A sleepy little town, it was originally named “Turkey” by its first Puritan settlers in 1720 because of the wild turkeys that roamed the area, and still do to this day.

The schools are good; in fact that’s one reason Henry Kavett and his family moved to the area years ago. Kavett, who is Jewish, appreciates that the town’s only middle school sends all of its eighth-grade students to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City, where they hear a survivor’s story.

Still, most of the 12,000 residents are Christian, according to Councilman Stephen H. Vengrow, and New Providence has a long history as a Christian town. Along with an image of a turkey, the official town seal bears a picture of a church, a reminder of the town’s name change in 1759, following the collapse of a church balcony in which no one was seriously hurt.

The presence of so many Christian residents was what Vengrow said he was trying to refer to when, at a Nov. 20 council meeting, he said his “Christian town” was part of a “Christian nation.”

Vengrow said he felt that fellow borough staffers and council members understood what he meant but that some audience members heard his remarks from a different perspective.

Those remarks came during a discussion of a memo on holiday decorations and a subsequent vote to decide on the display of Christmas decorations — as well as a banner displaying a Hanukka menora.

“I said if you’re going to put up a menora, you should put up a creche,” Vengrow said. “I meant that I didn’t think people in town would object to a creche…. I was too hasty in the way I made my comments.”

Kavett, a Jew and New Providence resident for over eight years, was in the audience that night. He said he felt Vengrow’s statement to be insensitive and that he also was upset that other public officials in the room said nothing in response to the comments.

Nobody at the Nov. 20 meeting said anything, Kavett said in an interview with NJ Jewish News. “That’s where you start to say, ‘Wait a minute.’ As a Jew, as an American, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ How come no one else had any problem with Vengrow’s comments? No one was willing to say, ‘That’s horrible.’”

After the Anti-Defamation League and residents expressed their outrage over Vengrow’s remarks, he apologized, and at a town council meeting the evening of Dec. 4 he did so again, calling for a resolution stressing the need for people to honor and respect New Providence’s diversity. The resolution passed unanimously, and the council indicated it would establish some kind of borough-wide interfaith commission to teach tolerance and highlight diversity in the town.

ADL’s NJ regional director, Etzion Neuer, said his office is speaking to residents, clergy, and town officials about the issue.

Merle Kalishman, chair of the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, was at the Dec. 3 council meeting. She said she would send a letter to the council offering the CRC’s services in establishing interfaith dialogue and activities. She also spoke to NJJN about the troubling accounts she heard.

On Dec. 5 ADL was scheduled to run its anti-bias program at the New Providence High School.

Vengrow, a managing partner at the Manhattan and Jersey City maritime law firm of Cichanowicz, Callan, Keane, Vengrow & Textor LLP, told NJJN he has spoken to residents and members of the clergy, including Rabbi Stuart Gershon of Temple Sinai in Summit, and with Neuer.

ADL interpreted Vengrow’s original comments about New Providence’s being a “Christian town” to be “exclusionary and troubling,” said Neuer. The ADL official said the remarks “sent a strong message that non-Christians were unwelcome in New Providence,” something ADL finds objectionable. But, he added, the councilman “was pretty clear to us in expressing remorse for what he said. I think people often can say things and not realize the consequence of what they’re saying. He responded in the way we hoped he would — he clarified his statement and expressed remorse. I would encourage others to accept his apology.”

Some Jewish residents who were present at the Dec. 4 meeting said they didn’t feel the apology was enough. Todd Rivkes, who told the council that rocks were thrown through his windows when his family first moved into town years ago, called on Vengrow to resign his post.

Eleven-year-old Sara Kelleher read a prepared statement to the council. She thanked Vengrow for his apology but said she still wanted to tell him and others how she felt when she heard him call her hometown a “Christian town.” She cautioned him to think before he speaks in the future and to remember that as an elected official he represents the whole town, not just the Christians.

“I was furious; why shouldn’t I have been?” Sara said. “But there was something else too. I felt hurt and rejected.… I am not a Christian. I am a Jew. Is Councilman Vengrow saying that I don’t count as a citizen of the town I have lived in all my life? Or of the country I love? What am I?”

Kavett said he’d like to see the town not only acknowledge that the remarks were insensitive but to address the greater issue, something he feels would be of interest to the town’s Chinese, Hindu, Indian, and Muslim minority populations as well.

“There are a lot of things that were said,” Kalishman said. “The issue is silence. People who said they didn’t know, the people who have had issues — they should have spoken up. But they have to have a place to go and a person to tell.”

Kalishman said her committee would work with the borough to create such a system.