Reuvain Borchardt

Pictures by Heritage Photography

As frum families spread across nearly every corner of Central Jersey, one town mysteriously remains somewhat of a frontier. The three dozen Orthodox residents who have happily settled in Brick are hoping to change that. They say their town offers the affordability, convenience, and quality of life that can make this a beautiful kehillah.
It’s time to put Brick on the map.

For more than two decades, the map of Orthodox Central Jersey has been redrawn again and again.

As Lakewood’s population surged and housing prices climbed, young families pushed outward in search of homes they could afford. First came Jackson and Toms River, then Howell and Manchester. Each built thriving communities of thousands of frum families.

So far, Brick remains the exception.

It’s not farther away or more expensive, nor is it lacking in nice homes, suburban beauty, or clean and friendly neighbors. Brick checks all the boxes. Yet it has not yet experienced similar explosive growth.

Roughly 35 Orthodox families now call Brick home, with about 30 living within walking distance of one another in the main neighborhood. (Reflecting how recently the community has taken shape, residents still argue about the neighborhood’s name—it’s either Burrsville or Lakewood Gardens.) The community has two shuls, learning programs, Pirchei and Bnos, N’shei events, and a night kollel.

Still, compared with virtually every surrounding town, Brick remains something of an unknown.

Residents believe it’s simply a lack of awareness—as opposed to any fundamental shortcoming—that is responsible for Brick’s slow growth.

“I think a lot of people don’t know about it,” says Rabbi Kalman Lyulkis, one of the community’s earliest residents. “There’s so much available in Jackson, Howell, and Manchester that people don’t even get this far.”

We’re speaking around a table in the dining room of Lyulkis’s neighbor Rabbi Yisroel Meir Hirsch (they’re both BMG yungerleit) along with a third Brick resident, Rabbi Nesanel Katz (a rebbi in Howell).

Hirsch bought his home two years ago for a price that would get you a bungalow anywhere else. The rustic house has a nice front yard and a spacious backyard with an in-ground swimming pool, and it’s surrounded by trees and large enough for a sizable playground and trampoline and plenty of open green space. In other words, the sort of house many can only wish for.

 

 

The winter there was nothing

 

The story of Brick’s fledgling kehillah starts fewer than five years ago, and it can be traced to one of the most difficult housing markets ever.

“If you say ‘winter of 2022’ to any real-estate agent,” Lyulkis says, “he’ll probably get chills down his spine. It was the roughest market for buyers. There was just nothing available to buy anywhere.”

At the time, Lyulkis—31 years old with a wife and four children—was living on Forest Avenue in Lakewood in a two-bedroom apartment.

“We absolutely had to get out,” he recalls. The problem, of course, was where they would go.

The home he ended up buying, in Brick, was what he says was “the only house—a four-bedroom, three-bath colonial— available at the time in Central Jersey.”

The only reason it was available, he says, is because it had landscaping issues. But that hardly mattered to him in a barren market. He bid against one buyer and got the home for $495,000.

At the time, only one other frum family lived in Brick.

His wife was all in because “we had no other choice,” he says. “But we had no idea what to expect.”

 

 

A lonely first Shabbos

 

The nearest shul was in a yeshivah a 20-minute walk away, and there was no eiruv. But most significantly, there was nobody else.

“I remember that first Shabbos we stayed home,” Lyulkis says. “My kids were just jumping off the walls. My first thought was, ‘Let’s go to a friend’s house.’” Then reality set in: “‘There are no friends. What did I get myself into?’”

Fortunately, he says, the feeling of complete isolation didn’t last very long as other families began trickling in.

And Lyulkis started fielding phone calls from prospective buyers asking what life in Brick was like.

He advised them to think of the same thing that he told himself when he first moved in: “‘Can I do this for five years?’” You don’t want to keep moving around, but five years can be a good investment, because home prices are likely to go up by then.

Within a year, eight more families had settled in the neighborhood.

The ninth was Nesanel Katz.

