Jews are not welcome in Rooservelt NJ, according to former Mayor.
Former Mayor Neil Marko, who voters recently ousted in a recall election, said, “Everyone in Roosevelt knows what a nice place it is to live except for the Orthodox Jews that, as Ralph Seligman puts it, are considered a threat to our communality by a bunch of old-timers.” An article that appears in the April edition of NJ Monthly about Roosevelt quotes Seligman as saying the recall “vote against the mayor was the expression of that communality. This business against the mayor was led by secular Jews-old-timers. We have coexisted and we have welcomed everybody.” The article also states that Seligman said the recall election came about because of the mayor’s plan to run a private Orthodox Jewish High School at the local synagogue, Roosevelt’s only house of worship. With regard to the article, Marko said, “This is just a nice spin on plain old intolerance and bigotry. If the editors of NJ Monthly had looked past their advertisers’ dollars, they would have seen that.” According to NJ Monthly, Roosevelt has 931 residents with a 0.2 percent decrease in population from 2000 to 2004.