Synagogue granted final approval for special area
BY KATHY BARATTA Staff Writer

MANALAPAN - There had been whispers of controversy, all unfounded and unnecessary, according to Rabbi Chaim Veshnefsky.

Veshnefsky, of the Jewish Learning Center Community Synagogue, Pine Brook Road, told Greater Media Newspapers that he and about 25 of his congregants had come to the Township Committee's Sept 5 meeting to thank the entire governing body for passing a resolution that he said will assist Manalapan's orthodox Jews on their way to prayer.

The resolution grants the necessary approval for an eruv.

The creation of an eruv, a symbolically enclosed area, permits certain activities to take place within that area which would Noting that although she had spent otherwise be forbidden in public by Jewish law on the Sabbath, such as pushing a stroller or a wheelchair. The eruv becomes a private area in which the otherwise prohibited activities may occur, according to an Internet Web site about an eruv in La Jolla, Calif.

According to a map posted on the Jewish Learning Center's Internet Web site, the Manalapan eruv is the area bordered by Union Hill Road, Pease Road, Gordons Corner Road, Wilson Avenue (Route 527), Sobecko Road and Pension Road. The border streets are not necessarily in the eruv, according to the Web site.

Mayor Andrew Lucas and committee members Richard Klauber, Susan Cohen and Anthony Gennaro voted to approve the resolution.

Deputy Mayor Michelle Roth abstained. "quite a bit of time during the past eight days in order to bring this to fruition," Roth said she felt that because her synagogue was "a signatory to this document, it is important to me that even the hint of impropriety be avoided. For that reason and only that reason I abstain."

Roth said she had always been in support of the eruv along with the rest of the 2007 Township Committee.

"The rumors and malicious gossip that I did not (support the eruv) are false and self-serving to those that have initiated them by manipulating the truth," she said.

Roth said she had been pleased to play an active role in speaking with the rabbis of Manalapan in order to develop an acceptable blanket resolution.

She noted that a resolution that was developed by municipal officials in 2005 while "commendable," had been "generic in nature and did not name any one synagogue in particular."

The eruv resolution adopted by the committee on Sept 5 includes all of Manalapan's Jewish houses of worship and cements a lease agreement request from the Jewish Learning Center to the committee which drafted the resolution following the Jewish Learning Center's request for it.

When asked if the congregants who accompanied him to the Sept. 5 meeting had attended in order to lodge any protests or complaints regarding the development or approval of the eruv resolution's provisions, Veshnefsky said rumors are "unfortunately always a problem," but said he and the others were only present to say thank you to the entire committee.