Lakewood Orthodox Jews Pitch In After 2-year-old Latino Boy’s Tragic Death
Image by GoFundMe
— The Jewish community of Lakewood, New Jersey, is providing assistance to the family of a 2-year-old Latino boy who was killed in a tragic accident.
Jayden Marquez was killed Thursday when his aunt accidentally backed into him with her car in the family’s driveway.
An Orthodox Jewish committeeman, Meir Lichtenstein, went to the hospital to comfort the family, the Asbury Park Press reported. He also arranged for Misaskim, an organization that assists in burials according to Jewish law, to clean the scene of the child’s death before the family returned home.
The Central Jersey township’s Orthodox Jewish mayor, Menashe Miller, arranged the establishment of a GoFundMe page to defray the costs of the funeral. The page reached and surpassed its goal of $7,500, with many of the donors local Orthodox Jews.
The Jew in the City blog reported that before the details of the family were known, several anti-Semitic rants assuming the grieving family was Jewish appeared online, which were “trashing religious Jews for not watching their children.”
Lakewood, which has over 90,000 residents, is a hub of Orthodox Judaism and also has a large Hispanic population.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
