Heaven-sent Haven

The Berlinskys didn’t set out to become Pennsylvania farmers. They started in New York City, where Max (Mordechai Zalman), arrived in 1879 and married Annie (Hena Devorah) a few years later. Together, they tried to build a frum home at a time when Jewish infrastructure in the city was still thin, unreliable, and spiritually draining. Keeping Shabbos meant risking your job, kosher food wasn’t easy to come by, and raising children in a Torah environment felt nearly impossible. About a dozen frum families made a radical decision: become farmers just outside White Haven and keep the Yiddishkeit intact.

Land was cheap, farm work was honest, and the mountains didn’t fire you for refusing to milk a cow on Shabbos. Max bought acreage, built a dairy farm from the ground up, and slowly carved out a resolute rural Jewish outpost, long before White Haven knew it ever had a Jewish story to tell.

We begin at the old wooden barn clearly visible from Oley Valley Road, the last surviving witness to my family’s life on the farm, which they sold in 1913. Since my last visit eight years ago, the barn has even gotten an upgrade: a bright green metal roof, gleaming through the snowfall like someone decided this old relic deserved a fresh yarmulke.

For a moment, I just stare at it. This barn once held everything: the livestock, the hayloft playgrounds, the winter chores, children sitting on overturned crates removing kernels from corncobs while their father told them stories of Jewish history, the grief my family once hid from one another inside its wooden walls. It served as a classroom, sanctuary, a hachnassas orchim and, at times, shelter from sorrow.

I want to see inside. No, I need to. But that means gaining entry to a barn that hasn’t belonged to my family in 112 years, especially one that could very well contain someone’s belongings or temper.

A short dirt road barely 200 feet in length separates the barn from a small cottage that wasn’t here in my ancestors’ day. The original home burned down long ago, taking the era with it and sparing only the barn.

I walk up to the cottage and knock. Gently. Twice. Then I step back, hands visible, posture set to nonthreatening Jewish reporter in the snowstorm.

The door opens an inch, then another. A middle-aged man appears, wearing the expression of someone dragged away from a winning dream (lottery money in one hand, map to the Fountain of Youth in the other) only to find himself brought face-to-face with me on his porch.

I try to sell him on the significance: how my family lived here, how the barn is the last monument to a vanished farming community, how Trump spoke just up the road last night. He is unmoved. He tells me he’s just the renter, has no access to the barn, and strongly discourages contacting the owner, who works late, and, by implication, wants even less to do with me than the man currently blocking the doorway.

The snow is falling harder; his patience is melting faster. I take the hint.

Back in the car, Itzik, my photographer who has been mentally rehearsing evasive maneuvers in the event that a shotgun made an appearance, is relieved. I’m disappointed. The barn has denied us its secrets yet again.

Trump talked the night before about “bringing it all back,” especially manufacturing, farming, industry. Standing outside a barn that once held all of that, I couldn’t tell whether this was proof of how much had been lost or how much faith people were still willing to place in idea of return.

We pivot to Plan B: find the locals, specifically with pro-Trump signage. Surely someone with a massive Trump banner across their property would be thrilled to talk to a Trump White House reporter, or at least offer a warm foyer for two strangers escaping a snow squall. But house after house is dark, quiet, unresponsive. Meanwhile, most of the businesses in town are shuttered. So where is everybody?

To this day I’ll never know.

We leave the rural parts for the town of White Haven, encompassing a single square mile, home to some 500 souls and dwindling. There are few signs of life at a nearby tavern; we’re the first two customers in a while. The bartender, Christian, is energetic and talkative. He tells us snow sometimes keeps folks home and sometimes pulls them in. Today, it seems to be the former. The economy hasn’t helped, he adds. His hours are up and everything costs more.

“Well,” I say, “Trump’s getting rid of taxes on tips and overtime.”

Christian brightens. Hope is a powerful currency in a town like this. It wasn’t ideology that lit up Christian’s face, it was arithmetic. Politics doesn’t show up to towns like this as a theory. It shows up as a line item on a paycheck or a tip jar. Trump’s appeal here isn’t abstract, it’s transactional.

Outside, I meet Ranger Bob, a Vietnam veteran, and Dennis, the tavern’s chef and a regional culinary legend. He cooks elk, bison, even alligator.

