A fire, a ‘miracle,’ and a Short Hills man’s vow to move on

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

On a chilly and rainy afternoon last week, Isadore Spiegel walked gingerly through the rubble spread across the marble floors of burned-out and hosed-down rooms — still trying to cope with both a mammoth personal loss and a sense of awe.

Many of the artifacts gathered during Spiegel’s years of living in the Short Hills section of Millburn were destroyed in a devastating five-alarm fire on Dec. 30. But what remained undamaged were five Torah scrolls and the wooden cabinet that held them in a wing he had built specially to house a synagogue.

Around the cabinet, the sanctuary was in shambles. Waterlogged prayer books stood damaged on a broken bookshelf. An anteroom once filled with Judaica was in ashes. A mehitza, used to separate men and women at prayer services, lay askew on the slippery floor. And yet the brown wooden cabinet with engraved stars of David on its doors remained intact as a protector of the sacred scrolls — which are now relocated in a safe space.

“I guess Hashem won that war,” said Spiegel as he glanced sorrowfully at the wreckage that was for 10 years the center of his spiritual life.

“It was almost a miracle,” said Millburn Fire Department’s Capt. Shawn Daly, referring to the fire that gutted Spiegel’s uninhabited home while he was spending the winter in Florida. “The room with the Torahs was heavily involved in fire, and there was considerable water damage as well.”

The cause of the blaze is still undetermined, and Daly said there is “no indication that the fire had a suspicious origin.”

Spiegel remains traumatized, even as he acknowledges that his own misfortune is dwarfed by “the hundreds of thousands lost in the tsunami.”

“To lose it overnight within a few hours — it just put me in a situation where I was very depressed about it.”

Building the shul 10 years ago was Spiegel’s way of recreating the religious environment of his Orthodox home in the town of Harrison, where he said he was born on a kitchen table 74 years ago.

“I came from a meager, a very poor, poor, poor family,” said Spiegel, taking refuge from the devastation as he sat behind the wheel of his idling SUV in the driveway of his tattered home.

“My father was a religious man,” he recalled. “He was a tailor, and he was the shames of the Harrison shul. Ever since I can remember, he stressed the idea of religion and ever since my bar mitzvah 61 years ago I was indoctrinated and I believed it in my heart. I don’t claim to be the most Orthodox religious person. But I do what I think is very important — to make my contribution to the Jewish religion.”

His first involvement in synagogue life came when he was just eight years old.

“I used to run for minyans. I used to run around to Harrison Avenue to all the storekeepers so we could put a minyan together. My father would say, ‘you go to Mr. Lieberman and tell him we need him. Tell Mr. Gorewitz we need him. Tell Mr. Carew we need him.’ These people only wanted to attend when it was absolutely necessary because they had a business, and the business was prime requisite.”

For a time, business became paramount to Spiegel as well. After returning from the Korean War, he bought a 22-foot van and began delivering appliances for the now-defunct chain called Vim.

His fleet multiplied slowly, from one truck to two. Over the course of six or seven years, it expanded to what became the Spiegel Trucking Company, which is still based in his hometown.

“It was very difficult work. I was supporting brothers and sisters. But my whole thing was the work ethic. At the time I worked on the Sabbath. I worked anytime.”

But once he could afford to ease up his workload, Spiegel recommitted himself to his religious upbringing. “‘I didn’t have to work anymore on the Sabbath. I didn’t want to drive on the Sabbath. I wanted to be called shomer Shabbos.”

Rabbi Mendel Bogomilsky, who currently runs the Chai Center-Shul in Millburn, officiated at services when Spiegel began his synagogue back in 1993.

“It was a lot of fun,” said the rabbi, who walked 40 minutes to and from Spiegel’s home every Saturday. “He started it with a bunch of people who were interested in setting up an Orthodox synagogue in Short Hills, and he said, ‘I’m building one in my home. So come to my services there.’ He has a heart of gold, and he performed an unbelievable service for a whole lot of people.”

“I had many neighbors come, and some people who couldn’t afford to pay dues in another synagogue would come here,” Spiegel recalled. “We’d have very lavish kiddush every Saturday. It was something to look forward to. We’d have a spread of fish. We’d have all kinds of salads. We’d have excellent pastry we got from Brooklyn. Everything was 100 percent kosher.”

A big Saturday
Services were suspended late last year, when Spiegel headed to Miami for the winter. But on an average Friday night, some 14 to 20 worshippers would climb the steep curved driveway on Watchung Road and enter a side door of his home marked with the word “shul” on a bronze plaque.

Spiegel’s Saturday services, however, were better attended.

“Saturday was a big day, especially if we had a simha — a celebration. Bar mitzvas I had here. We’d have 100 people whenever there was something like that.”

When he couldn’t get 10 men together for a minyan, all Spiegel needed to do was ask his neighbors.

“Who ever thought, in this area which is predominantly Reform and Conservative — if we ever needed a tenth man sometime we would knock on a door? We knew it was a Reform family, but they would do their utmost to get here to make the tenth person. I’ve knocked on doors of people around here who are gentiles, and they said to me, ‘we only wish we were Jewish.’”

“Isadore is amazing,” added Bogomilsky. “He’ll go up to people in the supermarket and ask if they are Jewish. If they say ‘yes,’ he’ll invite them to join his minyan.”

As with most synagogues, attendance was largest at the High Holy Days, with 125 people in the congregation and an a capella group of religious singers, Kol Chai, flown in from Jerusalem each year to assist the rabbi.

“I know I can’t replace it,” Spiegel said wistfully.

Nor can he keep more than memories that were born in other parts of his property, such as the garden he stocked each year with $10,000 worth of flowers, or the rooms where he would entertain guests — including senior citizens from Harrison and Newark — every Sunday.

Ever the realist, Spiegel knows he must leave those bygone moments behind him. Temporarily residing at a West Orange hotel, he has received offers to move in with friends. But Spiegel wants to leave New Jersey’s “killer weather” behind. His dream is move to La Jolla, Calif., to enjoy being his “own captain” on the three powerboats he owns.

“My money never went to my head,” he said. “I could talk to someone with ‘dese, dose, and dems’ and someone who’s got the greatest elocution in the world. That’s a gift. I praise myself. Self-praise isn’t worth too much, but I came from the gutter. I came from the pits. I just hope I can wake up every day so I can exercise and I can daven. That to me is like a pleasure.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.