Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky, attending the JCC of Central NJ fall festival with his wife, Malkie, and their children, says he is hearing more about gratitude than complaints about financial stress.
Photos by Elaine Durbach
October 16, 2008
Peter Fleischmann is one of those people who always seems upbeat and smiling, but — like so many others — he said he is finding the current economic situation nerve-wracking.
“What’s most frustrating is that as an individual you’re totally helpless,” he said this past weekend. “Other than taking all your money out of the market and putting it in a box under the mattress, there’s nothing you can do. It’s this totally helpless feeling — watching everything you’ve worked for all your life being destroyed by forces you have no control over.”
After a week that produced one startling headline after another — “Wild Day Caps Worst Week Ever for Stocks” blared last Friday’s Wall Street Journal — Fleischman, a member of Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, is hardly alone in his uncertainty and anxiety.
Even in the relatively affluent suburbs of New Jersey, the market turmoil is being felt personally.
Fleischmann, a former longtime resident of Scotch Plains now living in Edison, worked in film production and advertising and then as a coordinator for a government-sponsored program matching American and foreign business partners. Asked what should be done to calm the markets, he had no remedy to offer.
“Henry Paulson is brilliant, but no matter what he and Ben Bernanke and the other geniuses in Washington do, it doesn’t seem to make any difference,” he said.
Merchandise is still selling, Susan Hailman of Judaica Central says, though vendors and customers are becoming more cost conscious.
By this past Sunday afternoon, Lori Wendler had finally managed to unwind from a frantic work week and was enjoying an afternoon of sunshine and fun with her husband and children at the JCC of Central New Jersey in Scotch Plains.
But she was planning to be on a train into Manhattan before 6 o’clock the next morning.
“I’ve got to get a jump on the next work load,” she said. She works in operations with a finance company, one of those not closing but facing a buy-out, and has had to deal with mounds of new paperwork.
“What I don’t understand are the people who are still strolling in late, as if all this was no concern of theirs,” she said.
Their own future is full of questions, she added, given the takeover of her employer and the fact that her husband –— a lawyer — specializes in real estate law.
Asked if she was managing to sleep, she said, “I am — because I’m so exhausted by the time I get to bed.”
She said she foresaw trouble but not a crisis of this magnitude.
“From months ago, we were seeing layoffs and trouble in the housing market. But when Bear Stearns went down, that was a shock. We know so many people who are losing their jobs.”
Liora Zinkel of Westfield said her husband works for a Japanese bank that is looking strong, but they have many friends on the downside of the crisis.
But if she has been having trouble sleeping, it’s not because of the economy: They have a six-week-old son, as well as a three-year-old daughter who has started coming into her parents’ bed ever since the newcomer arrived.
“I’m so sleep-deprived, I could fall asleep standing right here,” Zinkel said.
Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky, leader of the Chabad of Union County in Fanwood, said he has been surprised, pleasantly, by those who have been counting their blessings at an anxious time.
“One man did call me late on Wednesday afternoon, as we were getting ready for Yom Kippur, not for advice but just to talk,” said Blesofsky, interviewed at the JCC, where he and his wife, Malkie, were enjoying fall festival activities with their four children. “But most people aren’t complaining about how bad their finances are; they’re dwelling on what they have — how grateful they are that they have their health, that their children are all right.
“Maybe it’s a way to deal with their anxiety, but I think it shows they’re aware that we’re more than just about material things; you peel back the layers and you come to neshama — to spirit,” he said.
Peter Fleischmann says the feeling of powerlessness is counteracted only by his “cockeyed optimism.”
Susan Hailman, one of the owners of Judaica Central Boutique in Scotch Plains, had an array of products for sale at the JCC festival. She said some of her suppliers have increased prices, but many of the craftspeople have made an effort to keep costs down. And she hasn’t seen a significant downturn in the number of customers coming in.
“Some people might be choosing less expensive items, but what they’re buying aren’t things they would do without. If a son is having his bar mitzva, they’re still going to buy him a tallis. If they’re going to a wedding, they’re going to bring a gift.”
Fleischman, who fled with his parents from what was then Czechoslovakia just before the Holocaust, said he isn’t all that depressed by the recent news on the economy.
“I’ve survived worse than this,” he said. “I suppose I’m a cockeyed optimist. Sooner or later, things will turn around. The stock market crash in 1987 happened the day of our eldest son’s wedding, and we all got through that.”
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