I ask what alligator tastes like. He gives me a long look and replies, simply: “Alligator.”

I press: more like fish or chicken?

He shakes his head. “Like alligator. That’s what it tastes like.”

Ranger Bob bursts out laughing. “What, you thought alligator tastes like chicken?” Soon all three of us are laughing in the swirling snow.

Now Ranger Bob interjects with unexpected enthusiasm. “Rattlesnake,” he declares. “Now that’s good eatin’.”

I ask Dennis if there’s one animal he’s always wanted to taste but never had the chance.

He thinks for a moment, then says, “You know what I’ve never cooked, and I don’t think I’ve ever had? Ostrich. And ostrich eggs. They’re supposed to be delicious.”

He then pauses.

“I don’t think I want to know what hippos taste like.”

“Fair,” I say. “Especially since hippos would probably get a taste of us first.”

Dennis raises an eyebrow.

“Did you know hippos are the most lethal animal in the world?” he asks.

“Second,” I correct him gently. “Mosquitoes are number one.”

“Touché,” he concedes.

“But in the US,” I continue, “the deadliest animal is actually… deer. Car accidents.”

This delights Ranger Bob, who has seen enough mangled bumpers and roadside memorials to appreciate the logic. For him, this is a whole new trivia to share with future tavern patrons.

Dennis isn’t thinking about tips or taxes or economic policy; he’s thinking about survival.

I ask Ranger Bob and Chef Dennis what happened to all the farms, the ones that outlived my family’s and once defined the valley.

“Most of the farmland’s been bought up,” Ranger Bob says, shaking his head. “Turned into developments. Condominiums.”

As a result, he explains, the food that once grew a mile or two away now has to be imported from Mexico, California, or if they’re lucky, New Jersey. “All that distance drives the prices way up.”

There’s a sadness in how he says it, but before it settles, Chef Dennis jumps in with the upside.

“We’ve become a tourist region,” he beams. “Great skiing, great fishing, great hunting, great hiking, white-water rafting, camping you name it.”

He ticks off each activity like he’s listing ingredients in a recipe he knows by heart. Ranger Bob nods along.

Trump talks about reviving “beautiful clean coal” and old industries, but White Haven is already living in the after. The coal is gone, the farms are gone, the industry is gone. What’s left is seasonal, uneven, and poorly paid tourism. The applause at the rally wasn’t for a past that people expect to return to. It was for a future they hope will feel less precarious than the present.

He personally appreciates all of it, thanks to a childhood spent outdoors with a father who believed that the greatest classroom had trees for walls and a sky for a ceiling. That early love carried him through schooling, certifications, and ranks until he eventually became a district ranger.

“I was getting paid for being in the great outdoors,” he says, pride flowing through every syllable. “It was great. And I was getting paid for it!”

They don’t have much to say about Trump or the rally itself — only that they watched it the next morning.

“There are some changes,” Ranger Bob says cautiously, “but it takes time.”

“I just love cooking,” Dennis adds, quieter now. “I like seeing people happy.”

It’s a simple sentiment, but in this snow-dusted tavern, on a day when the roads are empty and the air smells faintly of woodsmoke and fryer oil, it feels like the closest thing to a mission statement for the entire region.

Pastoral Views

J

ust down the road and across the railroad tracks sits White Haven’s library, a surprisingly modern building that doubles as a museum filled with relics from the town’s past, triples as a food pantry, and quadruples as headquarters of the region’s historical society. In a place where resources are scarce, buildings learn to wear many hats.

Two members of that historical society, Erv Carter and John Crosley, have agreed to brave the storm and unlock the library just for us, even though it’s been officially closed for weather. Their enthusiasm for White Haven’s history seems to overpower mere meteorological concerns. In fact, I got to know them over my six-month quest back in 2017, which eventually lead to the discovery of my family farm and the barn thereupon.

Erv describes the community as “lower socio-economic,” though he quickly adds that when he was growing up, no one could tell. “We never knew we had nothing,” he says. “It was the same for everyone. We were happy.”

His mother had just two dresses, he recalls, yet they never felt poor. That’s simply what life was.

Erv doesn’t own a cell phone and has never heard of WhatsApp, but he volunteers regularly at the food pantry. Lately, he says, the number of recipients has doubled in the past six months. He’s not sure what’s behind it. Maybe heating bills swallowing up the rest of people’s paychecks, he speculates.

