Lakewood Orthodox Jews Pitch In After 2-year-old Latino Boy’s Tragic Death

Image by GoFundMe

By Marcy Oster December 14, 2016

— The Jewish community of Lakewood, New Jersey, is providing assistance to the family of a 2-year-old Latino boy who was killed in a tragic accident.

Jayden Marquez was killed Thursday when his aunt accidentally backed into him with her car in the family’s driveway.

An Orthodox Jewish committeeman, Meir Lichtenstein, went to the hospital to comfort the family, the Asbury Park Press reported. He also arranged for Misaskim, an organization that assists in burials according to Jewish law, to clean the scene of the child’s death before the family returned home.

The Central Jersey township’s Orthodox Jewish mayor, Menashe Miller, arranged the establishment of a GoFundMe page to defray the costs of the funeral. The page reached and surpassed its goal of $7,500, with many of the donors local Orthodox Jews.

The Jew in the City blog reported that before the details of the family were known, several anti-Semitic rants assuming the grieving family was Jewish appeared online, which were “trashing religious Jews for not watching their children.”

Lakewood, which has over 90,000 residents, is a hub of Orthodox Judaism and also has a large Hispanic population.

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