‘Nobody has any words’
Brooke, Michelle, and David Dryerman of Woodcliff Lake die when family car crashes
Last Saturday night, three of the four members of the Dryerman family — 17-year-old Brooke and her parents, Michelle and David, both 54 — died in a single-car crash on the Garden State Parkway in Woodbridge.
David was in the driver’s seat when the car, a Tesla Model S, “ran off the road to the left, struck a sign, struck a guardrail and concrete bridge support,” Sgt. Charles Marchan of the New Jersey State Police said, as quoted by northjersey.com. They were near Exit 131, going to Metropark.
Brooke was a senior at Pascack Valley High School.
Brooke’s older brother, Max, 19, is a sophomore at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He was at home that evening — his semester starts this week. He survives his parents and his sister.
Loren Monosov is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley, the Conservative shul that the Dryermans joined in 2010, when Brooke was 3 years old and Max was 5.
Not only were they her congregants, “they were my neighbors,” Rabbi Monosov said. “They were the kind of people you want as your neighbors. We watched each other’s children grow up.”
Now, the task of officiating at their funeral has fallen to her.
Brooke loved helping, and she loved working with children, Rabbi Monosov said. “When she was in fifth grade, she came to my house because she wanted to be a mother’s helper.” That didn’t work out — she was, after all, in fifth grade — “but we” — sometimes the parents, sometimes the kids — “walked our dogs together. We walked together during covid.
“She worked in the Hebrew school as a madricha,” an aide, “on Sunday mornings, and she always put her hand up whenever there was anything extra to do. She was downstairs for every family program, in our ballroom and cocktail room, doing crafts with the kids.
“She was somebody who felt at home in the synagogue. She wanted to be part of it. She wanted to be part of the Jewish community.
“She always wanted to be involved. She always wanted to do more.”
Last year, Temple Emanuel formed a new youth group, “and Brooke spoke from the bimah on Yom Kippur about it,” Rabbi Monosov said. “She was excited to be a part of it.”
Brooke became bat mitzvah in the spring of 2020, when the pandemic was beginning and the risks were unknown and terrifying. “She wanted to have her bat mitzvah in the sanctuary, and she was so disappointed that she couldn’t,” Rabbi Monosov said. “So she came into the sanctuary in 2021 — it still was covid and it was awkward because of the number of people we could let in, but it was to honor her bat mitzvah.”
Brooke and Max went to Camp Perlman, a BBYO sleepaway camp in Lake Como, Pennsylvania. “They always had that kind of Judaism, the kind you get in camp,” Rabbi Monosov said. “They would always stand in unison at the same parts of the service; they would sing the camp V’Shamru.”
The family cared deeply about Israel, Rabbi Monosov said. “They helped collect items for me to bring when I went there right after October 7. They were very much part of our rally around Israel this past year.
“They loved being Jewish. They were proud to be Jewish.”
Rabbi Monosov is grateful to the town for the way it came together, for the heart it has shown. “It is such a beautiful place,” she said. “Everyone has been rallying to help.”
In particular, the police chief, Stephen Regula, “was phenomenal,” Rabbi Monosov said. When she heard about the accident, “I said, ‘Help me,’ and he did. He worked with me all Sunday.”
The family had been at an aufruf in Roslyn, on Long Island; a nephew was about to get married the next week. After that, they had gone to the See. Hear. Now. Festival in Asbury Park; Brooke posted about it on Instagram.
The Dryermans had their tallitot in the car, and the family wanted them back. Mr. Regula, who is not Jewish and did not know what a tallit was until he looked online and then confirmed it with Rabbi Monosov, drove down to Middlesex County to get them. “He was a mensch in every way,” Rabbi Monosov said.
She was glad to report that each of Max’s parents had a sister — Michelle’s sister and brother-in-law are Renee and Ken Litwin, and David’s sister and brother-in-law are Carrie and Alan Chalup. Max has three living grandparents, and the entire family, on all sides, was very close and has only become closer since the tragedy. Max is not alone.
Rabbi Monosov also is grateful to the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey in general, and to its CEO, Jason Shames, in particular, because it “has offered its support to Max in a multitude of ways.”
Max has started a GoFundMe campaign in his family’s memory.
Both Brooke and Max Dryerman also were active in Valley Chabad’s CTeen and Friendship Circle.
“Max volunteered in the basketball league, and during her bat mitzvah year Brooke came to the Jewish Home Assisted Living in River Vale,” Rabbi Yosef Orenstein, who leads Valley Chabad’s Teen Leadership Initiative, said.
“I got to know the parents through the children,” Rabbi Orenstein said. “They were the nicest people. I knew Michelle from when she dropped them off, and when she picked them up. She always was warm and friendly; she always had a smile, and she always appreciated what we did.”
The Dryermans and the Orensteins were neighbors. “When I walk to shul on Shabbes, I would always see them walking the dog together. It was always both of them, always the two of them together. She was significantly shorter than he was, so it always stood out.
“Even this last Shabbes, I saw them, walking the dogs as usual.” That was the morning of the day they died.
“When this happened, when the news came, I was in shock. In disbelief. How do you wrap your head around it? The pain is unbearable.”
Many of the teenagers who were part of CTeen “needed some way to get together,” Rabbi Orenstein said. “They needed a way to connect.” So on Sunday evening, “we got together for an outdoor candle-lighting, just to be together and hug each other.
“About 150 students, mainly high-school seniors, and some of the parents came. There are no words. Just the opportunity to be together. This is just about two weeks into the school year. Everyone is trying to hold onto each other.
“Nobody has any words. Nobody has any way to process it.”
He is not trying to pretend that there is anything at all good about the deaths, Rabbi Orenstein said, but he does hope that some good can come out of the horror. “The best thing that we can do now is to commit ourselves to bring more light and positivity into the world,” he said. “That is the one thing that we can do.
“We cannot bring them back, but somehow we can come together to make this world a better and brighter place, despite the pain,” he said.
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