NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
01/14/13
Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
For Jews, Chanukah is a season of light and miracles. It wasn’t like that last month for Sam Kellner, a chasidic resident of Brooklyn’s Borough Park.
Unemployed and facing mounting debt from his lonely fight against both the powers that be in his community and the Brooklyn district attorney, Kellner, 50, was contemplating a Chanukah in darkness: he had pawned the family silver, and the menorah along with it, to free up some cash to pay his attorney.
When his wife found out, she was upset, so Kellner trudged back to the silver shop on 13th Avenue to retrieve the menorah.
If anyone could use a miracle, it’s Sam Kellner.
“They took everything from me,” Kellner says. “They’ve killed me on the street, kicked me out of my shul. I have no job, no money, no friends. And the DA is going after me. All because I committed the sin of fighting for my son.”
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