 

 

Looking for home

 

For Katz, buying a home had become less about finding the perfect community than finally ending years of what he considered an almost nomadic existence for his family of 11.

“We were in galus,” he says with a wry laugh.

By then, the Katzes had moved three times, from one rental to another. “I said that the fourth time we move, it’s going to be to our own place.”

All the other burbs were simply unaffordable. And so he bought a home in Brick for $550K.

It was more of an adjustment for him than for some other families, as he is older than other men in town, and his oldest children were already in high school and had nobody their age in the neighborhood. Still, everyone was thrilled with the move.

“We felt we were home at last,” he says.

 

 

Expectations meet reality

 

Yisroel Meir Hirsch arrived in 2024. By then, 20 frum families lived in the neighborhood.

His own housing search had followed a familiar trajectory. He and his wife had spent five years in a two-bedroom basement apartment while raising three children. One slept in the dining room.

The moment that crystallized things came when someone offered Hirsch a toy for his kids. He declined—because “we had nowhere to put the toy.”

Meanwhile, rent had doubled—from $1,000 when they married to $2,000 five years later. The Hirsches lived frugally and saved carefully, vowing, “We’re not renting again.”

But their housing search, in Howell, began with disappointment.

“We realized all we could afford was a dollhouse,” Hirsch says. “You couldn’t even have a catch in the backyard.”

Then he heard about Brick. He knew almost nothing about the community, but what caught his attention was the map.

“I looked and said, ‘Brick is an awesome location.’”

Brick residents reach Lakewood via east–west arteries including Cedar Bridge Avenue, County Line Road, Route 88, and Route 70—avoiding Route 9 completely.

“If you want to get to BMG,” he says, “there are so many different ways.”

Initially, Hirsch admits, he had a long checklist for what he required of a community: “We need our house to be in a place that has an eiruv. And a rav. And the rav should have semichah from a particular yeshivah. And I have to know that nobody talks during davening.”

When reality slowly began reshaping expectations, he lowered that to simply “We need the place to have a shul with a mikveh.” Eventually, it just became, “We need a house.”

Sometimes, he says, “You have to take a reality check and just move.” But he’s pleased to add that while there’s no eiruv or rav or mikveh yet, nobody talks during davening.

His home—1,600 square feet with an unfinished basement—cost $540K, a great price even considering he put in tens of thousands in renovations. “My mover,” he recalls, “told me the same house in Howell would have cost $700,000.”

 

 

Building brick by brick

 

Today, Brick has two shuls—one in a home, another in the conference room of a local frum office, which is used mainly for Shabbos Shacharis.

On Shabbos, more than 40 men above bar mitzvah age daven together.

Every Shabbos, there’s a men’s learning seder as well as Avos U’banim. During the week, there’s a night kollel followed by Maariv.

A search committee is exploring options for a more permanent shul location, and they’re in the early stages of a search for a rav, though they’ll need more people to move in before they can afford one.

For Katz, who serves on the rav-search committee, the ideal rav is someone who’s a talmid chacham and good speaker, of course, but just as importantly, “he has to be street smart—someone who understands all different types of people and knows how to deal with each of them.”

The nearest mikveh requires a roughly 35-minute walk, though residents say plans are being discussed for an eventual mikveh of their own.

The eiruv, which has long been one of the practical hurdles for families considering Brick, is also nearing completion.

 

 

Why the slow growth?

 

If demand for housing is so high and prices are soaring and Brick is such a lovely place to live, why don’t more people live there?

There’s no one answer, but residents have many theories.

For one, there aren’t many houses for sale.

“Brick is a great place for non-Jews, too,” says Katz. “It’s near the ocean, and many people have boats. They spend the summer boating and the winter cleaning their boats. They love it here.”

Yaakov Tannenbaum, a realtor who focuses on Brick and has sold six houses there, says there’s something of a vicious cycle.

“There aren’t many houses for sale in Brick, but part of that is that not many people are looking to buy,” he says. “So sellers aren’t very motivated to sell. If people show more of an interest in moving, more ‘for sale’ signs will go up. It’s the demand that drives the supply.”

