The Way of Four Faiths: Ethel Road

December 4, 2007

Author: SULEMAN DIN

Source: The Star-Ledger

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1196747358108820.xml&coll=1

As Ahmed Salem searched for a place in the Piscataway area to open an Islamic school a few years ago, he noticed a rabbi outside an otherwise nondescript commercial building on a road lined with warehouse complexes.

"He's a man of faith," said Salem, an Egyptian scholar. "I thought: I have to talk to him."

It turns out the rabbi was leaving a yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish boys school, which was in the process of moving its classrooms from the converted office space to a newly built facility across the street on Ethel Road.

Salem's An-Noor Academy opened its doors in the vacated ye shiva a few months later.

The long-established Timothy Christian School is about a half- mile down the street. And when the national headquarters for the Hindu BAPS organization was founded nearby, it created an unusual religious cluster, all within walking distance of each other.