A Newark police detective, Ronald Arbuckle, said the vans were leaving the parking lot of a restaurant where they had stopped after a funeral when the parishioners, from a Brooklyn congregation, heard screams.

The informal Brooklyn congregation - mostly elderly widows or immigrant families facing eviction from crumbling buildings - is his way of fighting off the boredom of retirement and the creeping gentrification in Bushwick.

Funding was provided by the Brooklyn congregation of Bible Students and broadcasting continued into the 1980s.

Beecher's Brooklyn congregation adored him, and he became a national figure.

As neighborhood demographics changed in the late 20th century, and Brooklyn's Jewish population became more Orthodox, the East Midwood Jewish Center absorbed three other Conservative Brooklyn congregations.

For years, said Sister Dolores Castellano, president of the Brooklyn congregation, the 70 nuns there had discussed reconnecting with their roots, renewing relationships in keeping with the Pope's directive for the new millennium.

The Williamsburg faction says the grand rabbi put his younger son in charge of the Brooklyn congregation because the Satmar community had grown too large for one man to tend.

They numbered about 100, far fewer than the Brooklyn congregation worshiping within St. James Cathedral Basilica.

His youngest son, Zalmen, runs the Brooklyn congregation.

Although he continued to attract large crowds, they did not express the same enthusiasm as that of his Philadelphia or Brooklyn congregations.