Dear Mr. Applebome:

As a Teaneck resident, the rabbi of the largest Orthodox synagogue in town, and president of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County, I read your article about the alleged divisiveness in the Teaneck community with great interest but also with a tremendous sense of disappointment. I was frankly dismayed that you chose to criticize the Orthodox community for its implicit sins and inadequacies without quoting even one Orthodox spokesman in this township.

Mayor Katz is not the "mayor of the Orthodox," but the mayor of all the people. In the most recent election, he was the largest vote getter among all the candidates, and received overwhelming and wide-ranging support in every district in Teaneck.

Had you chosen to speak with an Orthodox Jew, instead of merely quoting our detractors, you might have learned that despite constituting only 15 percent of the population, Orthodox Jews make up more than 60 percent of the Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps. and pay more than 60 percent of the property taxes.

You would have learned that we walk in the streets on the Sabbath because 90 percent of the roads in Teaneck do not have sidewalks.

Most of all, you would have learned that we are decent, quiet, law-abiding middle-class families that almost never attract the attention of the police; that we have looked the other way as the township has stocked the public schools with children from other districts (at our expense); and do not complain when the Board of Education refuses to hire Orthodox Jews as teachers (and fired existing Orthodox teachers for their inability to attend the suddenly "mandatory and indispensable" Saturday morning faculty meetings).

Our stability as neighbors has increased property values across Teaneck to the advantage of all its residents.

Some Teaneck residents may be nostalgic for the days of the first voluntary integration and the soul-searching after the Pannell shooting, but neither event speaks to my historical memory at all. I, like most other Teaneck residents, did not live here in those years.

My own neighbors—on my street—have been blacks and whites, Orthodox Jews, non-Orthodox Jews, and non-Jews. Who really cares? I serve on the Teaneck Civilian Complaint Review with people who represent the same full range of diversity in Teaneck. Who cares?

Our "rising political fortunes" are attributable to what I thought was called "democracy." We moved here, opened businesses here, and vote for the candidates of our choice—Orthodox, non-Orthodox, and non-Jewish—and sometimes our candidates win, and sometimes our candidates lose. But we trust that whoever wins will govern for the betterment of our entire community.

Mayor Katz is correct when he says that the issues are political, not religious. Years of mismanagement has led Teaneck to the point where it has the least commercial development of any town in our area, and more parks than any other town in New Jersey. It is the only town with no commercial development along Route 4, and therefore we suffer from the highest property taxes in the region.

Our public schools have some of the lowest test scores in the state, and the second highest per-student cost in the county. We Orthodox pay through the nose, get almost nothing in return when it comes to services, and then have to suffer the complaints of others when we wish to have a voice in the governance of our town.

I need not go on. My point is, you might have uncovered the true story (the guilt feelings engendered in some non-Orthodox Jews who live in close proximity to the Orthodox), as you would have learned about the vital contribution of the Orthodox community to every aspect of civic life in Teaneck—had you only chosen to actually speak with an Orthodox Jew.

That you did not is, in my humble opinion, a breach of journalistic standards and particularly unworthy of the New York Times.