(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)February 23, 2010

(MAHWAH, NJ) – Cipora O. Schwartz, author and local historian, spoke on February 23, 2010 under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the History Club of Ramapo College about “The Barnert Family of Paterson and Religious Freedom in America.”

Her book, “An American Jewish Odyssey: American Religious Freedom and the Nathan Barnert Temple,” (Ktav Publishing) which took the long-time congregant eight years to write, was published in honor of the temple’s 160th anniversary in 2007. The Nathan Barnert Temple, which adheres to the Reform direction Judaism, is the oldest Jewish congregation in New Jersey, founded as Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Paterson in 1847.

The congregation was dedicated as the Nathan Barnert Memorial Temple on Sept. 17, 1894. Barnert had served as Paterson’s mayor for two terms. He also built and donated the Barnert Memorial Hospital on Broadway and the Daughters of Miriam Home for the Aged. During his mayoral terms, he donated his monthly salary to charitable and needy organizations of all faiths. According to Schwartz, “His sense of philanthropy and the civic duty he demonstrated really laid the foundation for what this community is all about.”

More generally, according to Schwartz, religious freedom and equal rights enabled the Jews of Paterson and the rest of the United States not only to worship as they pleased, but also to realize the American dream. At the same time, she acknowledged, not all Americans were so fortunate. To this day, racism and other forms of discrimination continue to limit or deny access to the kind of success Nathan Barnert and other American Jews were able to achieve.

She closed her talk by relating how to this day the community founded by Barnert and his contemporaries, even as they re-located to the affluent surroundings of Franklin Lakes, continues to fight for social justice and equal rights for all. Key to this tradition has been the unique leadership of Rabbis Max Raisin and Martin Freedman, both of whom were courageous fighters against bigotry and for civil rights.

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