“Eleven to fifteen of the forty-one kids hadn’t eaten since the previous day,” he says quietly. “It takes a chunk out of our budget, but it’s the most worthwhile program we have here.”

John, the historical society’s president, is a friendly man with Civil-War-era sideburns who genuinely looks as though he stepped out of one of the many black-and-white photographs lining the walls. He has been preserving White Haven’s history since he was a schoolboy, the kind of lifelong calling that turns a hobby into a civic duty.

As we walk through the museum exhibits, Erv gestures toward a map and reminisces: “Pond Creek once had its own post office. And Tannery had a post office, too.” Now, they’re little more than street names on winding country roads. “And now they’re talking about taking White Haven’s post office away.”

“That’s gonna be a bugger,” John whispers, as though already resigned to the town’s fading fate.

Rite Aid recently shuttered its doors as part of a nationwide bankruptcy. With it went White Haven’s lone pharmacy.

Despite voting for Trump, Erv isn’t impressed with the speech from the night before.

“I wish he’d stay away from the microphone,” he sighs. “I don’t mind that he’s blowing up drug boats near Venezuela or shutting the border. But I want my president to be more presidential.”

Erv does most of the talking, while John chimes in with details, clarifications, and the occasional dry aside. Between the two of them, White Haven’s past and present unfurl like a hand-drawn map.

I ask whether locals here feel any sense of connection to President Biden, given the proximity to Scranton.

“Scranton’s not that far,” Erv concedes. “But the people here don’t consider Biden a local person.”

I bring up family in Hazleton and the conversation turns darker.

“Most people won’t go to Hazleton for the hospital anymore,” Erv says. “Afraid of getting shot. People are shot every day in the Hazleton–Wilkes-Barre area. Used to happen once a month.” He blames the closure of mental health facilities, which pushed vulnerable people onto the streets. “And they have guns. There’s a lot of drugs and gangs.” He pauses. “We don’t have guns here yet. The only people out here with guns are people like me.”

“Perfect for when people like me come knocking on the door,” I smirk.

He assures me that I’m not viewed as a threat. For most of his life, he says, residents never locked their cars or homes. Everyone knew everyone else; kids felt safe in any house in town.

“They don’t make a community a community anymore,” he laments. “Most people don’t even know their neighbor. And that’s not good.”

I share a story from my great-grandmother’s handwritten memoir about growing up on the family farm in White Haven until age nine. There had been a thief in the neighborhood, a man who robbed Jewish homes during the holidays when families were away. My great-great-grandfather, Max Berlinsky, figured out who it was. But instead of confronting him, he offered a creative solution: payment in eggs and milk in exchange for watching over the property during the holidays.

When the family returned, nothing was missing. In fact, it was more organized than when they had left. Max praised the thief-turned-watchman for being so effective at his job, and for keeping the burglars at bay. He never gave them any more trouble.

Erv asks whether my family owned a dairy farm, which of course they did. He suggests I look up a local man named Ed Capp, who “lives about a mile up the road, but I don’t know him well enough to introduce him to ya.”

Erv describes Ed as “a funny guy.”

“Funny like someone who’ll appreciate a stranger knocking on his door?” I ask.

Erv doesn’t hesitate. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”

I assure him that I, however, absolutely would. Challenge accepted.

Before we part ways, Erv sums up the ache that’s been running under White Haven’s surface this whole time. “White Haven is not an identity anymore. We lost our identity when we lost our high school, and then we lost our bank.”

I ask if he’s worried that his village is turning into a ghost town.

“It already is a ghost town,” he replies. “The railroads and lumberjacks are all gone. The Aspen Powder Company packed up and moved. The White Haven Center employed 2,000 people in its heyday, that’s been shut down. We have no industry now, only resorts. And while the resort industry charges well, but they don’t pay well.”

I keep getting the impression that here, support for Trump isn’t about change, it’s about preventing further loss.

A town that once powered rail lines and milled timber is now holding on through a tourism industry that keeps the lights on but not much else. The only logical move would be to spend the night in one of the resorts.

