Every home is big on glass in a Toms River, New Jersey, neighborhood
called North Dover. Windows let in the sun, or show off chandeliers in
multistory entrance halls.
These days, though, most homeowners
draw the blinds, retreating from brushes with a fast-growing Orthodox
Jewish community that’s trying to turn a swath of suburban luxury 10
miles (16 kilometers) from Atlantic beaches into an insular enclave. The
rub, a township inquiry found, is “highly annoying, suspicious and
creepy” tactics used by some real-estate agents.
They show up on doorsteps to tell owners that if they don’t sell,
they’ll be the only non-Orthodox around. Strangers, sometimes several to
a car, shoot photos and videos. When they started pulling over to ask
children which house was theirs, parents put an end to street-hockey
games.
“It’s like an
invasion,” said Thomas Kelaher, Toms River’s three-term mayor, who’s
fielded complaints from the North Dover section since mid-2015. “It’s
the old throwback to the 1960s, when blockbusting happened in
Philadelphia and Chicago with the African-American community -- ‘I want
to buy your house. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.’ It scares the hell out
of people.”
The upset has its roots in adjacent Lakewood, home to yeshivas including
Beth Medrash Govoha, among the world’s biggest centers for Talmudic
study. Scholars typically marry young and start large families that
maintain strict gender roles and limit interaction with secular society.
Rabbi Avi Schnall, state director of Agudath Israel of America, which
represents Orthodox Jews on political, social and religious issues, said
a few sales agents “are overly aggressive and making a bad name for the
others.” He declined to say whether anti-Semitism is at work, but said
the “extent of the anger” in Lakewood’s neighboring towns is deep,
fueling opposition to a learning center, a boarding school, dormitories
and other proposals. [...]