BEARD DEBUTS
FRANKLY SPEAKING
“My Best Friend Anne Frank” doesn’t entirely
live up to its promise.

FEBRUARY 24, 2022 / 23 ADAR 5782
PAGE 26
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM — WHAT IT MEANS TO BE JEWISH IN PHILADELPHIA —
$1.00 OF NOTE
LOCAL Two Synagogues
Hire Rabbis
Newcomers take
over for longtime
leaders. Page 4
SPORTS Girls Day School
Basketball Teams
Have Strong Years
Barrack, Kohelet
teams make the
playoffs. Page 6
THE LOOK
Take a Look at
The Look
Special section
highlights fashion,
home trends.

Page 15
Volume 134
Number 46
Published Weekly Since 1887
Local Jews
React to Fred
Neulander Musical
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
WORD THAT A LOS ANGELES
playhouse is turning a South Jersey tragedy
— Rabbi Fred Neulander having his wife
Carol Neulander killed — into a musical
called “A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill”
has left former members of the rabbi’s
community, M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill,
aghast. In 1994, Neulander, who was having
an aff air with another woman, paid
two hitmen to murder his wife. He left
the Reform synagogue in 1995 and was
convicted in 2002. He is incarcerated in
the New Jersey State Prison, serving a
sentence of 30 years to life.

Matt Schatz, the playwright and
composer behind the musical, lived in
Cherry Hill during his senior year of high
school in the late 1990s, as well as aft er
college and aft er graduate school. His
parents still live in the township, he said.

But while Schatz is Jewish and had
a bar mitzvah at another South Jersey
synagogue, he was never a member of
M’kor Shalom. He said he decided to write
See Musical, Page 12
Jared Armstrong’s mother, Lou Ellen Butler, and his father, Antonio Armstrong, hold him as a
baby during a simcha event celebrating his birth.

Courtesy of Jared Armstrong
Black Jew Denied Israeli
Citizenship Twice
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
ACCORDING TO BOTH himself and his
rabbi, Jared Armstrong is Jewish.

But according to the state of Israel,
Armstrong is not Jewish enough to gain
the birthright citizenship that the state
promises. Th e 24-year-old, who is Black and
grew up in Philadelphia, is trying to make
aliyah “because it’s my right,” he said. Aft er
Armstrong’s two-year basketball career
at Division II Slippery Rock University
in western Pennsylvania ended, Hapoel
Haifa, an Israeli professional basketball
team, recruited him to play because of his
Jewish background.

Israeli offi cials, though, have rejected
See Denied, Page 13