Making Do

W

hite Haven’s Borough Manager Linda Szoke makes time for me during a break amid the hullabaloo of coordinating snowplows and fielding calls from concerned citizens. She’s had her hands full and hasn’t had a chance to catch up on the news, Trump’s rally notwithstanding.

Still, she’s painfully aware of the challenges facing White Haven. She claims that while the food pantry does serve about 90 individuals, that’s only out of 1,100 people in White Haven and the surrounding areas, which she points out isn’t such a bad ratio, especially given the high percentage of retirees over working-age folks.

When I ask her about Erv’s report that the number of children receiving meals has doubled, she doesn’t contest it — though she adds some positivity. “The numbers have doubled, but it’s also because the kids have nothing to do in the afternoons, and it’s an after-school program where they can go have fun and hang out. And although the program is growing and we want it to grow. Nine out of ten of the kids are bringing their own snacks. And not eating the food provided. And they do a fantastic job. Our summer program is completely free and many of them are latchkey kids, who’d be at home by themselves otherwise. So as a parent, what would you do?”

Before retiring for the evening, Itzik and I decide to take a detour to meet the elusive Ed Capp. Erv’s description of his house, though almost certainly accurate, becomes meaningless beneath several inches of fresh snow. Every roof looks the same, every porch is buried, every mailbox has turned into a small Arctic formation. But eventually, through persistence and guesswork, we find what we believe is Ed’s place.

Ed Capp, who comes highly recommended and heavily caveated, lives in a house fits the reputation. Modest. Quiet. Various oddities and collectibles visible through the living room window, others sit mingled in heaps outside. When I knock, the response is immediate and deafening: Three dogs erupt as if I’ve just announced the end of mail delivery. Ed, however, is nowhere to be found.

The resort we’ve booked is 20-something miles from White Haven, past a scattering of towns where abandoned coal mines still dot the hillsides like open mouths from a bygone era. Those mines never got the memo about “big beautiful coal” and manufacturing jobs coming back. And on this particular night, judging by the empty hallways, our resort seems to have received the same memo the mines did.

One other vehicle in the parking lot. Strangely complex directions to get to my room. Why this practically deserted resort set me up with a room on the fourth floor is anybody’s guess. But the journey to get there was worth it. I still have the paper with the directions:

1. Take the lobby elevator to the second floor.
2. Approach the “bear mural” and take the hallway on the right.
3. Go down to the end of the hall and make a left and a quick right.
4. Take the next elevator to floors 3, 4, or 5.
5. To get to the sixth floor, take the second elevator to the fifth floor, walk to the end of the hall, and take the third and final elevator up one floor.

Thankfully, step 5 was not necessary. The room was 396 square feet. Never before had I spent a quieter night in a hotel.

Local Brew

Ireturn the next day, only without Itzik, who’s headed to New York City for a gig. Same house. Same knock. Same dogs, just as enthusiastic, possibly more so. This time, Ed is home.

“Are you Ed?” I ask, and he nods without breaking eye contact. “I’m Jake, I hear you’re a legend around these parts.”

That does it. His interest is officially piqued.

I ask if it’s true that he owns the largest collection of antique milk bottles in the state. He beams. Then he tells me to wait outside. Thirty seconds later, he reemerges holding an empty, single-pint glass bottle, light catching it just right.

“Can you read this?” he asks, pointing to the raised lettering.

“Fer… menchins,” I read slowly.

“Yep,” he says, satisfied. “Fermenchins.”

It took him 30 years to find that bottle. He’s the only collector in possession of one. “There are five serious collectors still active in White Haven,” he explains. “None of them have this.”

His secret weapon? Outhouses.

Back when outhouses were everywhere, things got dropped, tossed or lost. And many of those outhouses are still out there. When Ed spots one, he asks the owner for permission to dig. He doesn’t mind the smell. It’s worth it. He’s always finding something.

He once found a gold ring. Nice, but not the goal.

What he’s really after are the true treasures: glass milk bottles.

He’s collected more than 5,000 so far and has no intention of slowing down. His oldest dates back to 1902, a bottle he can’t show me. He’s afraid to touch it. He asks me to guess how much he paid for it.

“Did they know how badly you wanted it?” I ask.

“They didn’t,” he says, “but they knew how rare it was.”

I guess $50, and I’m wildly incorrect.

“A thousand,” he says. “That’s what I offered. I could sell it today for twenty-five.”

