an incumbent who had been charged with any crime and not been indicted.”

Although he is not a synagogue member, Schrier said he has developed a relationship with the Rabbinical College of America, the Chabad-Lubavitch seminary in Morristown. He called its dean, Rabbi Moshe Herson, “a fascinating man who drew me back in time to the Jewish community of my youth” and his grandparents’ Orthodox home in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.

“That community is in me and I don’t want to change that. I cherish the relationship with Rabbi Herson. It has helped me become a better person, not just a better Jew.”

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‘Lighting a flame’

As an informal and sometimes formal liaison to and from the county’s Jewish community, Jack Schrier’s latest effort took place June 29 in Morristown, when he brought together Morris County social service agency directors with agencies partnered under the umbrella of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.

Schrier, a member of UJC’s Community Relations Committee, said he is determined to forge closer bonds between the county and nonprofit entities, as well as between the Jewish communities in Essex and Morris.

“MetroWest wants to be involved with the Jewish community in Morris County, and I think that is a wonderful thing,” he said. “MetroWest is an Essex County organization in Morris County. The focus has not been westward; it has been eastward. The Jewish community in Morris County hasn’t gotten the attention it should have. There has not been a lot of involvement.”

Schrier called the meeting a “kindling” of new initiatives, including extending kosher meals-on-wheels to elderly homebound Jews in his county.

He said he also hopes to broaden the reach of the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest.

Although based in East Orange, the JVS receives some funding from Morris County. In this year’s tough economic climate, Schrier said, he managed to keep 50 percent of its funding from being eliminated.

But, he said, “the JVS is not seen as a presence here yet.” That, he said, is the result of some misconceptions. One, that the agency would duplicate services already being done by Morris County’s Human Resources Department. The second is that the affluence of the county precludes its needing JVS.

But, said Schrier, “even though Morris County is one of the wealthiest in the United States, not everybody in Morris County is wealthy. There are people here in need of help that these services can provide.”

To CRC associate Melanie Roth Gorelick, Schrier “has been a strong advocate and friend on a wide range of issues. We are currently working together to ensure a larger involvement of the Jewish community in public life in Morris County, and we are aiming to find increased areas for collaboration as we have successfully done in a number of areas, including homeland security and aging-in-place initiatives.”

The CRC is also involved in Morris County Connections, a UJC MetroWest targeted funding program that is successfully building a more cohesive and engaged Jewish community in Morris County.

“My hope is to light a flame,” Schrier said. “It is flickering, and it needs a bellows to activate it. Maybe now that everybody knows each other, that get-together will be the beginning of the flame.”

— ROBERT WIENER

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