Early Radburn and Jews: Beyond a simplistic narrative

Radburn's experience can't be reduced to a tabloid headline

A recent New York Post story (“Inside Radburn — NJ’s hate-filled, antisemitic past, and hope-filled future’’) oversimplifies Radburn’s experience with anti-Semitism in the community’s first few decades. It exaggerates Jews’ historic exclusion from Radburn, and fails to note examples in which Jews were welcomed to early Radburn and lived happily there.

As editors of this blog on Radburn history, we helped the Post with photos to illustrate its article. But we had not read the piece before publication, and believe that historical fact contradicts some of its assertions.

The author, himself a Jew who grew up in Fair Lawn 1954-75, claims flatly that “our kind were unwelcome’’ in Radburn. But he ignores the fact that Jews, who were legally barred from buying homes in many other American suburbs before World War II, were among Radburn’s very first residents in 1929. They included Abraham Platt, a stockbroker; Robert Cohen, an accountant; and Maurice Pine, a dentist and later founder of the Fair Lawn Public Library.

In 1942, only 13 years after Radburn’s founding, William Elbow was elected president of Radburn’s governing body. In an interview in 1979, Elbow said he moved to Radburn from Paterson because he was Jewish and had been told that Ridgewood – like many communities at the time – had residential deed restrictions forbidding sales to Jews.

The Post article also wrongly accuses Radburn’s famous co-planner, Clarence Stein, of making Jewish exclusion part of his plan. Although Stein apparently did accede to the developer’s unwritten policy of racial exclusion – again, like virtually all suburbs at the time – there is no hint in his actions or writings of anti-Semitism; he was himself Jewish. Moreover, in the years when Stein was active in Radburn, he had no say in who was or wasn’t admitted for residence. He was an architect and planner, not a real estate agent.

All that said, too many Jews have reported feeling unwelcome in Radburn in the period after World War II to think prejudice in that period was not real. In one case, Radburn neighbors banded together to (unsuccessfully) try to block a house sale to a Jewish family. And real estate agents – apparently including one who himself was Jewish – steered Jewish home-seekers to other neighborhoods.

But discrimination was only part of the picture in the post-war era.

Many youngsters who lived outside Radburn -- including the author of the Post article – recall playing happily and freely in its parks, playgrounds and ballfields alongside kids whose families lived in the Radburn Association.

Many Radburn residents welcomed and supported Jews and Jewish institutions. For example, Mayor John Pollitt, a Radburn resident, spoke at the groundbreaking for the Fair Lawn Jewish Center in 1949, and in recognition of his support for the project was given the honor of turning over the first spadeful of dirt.

Another speaker that day was Rev. Bedros Apelian, pastor of the Church in Radburn, a Christian congregation. In fall 1957, when the building of Fair Lawn’s new Reform synagogue was delayed, the temple took advantage of the church board’s offer to use its building for high holiday services.

When the Fair Lawn Jewish Center officially opened in 1950, those in attendance included the president of the Fair Lawn Chapter of the Women’s American ORT, Tamar Braun – a Radburn resident.

These are documented facts. Memories, on the other hand, can be faulty. The Post quotes a former Radburn resident as saying “We had no Jewish people living in houses in Radburn up through the 1960s.” But a scan of a Radburn residential database in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s shows too many examples to the contrary to list here.

Another resident is quoted as saying that when his Jewish family moved to Ballard Place in Radburn in 1953 (when he was 3 years old) “six of the 16 houses on the cul-de-sac went up for sale within weeks.’’ Yet real estate records from the time show no such rash of sales. And within a few years, Ballard Place’s Jewish residents also included an Israeli diplomat, a rabbi, and the daughter of a prominent Radburn realtor.

Simplifying Radburn's history into a binary of "hate-filled past" versus "hope-filled future" does a disservice to the complex experience of its Jewish families. The subject deserves nuanced treatment – especially at a time of heightened anti-Semitism.