The most he’s ever sold a bottle for? “Forty-two hundred.”

I ask how he got into the business.

He tells me about a distant relative cleaning out a garage when Ed was just a kid. “He said, ‘Get rid of all those milk bottles.’ ”

Ed didn’t. He took them. And a lifelong obsession was born.

The name Berlinsky, he says, does ring a bell, but he’s never encountered a milk bottle with that name embossed on it. I speculate that since his milk was kosher and highly specialized, my ancestors may not have bothered with branding. Or maybe the lettering was in Hebrew.

“That’s possible,” Ed says thoughtfully. “Especially if they started back in the 1800s. Unmarked bottles were common.”

Before I leave, he promises to alert his fellow collectors to keep an eye out for “a Berlinsky.” We exchange numbers.

While Trump talks about bringing the past back, Ed knows better. You can’t rewind a town, you can only preserve what survives. His collection isn’t nostalgia, it’s documentation. A lifetime spent saving proof that this place once worked, and that its story is still worth protecting. This is what makes Ed an absolute legend.

Creative Energy

AT

Circle 25 Gifts, a small boutique a few doors down from the Borough Office, nothing is mass-produced, shrink-wrapped, or destined to be mistaken for something you panic-bought at an airport gift shop. This is a place where objects still have backstories and, occasionally, personalities.

The shelves are lined with handmade pieces by local artists; specialty décor, small artisan goods, seasonal pieces, and one-of-a-kind finds that quietly dare you to explain them when someone asks where you got it. Interspersed among the displays are repurposed and upcycled creations, old materials given a second life, upgraded from forgotten to functional, from discarded to delightful. The kind of place where you walk in “just to look” and walk out holding something you didn’t know you needed.

The shop features handcrafted work from 24 different artists, all of whom live in White Haven or the surrounding area.

“I think we have a lot more creatives here than people realize,” says Heather, one of the artists, who’s working behind the counter. “We’ve done an art walk every year since the shop opened three, four years ago.”

I ask what it is about White Haven that draws so many artists.

“Probably nature,” she says. “Young people can go out, hike, relax, clear their heads. You can get away from the noise and be in your own headspace. It’s great for creative energy.”

She’s proud of the shop’s impact, but worried about the economy. “We finally started thriving,” she says, “and now we’re struggling again.”

Still, she says the town is trying to be proactive. “We support each other’s businesses. We shop local as much as possible instead of driving to Wilkes-Barre or ordering from Amazon. This store is also a drop-off center for the local food pantry, so we’re supporting each other that way.”

Two people walk into the shop while we’re talking. Both turn out to be contributing artists. They exchange notes about upcoming shows and materials, then pause at a display made of rolled bits of recycled paper a car and an owl, crafted by a 12-year-old. The child’s younger sibling sells a different kind of trinket nearby. That makes five of the artists accounted for. The other 19, I figure, will have to wait for a return visit.

Heather, a contributor herself, shows me her hand-crocheted monster dolls.

“Usually they just sit all year,” she says, “and then December hits and they fly off the shelves. I haven’t sold one yet this December.”

In my head, I’m already sketching out a Heather’s Crochet-Monster Economic Index, a system that judges the health of the American economy based solely on whether a gift shop in White Haven sells more or fewer one-eyed crocheted dolls in the first 12 days of December.

I strike up a conversation with a young woman browsing nearby. The economy, she tells me, isn’t good. Gas is cheaper than it was, but everything else is still high. She manages by working three jobs. The problem, she says, is that all three places are struggling.

The worst hit, she tells me, is a store that sells yarn.

“Just yarn?” I ask. “I assume cats love it.”

She laughs. “It started as yarn and crochet. Now we sell clothing and teach classes, too.”

She explains that tariffs have hit the yarn industry especially hard. Even companies that source materials domestically often ship yarn overseas for dyeing, then back again, meaning tariffs still apply. Prices have gone through the roof. There used to be a local dyeing company, she says, but for reasons she can’t fully explain, and I’ll never fully uncover, it went out of business shortly after the tariffs were announced.

Circle 25 doesn’t wait for policy to trickle down. In this cozy town backdropped by the open embrace of endless nature, the economy is stitched together by artists, creators, and shopkeepers who learned that survival starts with each other, not Washington.

