‘To Newark with Love: A City, A Family, A Life’ by Helen Lippman

Written By Mike Greenblatt

To Newark with Love: A City, A Family, A Life (2023)

Helen Lippman
(America Through Time Publishers)

It’s a ‘60’s thing. Helen Lippman lived through the Newark race riots. She’s a third-generation Newarker who can remember fondly her trips to the downtown planetarium, going down the shore, renting rowboats in Weequahic Park and the rides at nearby Irvington’s Olympic Park. She also remembers the stories of police brutality that led to the riots. Her grandparents were part of a huge migration of tens of thousands of Eastern European immigrant Jews who settled in Newark. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants. She experienced anti-Semitism first-hand, made all the more palpable since she was of the generation that contained a number of “Red Diaper Babies.” Her parents were atheists with ties to American Communism. Let us not forget that after World War II ended, the Communists were still considered the good guys who helped fight Nazi Germany. Silent film star Charlie Chaplin, composer Leonard Bernstein, director Orson Welles, and singers Lena Horne, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives flirted with it but American Communism was ultimately demonized and died a quick death. (Her Jewishness, which also comes out loud and proud, was always more cultural and rooted in tradition.)

The author gets very personal. After all, she came of age in Newark, rebelling, smoking at 13, drinking at 14, finding a boyfriend at 15, cutting classes and starting fires. Yet she went to Rutgers-Newark at night, earned a journalism degree from NYU, was a voracious reader, and fell strongly into the Women’s Liberation movement where her proud feminism has tinged everything she has accomplished since.

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With a lump in my throat reading about the town I too grew up in and loved, Lippman is the first author since the revered Philip Roth to make that town truly come alive again. There’s even a compendium of modern-day attractions that the newly gentrified Newark has to offer. Lippman has followed up the publication of To Newark With Love with her follow-up, Hidden History of Newark New Jersey, which we will cover next month.

Mike Greenblatt

MIKE GREENBLATT has been writing for Goldmine magazine and New Jersey's Aquarian Weekly for more than 35 years. His writing subjects fill the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He's interviewed Joe Cocker, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, and members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. He was 18 when he attended Woodstock in 1969.

In addition to writing about music, Greenblatt has worked on publicity campaigns for The Animals, Pat Benatar, Johnny Winter, Tommy James and Richard Branson, among others. He is currently the editor of The Jersey Sound.

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