Tannenbaum also blames something of a self-fulfilling perception.

“People have told me that when they mentioned they were looking to move to Brick, friends tried to dissuade them by telling them it’s not taking off, so they shouldn’t bother buying there.”

Another issue was that when a few Jews moved in, initially some of the locals thought this would become the next big frum town and listed their homes for extremely high prices, comparable to other neighboring communities.

“But now they’ve dropped to a more realistic level,” Tannenbaum says, “ and you can get significant savings there versus a house in another town.”

As an example, a 2,700-square-foot colonial five-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home in Brick recently sold for $801,000, while similar homes sold in Howell for $900K and Toms River’s Whitesville neighborhood for $922K.

 

 

No traffic!

 

Brick may be farther from the center of Lakewood than some other towns, but considering the east–west commute, it’s actually a shorter drive than from many other places.

Lyulkis says his daily drive to BMG’s Bais Aaron beis medrash takes 10 to 12 minutes.

“Then it can take another 10 minutes to get through the parking lot traffic,” he says, adding, “The only time we go on Route 9 is when we cross over it, and we watch all the people sitting in traffic.”

Brick is near many elementary schools, places of employment in industrial park, and simchah halls.

One issue that initially caused some figuring out was school transportation, as LSTA buses don’t go to Brick.

“At first,” recalls one woman from the community, “it was like, ‘Help, how am I going to do this?’ But once you’re in it, it works.”

Several families carpool their kids to LSTA bus stops five minutes away in Raintree, Lakeview, or Ocean Point.

Others carpool directly to schools that are a mere 10-minute drive away. A few men drive carpools on their route to or from yeshivah, which passes the kids’ schools.

Shopping is similarly convenient. Kosher Village is less than 10 minutes away. Bingo, Walmart, Target, Aldi, and Home Depot are even closer than that.

 

 

A different type of community

 

The seven Brick residents we spoke with all say they’re happy to be there, and none wish they could have found an affordable home elsewhere.

“It’s a very healthy lifestyle here,” says Katz. “It’s detached single-family homes, you’re not on top of each other, and there’s no social pressure.”

That’s the most consistent theme among everyone we talked to—even more than price or traffic, they point to a wholesome atmosphere of simplicity and satisfaction.

Though their kids attend Lakewood schools, he says, “They have so many friends here who don’t have certain things that they feel totally adequate without.”

 

 

The neighbors

 

Everyone says their relations with neighbors have been almost entirely positive.

Locals like to see all homes on their block neat and clean. For large families, the main priorities in life may not be mowing the grass constantly and taking the garbage cans in the moment after the truck comes, but in Brick they’re careful to be respectful and follow the customary fastidiousness.

“We all get along excellently,” Hirsch says.

Katz’s neighbor once invited him in for tea and cookies. He sheepishly brought his own pastries in an NPGS bag.

Hirsch acknowledges that of course, Brick isn’t immune from the Eisavs of the world, and there will always be haters who object to Jews moving in. But thus far, objections have typically not been stated openly, and at least on the surface, things are peaceful.

 

 

The future

 

Tannenbaum believes the community’s growth will come when more people realize that “in Brick you’re not a pioneer, but in many ways actually closer to the center of the action.”

Residents are hopeful that it does happen. They’re proud of what they built and are eager to share it with more families.

So is it inevitable that Brick, like every town in the area, will soon have a thriving population?

Some of the locals think so—and welcome it.

One young mother says her older neighbor tells her, “I’m saving my house for you; you’re going to buy it when you have more kids.”

Another young mother went into Lakewood one day for a dentist appointment and was pleased to learn that the dentist is actually her neighbor in Brick.

“She has a big home and is almost retiring and moving away,” Kanner says, “And she said to me, ‘We have two sinks and a big living room. I know you guys are going to like this house one day.”

Will Brick become the next stop on Central Jersey’s frum expansion? The residents who have put down roots there believe it will be soon. They have laid the foundation for a thriving community and hope more families will give their town a closer look and make it happen.