Beyond the city limits, I meet Chris Demars, a wood carver who describes himself as “heavily dyslexic,” something he says is actually an advantage in his craft.

“Wood carving is art you take away,” he explains. “You’re not adding to a canvas or building with clay. You’re removing. It’s backwards art.”

Seven years ago, when “the economy fell off,” Chris shut down his landscaping company, a business he’d run for nearly four decades, employing 165 workers over the years and turned to wood-carving full time.

“I couldn’t have done this when I was thirty,” he says. “I’d have gotten mad and broken the saw. You need patience.”

He tells me that when car phones first came out, he had one installed in his truck. Then came the nonstop calls. “Everybody and their brother was calling me. I got so sick of it, I cut the phone out of the truck with a hacksaw.”

That, he says, is why he doesn’t use cell phones. Flip phones are okay, he agrees. But he’s never been on a computer. “I have a Facebook page,” he admits. “My wife and kids run it. I don’t know what’s on there. I’ve never seen it.”

Chris teaches up-and-coming wood carvers and measures time not in hours, but in tanks of chainsaw gas. A cardinal, he says, takes about two tanks. His friend, a three-times woodcarving competition winner, might burn through five.

“His bears are realistic,” Chris says. “I carve craft bears. Realistic bears aren’t as popular.”

He’d rather give me a half-hour tour and two free lessons than sell me one of his $200 bears, which already have buyers waiting to pick them up. White Haven might have a small population, but every single one of them has a fascinating story.

A Community Fit for a Kingston

MY first stop after Trump’s rally wasn’t a resort or a diner, but a communal Yud-Tes Kislev farbrengen with thriving Kingston community that stretched well past midnight, fueled by niggunim, stories and the quiet confidence of a community that knows what it’s building. The following night, I returned again, this time to give shiur at the weekly Wednesday night learning group hosted by former colleague and longtime friend Rabbi Sholom Laine.

One shiur turned into a conversation, which turned into an invitation, which turned into me spending the night with his family instead of at the empty resort miles away. Laine, it turns out, had moved to Kingston years earlier after reading an article about the community.

If White Haven represents a town waiting to be saved, Kingston represents something else entirely: a community neither red nor blue that decided not to wait for Washington, and went ahead and built its own future anyway.

Kingston’s Jewish community didn’t grow by accident. It grew because someone decided it had to, and then built the infrastructure before the people arrived. That someone was Motti Hershkop, who moved to the area more than two decades ago, back when Kingston had a minyan that barely held together and little else resembling a full Jewish life.

When the choice became either leaving or building, he chose building. Not because it was easy, but because the lifestyle, affordability, and long-term vision made sense. The strategy was counterintuitive and risky: open kosher businesses for a community that didn’t yet exist. A pizza shop first, then a grocery, then takeout and a restaurant; not as profit engines, but as signals. Signals that this was a place you could actually live.

It worked. Infrastructure came first, and the numbers followed. What began with a few dozen families grew steadily, until Kingston quietly became home to roughly 300 Jewish households, offering kosher food on a level that would make Chef Dennis proud, shiurim, and communal life that feels established rather than experimental.

But Hershkop is clear-eyed about the economic situation. The driving force wasn’t ideology, it was math. In major cities, housing and tuition swallow the ability to build generational wealth. In Kingston, lower rent, cheaper insurance, and a manageable cost of living gave young families something rare: breathing room. Without that, every generation starts from zero.

As Kingston became desirable, housing prices rose. Hershkop admits he fought speculative investors aggressively at first, trying to keep prices grounded so growth wouldn’t devour itself. Eventually, he realized you can’t police every market force forever. Community building, like compound interest, works over time, but only if you protect the foundation long enough for it to take hold.

What emerges from Kingston isn’t a boomtown fantasy or a political slogan. It’s a working model proving that modest scale, proactive planning, and a refusal to wait for perfect conditions.

Trump came to northeastern Pennsylvania promising revival. What I found instead were two truths living side by side. In places like White Haven, people are voting for a memory of times of stability, dignity, and work that stayed close to home.

In Kingston, people are voting with their feet by building institutions and investing locally. Together, they explain why Trump still draws crowds here and why the future of these towns may depend less on rallies than on what happens the morning after.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)