Congratulating Knudsen for Ridgewood win
The Record (Bergen County)May 11, 2018
I wish to extend my congratulations to Mayor Susan Knudsen on her re-election to the Ridgewood Village Council, as I applaud the commitment and devotion to Ridgewood of all the candidates for council.
We have concluded a hard-fought municipal election campaign where the best of civic duty was at times marred by harsh accusations and allegations, and even by reference to Nazi imagery.
We deplore all hateful language whether it be racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim or anti-Catholic.
While we may not always be immune from such discourse in our village, we do have the opportunity to rise above it and close ranks while we work toward our common interests.
Mayor Knudsen has been a friend to the Jewish community. I look forward to continuing to work with her in securing Ridgewood’s values as a village committed to all of its citizens, their rights, their freedoms and their dignity.
David J. Fine
Ridgewood, May 9
The writer is a rabbi at Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood.
Nice words, Rabbi, thank you.
Kind of useless to speak out on the Nazi crap after the election. Sonenfeld, aronsohn and weitz are in Finestemple. Fine chose to support their candidate and only spike out after Harwin lost. Man oh man, the local rabbis are total failures
Way to wait til after the election to try to take the high road. I bet you feel much better now.
I love this ,
Sorry, Rabbi Fine, your words ring completely UNTRUE. You are more political than all the rest of the nasty people on Harwin’s team. If you had sent this letter PRIOR to the election, well, that would have been sincere. You are playing to your base of members at the temple, Arosohn, Sonenfeld, Weitz…..you are as despicable as the rest of them.
11:43
Exactly- is this an attempt to gsin back the families who left when you began to play politics? Pray for pay… Garage
Why are you only congratulating Susan and not Mike? The ‘best of civic duty’ was Susan who was the recipient of the ‘accusations and allegations’ thrown to her by a fellow rabbi’s wife, all in the effort to win. You were silent. She did ‘rise above it’ despite how she was treated by members of your community. Is this how you treat a friend to the Jewish community? Have a conversation with Marla Glick, she seems to know when to speak out against hate and the things you say you deplore.
Too little, too late, rabbi. Your words ring hollow indeed. Very doubtful that we would ever have seen them if the other candidates had won.
“We deplore all hateful language whether it be racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim or anti-Catholic.”
I guess the cis-gendered, heteros and Protestants are SOL with the good rabbi. Oh well, I guess they don’t belong to groups that are “entitled” to feel slighted and therefore don’t count. Perhaps if we didn’t break people into identity groups and just thought of each other as “villagers”, “neighbors” and “Americans”, we wouldn’t have to reflexively react to the divide and conquer tactics of Leftist politicians whose whole career is built around profiting from off sub-groups being “offended”.
Does everybody know that Aronsohn is 1/8 Jewish and uses the temple for his own purposes? He likes to get awards and stuff. Also goes to church with Catholic wife. All things to all people, that is he.
I applaud the Rabbi for his gracious gesture. Not his job to get involved in local politics or police campaign rhetoric. He was right to stay above the fray much like Fr. Ron at OLMC.
https://theridgewoodblog.net/shades-of-1939-in-hitler-youth-student-gun-control-march_gun_control/
Rabbi Fine was a big fan of Paul Aronoshn
6:44, sorry pal. Father Ron got involved and did the right thing BEFORE the election. Fr. Ron is a good guy. Rabbi fine is a jerk