by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

August 13, 2009

For the 10 years she has been working at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, something has been troubling Linda Forgosh.

The executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest has been curious about the origins of eight old photographs hanging on a wall of the second-floor offices of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey.

One is a vintage fund-raising poster. Another is a faded, posed picture of officials gathered at a ground-breaking ceremony. The others depict exteriors of inner-city and suburban buildings that once housed forerunners of the modern-day MetroWest.

“A picture is worth 1,000 words, except when you look at one and no one can tell you what it’s about,” Forgosh lamented. “People don’t know what these pictures are or why they are hanging there. I thought to myself there is a history of the community here that needs to be told.”

So Forgosh set to work, rummaging through JHS archives to pinpoint dates, places, and people depicted in the large framed photos.

After several weeks she came up with enough information to write captions for each of them.

The captions she created “represent a story of this community. You get a sense of the lives of the people who worked in those buildings, why they were there, and what they represent,” she said.

The display begins with a 1923 poster aimed at raising $500,000 to build the YM-YWHA on High and West Kinney Streets in Newark — a crossroads that Forgosh labeled the “Hollywood and Vine” of the city’s vibrant Jewish community in the early to mid 20th century.

“If you lived in Newark and you were Jewish you belonged to the Y,” she said. Its programs — including series of lecturers and performers as varied as folksinger Woody Guthrie and aviatrix Amelia Earhart — appealed to non-Jews as well.

Hanging next to the poster is a 1922 photo of the Y’s ground breaking, with a group of anonymous men Forgosh is still hoping to identify. Next to it is a picture of the completed building itself.

Other photos set in a Newark of a different era include:

• An early incarnation of Newark Beth Israel Hospital, which stood diagonally across the street from the Y between 1908 and 1928, before it relocated to Lyons Avenue. Its High Street headquarters was sold to the Daughters of Israel Nursing Home, which ultimately moved to West Orange.
• The Y’s second home on Chancellor Avenue in the Weequahic section. The Y was there from 1959 to 1969, and its building was occupied by the city’s board of education after the flight of Newark’s Jews to the suburbs. That building also appears in another photograph.
• The Hebrew Benevolent Society and Orphans Asylum on Clinton Avenue.
• The Jewish Community Council on Central Avenue.
• The Essex County Council of Jewish Agencies on Clinton Street.

The remaining photo is of the building that housed the MetroWest federation and the Jewish News headquarters on Glenwood Avenue in East Orange.

Forgosh wasn’t able to identify the photographers.

She had assistance in the project from Frank Korczukowski, the campus director of facilities “and a real history buff,” as well as Tony Barragato, production manager in UJC MetroWest’s marketing and communications department, who supervised the design and printing of the captions.

“Photographs are more than just photographs; they tell stories,” Forgosh said. “All of history is in the details.”

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