David gottesman lives in beach-wood, Ohio, a town with a Jewish majority. This demographic fact is largely the result of a 1952 court ruling that ordered Beachwood's leaders to allow the building of a Reform temple. So naturally Gottesman assumed there would be little objection to a plan in 1996 to open two more synagogues, one for his own brand of Orthodox Judaism and another for a Hasidic group. He was mistaken. A majority of Beachwood's Jews, mostly Reform and Conservative, have fought his cause at town meetings, at the polls and in court with an obstinacy outstripping their own tormenters' 48 years ago. Gottesman realized that he was not their problem. A successful gastroenterolo-gist who didn't wear his skullcap on the job, he looked and acted much like them. It was the ultra-Orthodox Hasids they despised, with their side curls and apparent self-righteousness. Neighbors warned that the Orthodox wanted to turn Beachwood into a medieval "ghetto."
展开▼
