In the News

Rabbi Jim Simons instructed those attending a Thanksgiving interfaith service Sunday night in Haworth to treat the holiday as a beginning — a chance to begin to become the people they can be.

Simons, of Temple Beth-El in Closter, gave the sermon at St. Luke’s Episcopal & Our Savior Lutheran Church, and was joined by clergy from Cresskill, Demarest, Hackensack and Haworth. The Northern Valley service has been held about five years.

The outlook was grim for the tricksters. Make that horrorific!

Officials in communities across New Jersey labeled their streets unsafe for trick-or-treating today after Saturday’s snowstorm downed trees and power lines.

In some places, Halloween was officially delayed until the weekend. Grotesque! Creepy!

But just when things were looking really bad, two mothers in Essex Fells figured out how to save Halloween — at least for their kids and a few dozen others.

Diane Riley spends her days advocating for hungry people, recognizing that she could be in their place were she born 25 years later.

"I grew up in a very blue-collar home, and I know that today we would be one of the people going to food pantries," said Riley, advocacy director for the Community FoodBank in Hillside, New Jersey, and a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. "We were able to make ends meet, own a small home. We never went hungry. We had health care. That would not be the case today."

Church choirs have been around forever—a Sunday morning fixture in many churches. Popular perception is that a choir rehearses once or twice a week during most of the year, and steps it up a bit for the holidays. Thumbing through the want ads for choir director will bring up a number of part-time jobs.

That’s not how it works for Anne Matlack, D.M.A., full-time organist and choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison.

Retired Anglican Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who has risked his own life and that of his family as an advocate for gay-, lesbian- and transgender rights, shared his experiences and beliefs at the Adult Forum at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Morristown on Sunday.

In 2007, Senyonjo was relieved of his duties as a bishop in Uganda. “They never formally put me out of the church, but simply took away my duties,” he said.