NYT: Tenafly NJ is One Screwed up Town

Tenafly is our neighbor town, the one that sued to ban the Jewish Eruv, hardly visible wires that encircle part of the town.

When the NY Times singles out lots of people in your town out for acting absurdly, you really ought to consider intensive town therapy.

Or maybe they should stop putting the nasty pills in the town water supply.

[Picture on the right: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times. Ricki Rosen, seated at right, at a Tenafly Lions Little League game. In 2006, she was slapped by another parent, who fought a resulting attendance ban.]

Tenafly Journal

Little League Mother’s Slap Still Stings in a New Jersey Town

By NATE SCHWEBER and MANNY FERNANDEZ

TENAFLY, N.J. — One June day at a baseball field in this leafy Bergen County borough, one Little League mom slapped another in the face.

The confrontation occurred after a practice near the end of the Tenafly Lions Little League’s 2006 season. Ellen Reichenberg slapped Ricki Rosen after what people in Tenafly and a lawyer for Mrs. Reichenberg describe as a “verbal altercation.” Several Little League parents said the dispute stemmed from the fact that Mrs. Reichenberg’s oldest son had not been selected for one of the league’s all-star teams.

Nearly two years later, the slap itself is no longer the talk of the town. These days, the talk in Tenafly concerns the punishment and its aftermath. The recent decision by the Little League’s board of directors to ban Mrs. Reichenberg from attending games for two weeks of its short season has embroiled the league and the Borough Council in a messy public controversy.

The Council threatened to revoke the league’s use of municipal fields and other benefits if it did not rescind the ban, a move that has angered parents and soured relations between the league and the Council in the kind of apple-pie place that holds an annual Little League parade to kick off Opening Day...