I finished that Great Neck book.

Inventing Great Neck is the perfect title, since so much of the book is an "invention" of sorts.

Of course like the joke about the blind men and the elephant, we all see things from different perspectives. Except that this is just a blog, my personal perspective of the world, while Inventing Great Neck, by Judith S. Goldstein is supposed to be a serious history or sociology book, not a personal memoir.

It's bad enough that she skips, totally ignores, the presence and growing strength of the more Orthodox Jewish community during the 1950's and 1960's, but her attitude towards their numbers and commercial power in her Epilogue echoes what Mrs. Sears, Great Neck North's sewing teacher, who retired in 1967 used to say:

"Great Neck was so much better before the Jews came."

Never one to allow such a statement to pass, I asked her what she meant.

"We used to have such beautiful Christmas pageants."

Mrs. Sears also took off an entire grade, from A to B, when I refused to appear on Shabbat at her "Fashion Show."

Goldstein doesn't like the Great Neck of today, with its wealth of kosher restaurants and Sabbath-observing, strictly kosher stores. She admits their existence in pain, as if she's announcing a surprisingly rapid-growing cancer.

Well, the long-serving rabbi, whom she ignores in her listings of rabbis, Rabbi Wolf, of the Great Neck Synagogue, not only planted those Orthodox spiritual seeds, but he carefully tended them for decades. He and his family moved to Great Neck in the 1950's, during the time that Goldstein claims she's reporting. His widow still lives there.

Goldstein praises the Hebrew Schools and youth activities of the Reform Temple Bethel and the Conservative Temple Israel, but she ignores the fact that soon after Jews and gentiles united in the early 1950's to establish the North Shore Hospital, the North Shore Hebrew Academy, Great Neck's Orthodox Jewish elementary school opened its doors to any child whose parents wanted a full Jewish education. Rabbi Wolf even provided rides to children who had no other way of getting to class. By the late 1970's or early 1980's, the Great Neck Public School's were emptying out, as secular Great Neck was aging, and the NSHA leased a school building.

In the early-mid 1960's the most active and intellectually stimulating Jewish Youth activities were in the Great Neck Synagogue, which were also open to teens whose parents weren't members.

We also ran the best "dances." I was on the committee, auditioned the bands, made the posters and sat at the entrance collecting money. When the other shuls saw our success, they imitated and had dances, too. As I became more religious and Joel Paul was hired as Youth Director, the dances ended.

Goldstein only focuses on the Reform and a bit on the Conservative communities. She really hasn't a clue. The major difference between Orthodox and the others is that Orthodox Jewish Life is full-time. Every aspect of life is affected, food, clothes, education, daily prayer.

People have asked whether it's worth reading the book. If you're not from Great Neck, don't bother. I don't consider it accurate enough. If you're from Great Neck, I'd appreciate your comments to the blog, please. If you just want a general idea of how Great Neck grew, I found that interesting, if it's really accurate. Because of the omissions I know of, I'm suspicious of everything else. Some of her mistakes are inexcusable like the building of Great Neck South campus, which was easily a decade earlier than she implies.

Yes, that's me, as I'd go to Great Neck North, Class of '67.