Monica Honis

TEANECK -- Both sides in the hotly contested council election in this town play down their part in the long-standing feud between Bergen County Democratic Organization Chairman Joe Ferriero and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg.

But here on Weinberg’s home town, that rift is impossible to avoid.

Sitting down for a roast beef and chopped liver sandwich at a kosher eatery called Noah’s Ark on Cedar Avenue, councilman Elnatan Rudolph said that, while he doesn’t hide his ties to Ferriero, his opponents are the ones making the rift an issue. He noted a campaign piece that depicted him as a wind up toy, with Ferriero doing the winding.

While Honis and the two other candidates who act as her semi-official running mates dismiss partisan politics, Rudolph doesn’t buy it.

“They can tell you that. But it’s the same people who worked for (Weinberg), the same county committee men and women, who are supporting them in the race,” he said.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) thinks that a Teaneck councilwoman’s “gas chamber” comment was not intended to offend her Jewish colleagues, but that Monica Honis erred by not saying she’s sorry.

“I think it was a slip of the tongue, and I think that she should have immediately apologized,” said Weinberg, who’s not endorsing anyone in her home town’s council race. “And if she didn’t immediately do it, she should have at the subsequent council meeting.”

At a block association meeting on Monday, Honis, who’s up for re-election, said that picking her and not her two running mates would be like sending her “to the gas chamber.” Honis’s Jewish counterparts on the council took offense to that statement, saying that it was an insensitive reference to the holocaust.