‘Born at the Beth’
Society’s exhibit tells the story of Newark Jewry through the hospital that was the community’s centerpiece

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

As she looks back on the two-year gestation of a project that will detail the unique life and times of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Linda Forgosh, curator at the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, likens her work to “the longest pregnancy anybody could ever imagine.”

Her offspring is an exhibit called “Born at the Beth,” which will present the rise of one of America’s leading hospitals from a 21-bed facility at the turn of the 20th century to a state-of-the-art facility created through the generosity of Newark’s Jewish community.

Its story will be told in words, photographs, artifacts, and audio and video recordings when the exhibit makes its debut Thursday, Sept. 15, in the Weill Atrium of the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany.

Forgosh, who takes prides in creating presentations that turn decades of material into microcosms of suburban Jewish life, delved into the JHS archives to unearth what she calls “a unique chapter in American history.”

“By virtue of the fact that we have such a complete collection of material from Newark Beth Israel Hospital and because there are so many members of this community who were born at the Beth, they all somehow fit together,” said the historian.

The hospital was founded in 1901, “somewhat as an act of desperation for first generation Jewish immigrants looking for a hospital where Jews were welcome” as both patients and staff, she said.

At the time, some 45,000 Jews lived in Newark, then a city of 246,000.

Although Newark had five major hospitals, all imposed strict limitations on black and Jewish patients and doctors alike. While Beth Israel’s founders were seeking donations large and small, Community Hospital was being built by African-Americans across the street from the Beth’s first location on Kinney and High streets,

Beth Israel’s initial building campaign was financed by the philanthropy of Newark department store owners Felix Fuld and Louis Bamberger, social worker-turned-insurance agent Michael Stavitsky, and Michael Hollander, heir to the largest fur-dying company in the world.

Contributions rolled in from a broad base that ranged from the largesse of major donors to nickels and dimes deposited by the poor in 4,450 pushkas, the ubiquitous fund-raising metal receptacles.

“The cans were placed on every counter of every Jewish merchant in the Third Ward,” said Forgosh. “The pushka donations became a line item in the operating budget of the early Beth. Everybody could donate, and everybody did.” And for those with no money to spare, “sometimes those donations might be a sack of potatoes or a jar of chicken fat,” she noted.

Hospital as community

The hospital’s first incarnation was at the converted Pennington Mansion, owned by the family of William Pennington, who was governor from 1837 to 1843 and speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1860 to 1861.

“The minute they opened Beth Number One it was oversubscribed, swamped by an influx of immigrants,” said Forgosh.

The building was razed five years later so “a new, more modern hospital of 80 beds could open at the same site.” But demand for medical care necessitated that the Beth build again, and it did, in 1926, on farmland on Lyons and Schuyler avenues.

In its 95-year history, Beth Israel won bragging rights for many world-class medical innovations.

“It had the first hospital-based blood bank, the first successful implant of a nuclear-powered battery heart pacemaker, the discovery of the Rh factor, and the state’s first heart-lung and kidney transplants,” Forgosh said. “For 24 years, it published the Journal of Newark Beth Israel Hospital, which was read alongside the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine by those interested in cutting-edge medical developments.”

And yet, from its beginning, the Beth was more than a hospital.

In the 1930s, most of the medical and nursing staffs, as well as its patients, lived within walking distance of the hospital in Newark’s Weequahic section. School children would meet at its front steps. Sometimes people would drop in for no other reason than to eat lunch at its tea shop.

“The receptionist knew everyone by name, and anything that happened in the community filtered through the receptionist. It was a close-knit Jewish entity,” said Forgosh.

Throughout the decades, outside events would threaten the hospital’s existence. During the Depression of the 1930s, Beth Israel managed to escape bankruptcy. In the 1960s, even as most whites fled Newark’s violent racial tensions for the presumed safety of suburbia, the board of trustees voted to keep the hospital in place.

“I never respected the Jewish community more,” said Forgosh. “The board understood it was not the Jewish hospital of their mothers and fathers, that there was no longer a Jewish community surrounding it. Everybody had long since moved. Even the funding was no longer primarily from the Jewish community. But they decided not to leave Newark and to keep the commitment to maintain the wellness of that community.”

Then, in 1996, faced with the trend toward mergers and acquisitions in the medical care industry, the board sold Beth Israel to a conglomerate, the Saint Barnabas Healthcare System, for $125 million.

The proceeds helped create the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, which finances major medical initiatives in both inner-city Newark and the suburban areas of MetroWest. “I believe Beth Israel was the greatest collective accomplishment this Jewish community ever sponsored,” said Forgosh, “and it still is perpetuated in a living legacy every time a grant is administered by the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.”

Celebrity births

Alongside its medical achievements, the Beth has a celebrity “A-list” of sorts as the birthplace of such noted Americans as novelist Philip Roth, poet Allen Ginsberg, comedian Jerry Lewis, and activist Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Struck by the knowledge that so many prominent people began life at the hospital, Forgosh began an outreach project a year ago to connect members of a widespread community with its roots in Newark (see story, this page).

The Beth’s story, spanning more than 100 years of local history, will be on display in Whippany until Nov. 18, when it will become the newest of the JHS’ traveling exhibits.

Forgosh said she was amazed at “how seemingly so few people know or really grasp the significance of this Jewish hospital as a unifying force and as a major contributor to the overall health of everybody in the world — and it was founded and funded by us. That’s a great thing.

“You don’t have to have been born at the Beth or have grown up in New Jersey or even be Jewish to appreciate good history,” she said. “And hey, we’ve got history.”

“Born at the Beth” will open with a reception on Thursday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany. It will be on display in the campus’ Weill Atrium until Nov. 18, when “Born at the Beth” will become a Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest traveling exhibit.

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