Coming home to the Five Towns

Teenage girls of Southeast Asian descent carrying skateboards, observant Jews walking to and from shul, Hispanic young men playing soccer, and blacks and whites living in the Five Towns, which are really a dozen communities that form this portion of what is called the South Shore of Nassau County.
For the uninitiated, the Five Towns is comprised of Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Inwood, Lawrence and Woodmere. Cedarhurst and Lawrence are incorporated villages that have their own boards of trustees, zoning boards and public works departments. Hewlett, Inwood and Woodmere are hamlets subject to the jurisdiction of the Town of Hempstead. In the community there also four smaller villages: Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor, Hewlett Neck and Woodsburgh. Included in the region are the Village of Atlantic Beach, North Woodmere and Meadowmere Park.
Based on 2013 population figures collected by American Factfinder, whites do make up a primary portion of the Five Towns region with religion also being a major factor as a majority of the residents are Jewish and mainly Orthodox. The area includes growing Hispanic/Latino population and a small but developing Asian populace.
Handling all of this diversity head on, the Lawrence School District, which includes Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Inwood, Atlantic Beach and parts of Woodmere and North Woodmere, began after-school programs in 2013 that explore the Spanish and Hebrew cultures.
Adding to that educational component, the district is embarking on series of cultural sensitivity programs. On Tuesday, Charlie Harary, a nationally-known talk show host and motivational speaker, and a Number Five School student parent, presented a sensitivity training session to the middle school faculty. It focused on an understanding of the daily religious practices and customs that impact interactions with the growing number of observant Jews in the Lawrence schools.

As part of the cultural sensitivity initiative a middle school assembly is planned for June 11, which will be presented by teachers and administrators, students, a Nassau County Police Department representative and a Civil Rights spiritual leader.
“This will include an ongoing focus on students living in poverty, as well as a focus on the current national discourse on race,” Lawrence Superintendent Gary Schall said regarding the cultural sensitivity programs. “Recent events in State Island, Baltimore, Ferguson and throughout America, highlight the need for deepening our understanding of each other, and establishing a context for us to celebrate the diversity that makes Lawrence [School District] a true beacon of light.”
Lawrence’s programs may have helped Deb Hirschhorn feel much less awkward when she grew up in Laurelton, Queens and attended, where she felt compelled to sing Christmas carols that she said were not a part of her identity as an observant Jew, and told her fifth-grade peers that she couldn’t go bike riding on Shabbos.
“Here in the Five Towns, I’m not alone, said Hirschhorn, who holds a Ph.D., is a marriage and family therapist and runs the “Food For Thought” series of discussions for women held weekly at Cravingz Café in Cedarhurst. “I am very happy to have all sorts of other people around me; that’s lovely. After all we share a common humanity. But seeing other religious people on the street makes me feel at home.”