Former deputy mayor tired of anti-Semitism, leaving Westhampton Beach

Former Westhampton Beach Deputy Mayor Tim Laube, who lost his bid for mayor in June, said this week that he is moving out of the village he grew up in because of the growing swell of anti-Semitism in the municipality.

Mr. Laube, who supported the Hampton Synagogue’s attempt to create an invisible religious boundary in the village that, if approved, would allow Orthodox Jews to push strollers and wheelchairs on their way to temple on the Sabbath, said he has received threats from those who oppose the eruv.

“I received a number of threatening phone calls,” he said, referring to the dozen or so calls he received from angry village residents while he was running for office. “Callers accused me of being ‘a Jew-lover,’ a ‘kike-lover.’ [They] said that I would ‘burn in hell,’ [and] that ‘my parents would be turning in their graves.’”

The former village candidate, who is employed as clerk of the Suffolk County Legislature, said he heard similar remarks while campaigning door-to-door in Westhampton Beach in the spring. “I was told, ‘You got to stand up to these damn Jews,’ Another bigot said, ‘I don’t care what it costs: Keep the Jews out. You got to show those Jews ...’—and this was one of my neighbors.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Laube continued. “It was so disturbing.”

Most of those making the anti-Semitic statements apparently did not know that Mr. Laube’s late father was Jewish. His late mother was of Irish Catholic background. Mr. Laube was not raised in any religious tradition, but said he values the backgrounds of both his parents. For example, to celebrate his Irish heritage he serves as president of the Westhampton Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee.

“I’m moving out of the village,” Mr. Laube said in an interview this week. “I love the community, but I can’t look myself in the mirror and feel this is where I want to stay the rest of my life. Things would have to change.”

The former deputy mayor, who had been renting in Westhampton Beach, says that he plans to look for a new rental home somewhere in Southampton Town, but not in the village. Mr. Laube was elected to the Westhampton Beach Village Board in June 2004 and served one two-year term.

“I had planned to stay there but, after this, I’m so discouraged,” he said. “After October 1, I’m out of there.”

Mr. Laube also stressed that while he does not think that everyone in Westhampton Beach is anti-Semitic—“I think it is a minority, but a vocal and powerful minority,” he said—the overall atmosphere and sentiment shared by so many people are forcing him to move away from his hometown.

“It made me question where I live,” Mr. Laube said. “It’s not the same for me in light of all this. It’s just so saddening.”

And he contends that many of those in the “vocal minority” voted in the June election, in which sitting Mayor Conrad Teller won reelection with 60 percent of the vote. Mr. Laube charges that Mr. Teller “played both sides” of the eruv issue, noting that though he originally supported the plan, he is now leaning toward holding a public referendum on the issue.

“Here we are in this day and age asking Muslims to get along with Jews in the Middle East, in Israel, and we can’t do it in Westhampton Beach,” Mr. Laube said.

The mayor disputes Mr. Laube’s interpretation of events, noting that, in his opinion, the majority of those who oppose the religious boundary have concrete reasons for doing so.

“I don’t think it’s bigotry,” said Mr. Teller, a former Southampton Town and Westhampton Beach police chief. “They are property owners and they pay a lot of taxes here. They just don’t want an area declared an Orthodox Jewish enclave. That’s what they think.”

The mayor added that most of those who oppose the eruv are “level-headed, reasonable people.” Mr. Teller added that there was only one person, who does not live in the village, that he “would classify as a wee bit bigoted.”

The proposed eruv in Westhampton Beach, the application for which has been temporarily withdrawn by the synagogue, calls for the installation of between 30 to 40 black plastic pipes to preexisting utility poles in the village. The markers would delineate the boundary of the proposed eruv, which would measure about one square mile. There are eruvs throughout New York and elsewhere in the United States.

As a child growing up in Westhampton Beach, Mr. Laube said he heard some anti-Semitic comments from those unaware that his late father was Jewish. Mr. Laube said he dismissed those comments, noting that, at the time, he thought that such comments were uttered from a “really small, small, small group.”

However, Mr. Laube’s opinion has changed ever since he received the dozen harassing and anti-Semitic phone calls in the spring. “You have to multiply that geometrically,” he said, suggesting that those callers represent an even larger number of people.

In spite of the controversy surrounding the eruv which, in part, can be blamed on his election loss, Mr. Laube said he still stands behind the efforts of Rabbi Marc Schneier to create the boundary in Westhampton Beach. He noted that other municipalities, like the Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey, “wasted” more than a million dollars in trying to fight such an effort in the past.

“I supported it, morally and ethically, as the right thing to do,” Mr. Laube said of the proposed eruv in Westhampton Beach. “I hope the synagogue moves forward with the eruv.”