Who knew? The New Jersey town that became Orthodox central

This ‘company town’ is home to the largest yeshiva in the US, and its business community is booming. Now Lakewood’s small airport is getting a makeover too

IN THE BEGINNING, God created New Jersey. OK, perhaps, but many years ago there were the Delaware Indians, followed by Dutch and British colonists who landed off the Jersey Shore in the 17th century.

Then New Jerseyans fought against the British in the Revolutionary War. The state that is now best known for Bruce Springsteen and its proximity to New York City earned the nickname “Garden State”.

By the early 1900s, wealthy New Yorkers ventured out of the city via train and horse-and-buggy carts to relax and decompress in Central New Jersey towns that were by then dotted with luxury hotels. In the 1940s, when Jews were being slaughtered in Europe, one rabbi looked to New Jersey and identified his pastoral promised land.

In Lakewood — an Ocean County township that is not especially close to either Manhattan or Philadelphia — Rabbi Aharon Kotler, a Talmid chacham, or learned man, who left Europe at the outset of the Holocaust, planted roots.

In 1943, a year after opening a small yeshiva in White Plains, New York he moved the school to this New Jersey town that would become a pivotal piece of the American Jewish puzzle.

“A place out of town, suburbia, even today is not always so welcoming to yeshivas,” said Rabbi Aaron Kotler, the grandson of the man who birthed modern Lakewood and who has himself contributed to its massive transformation in recent decades.

Today, under the leadership of Rabbi Aharon Kotler’s grandsons, the yeshiva — Beth Medrash Govoha, or BMG — has grown from a dozen students in its first year to more than 7,000 this academic year, making it the largest yeshiva outside of Israel.

FULL STORY Inside New Jersey’s Orthodox boomtown (Jewish Insider)