Lakewood NJ -9 part series - Orthodox Community

[JustAnotherGen]

I thought BTA had posted about the backlash against the citizens of Lakewood NJ who are also Orthodox Jews as the result of a few individuals who did a bad bad thing. Went back a few pages and can't find it.

This is a follow up to that - 9 part series that I thought might be of interest to everyone.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2017/08/lakewood_inside_the_turmoil_in_njs_most_controvers.html


My note: Not sure how I feel about the title . . .Corruption implies wrong doing by the community at large. I disagree.


Race, religion, corruption and politics: A guide to the crisis in Lakewood

Editor's note, Part 1: Over the next nine days, NJ Advance Media will take a closer look at Lakewood, one of New Jersey's fastest-growing and most complex towns.
Lakewood is home to a huge Orthodox Jewish community and the rapid growth has engulfed the town, igniting tensions between the religious and secular societies on many levels.
Each day, we will explore some of the major issues in the community, including the welfare fraud investigation, housing problems and the strains on the education system.

Lakewood represents the convergence of almost every issue in New Jersey – race, religious freedom, discrimination, corruption, local politics, school funding, overdevelopment and transportation woes.

What makes it unique is the unprecedented growth of the town combined with the complex issues surrounding the booming Orthodox Jewish community.

While tensions have been rising in Lakewood for years, the turmoil has escalated in recent weeks with a showdown over school funding and a high-profile welfare fraud investigation.
The town thrust into the spotlight this summer with the arrest of 26 members of the Orthodox community accused of lying about their income to collect more than $2 million in public assistance.

The arrests brought renewed attention to Lakewood and highlighted what residents of the Ocean County town already know – Lakewood is changing. This once-faded resort community has become the most complex town in New Jersey.

[EllieBC]

1. The Lakewood situation is an unsustainable mess.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with kollel and kollel families. Lakewood residents are not chassidishe. They are yeshivish....Litvaks maybe is a better description?

Anyway, the Lakewood Jewish community does (more often than not) kollel after yeshivah. The men continue to study. So they graduate high school (from a yeshivah) with an at best questionable secular education and marry. The Bais Yaakov schools for girls provide the girls with a better secular education. This is because the girls will be working once married because their husbands will be learners instead of earners. This is the preferred set up. But the women can't totally support the men and their families because they tend to have large families and they start early.

So you have parents supporting their children and their spouses.

Can you see where this system is destined to fail?

People like to talk shit about chassidim but at least chassidim believe in working.

But these young and growing families with a not very high income to no income has created an atmosphere where fraud seems like a way out of the financial disaster.

Instead of working like chassidim or MO do.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Thank you Ellie

Very educational. I greatly appreciate it.

[Mosby]

5. one of the first articles posted here about the welfare fraud

Had "talk backs" at the bottom. There was lots of support from the orthodox community for the perps, claiming that "gaming the system" was legal and wasn't fraud.

I suspect this is a lot more widespread in that community than people think.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Hi friend!!

I did post something about this, but it was in GD (Sickening displays of anti-Semitism after welfare fraud arrests in Lakewood).

This type of bigotry always surfaces when a Jew is the culprit in a crime. It is very similar to what happens to the African-American community, and, to a lesser extent, to the GLBT community, when one of us does something bad, then all of us are to blame and any bigotry resulting is our fault because of the actions of someone in our group.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Oh thank you!

I knew you had picked up the story.

I hope this article leads to understanding in NJ.. Not harming.