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Dating back to a Sephardic businessman's arrival in 1698 to what is today Bound Brook, The Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey has the task of preserving over 300 years of Jewish history in the area.

''The short answer is no one else is going to do it,'' Nathan Reiss, president, told The Jewish State, explaining why the society is needed. ''If we want a history of our community, we have to do it ourselves; otherwise the records will just be thrown out, left in a wet basement, or tossed out in a dumpster.''

On April 13, the 33-year-old historical society honored its founder, Ruth Marcus Patt, at Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple in New Brunswick.

The founding of the organization in 1977, Patt told The Jewish State, was largely accidental.

After she wrote her first book, ''The Jewish Scene in New Jersey's Raritan Valley, 1698-1948,'' she and her husband, not seeking to make a profit from its publication, decided to publish the work under the auspices of an organization.

Consequently, she gathered 25 people, half of whom were professors and the other half who were ''old timers'' in the community. That is when the Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey was born, which she said ''took off like wildfire.''

''Everyone wanted to have a formal group with meetings and archives,'' she said.

After its founding, Patt said she had to largely start from scratch in collecting material; often she would interview past presidents and officers at local synagogues or Jewish organizations.

Patt, who was born in New Brunswick and for many years lived there before moving to Monroe, said she was fortunate enough to know who to speak to because of her deep family roots in the community.

Since then, in addition to amassing a comprehensive archive that is housed at Anshe Emeth, for the past 13 years the society has organized a lecture series on the American Jewish experience that takes place in both New Brunswick and Monroe.

''One of the most gratifying things was the lecture series,'' Patt said.

''It's amazing to me how we found so many subjects,'' she added. ''I believe never in repeating things twice.''

Among those in attendance to honor Patt's work was her twin sister, Adelaide Zagoren.

''Always Ruth's drive was to make her community ever better, especially the Jewish community,'' Zagoren said.

The historical society, Reiss said, is a valuable way to create ''cohesion'' within the Jewish community since without knowing an individual's own past it is difficult to forge mutual understanding.

Reiss spoke about the long and diverse history of the area's Jewish community stretching back to the Sephardic Jews who came to in the 18th century to trade at New Brunswick's busy port; the German immigrants who arrived in the mid-19th century; the Eastern European Jews of the late 19th century; the Sephardic Jews from the Balkans who came in the early 20th century; European holocaust survivors who sought refuge in the mid-century; the Middle Eastern Jews in the 1960s and 1970s; and the Jews from the Former Soviet Union who began arriving in the 1980s.

''Ruth Patt was the person, the first person, who after 270 years of Jewish history in central Jersey, decided to do something to preserve [the history],'' Reiss said.

Reiss added that although history in general is a ''tough sell,'' Patt ''has managed to convince people, one person at a time, that the Jewish history of central New Jersey is something they want to know more about.''

Patt was congratulated not only for her involvement with the historical society, but also her other efforts in the community, including her chairing the yearlong celebration of New Brunswick's 300th birthday in 1980.

Her planning of over 130 events that year, New Brunswick Mayor Jim Cahill said, ''was nothing short of remarkable.''

''On behalf of myself personally and the residents of the city of New Brunswick you're just absolutely terrific,'' Cahill said.

As part of the program, Douglas Greenberg, the executive dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, presented a lecture about the role of anti-Semitism in the formation of American Jewish identity.

In his talk, Greenberg said that he would cease ''to speak as a scholar'' and instead focus on his topic largely from an autobiographical perspective.

''We were unambiguously Reform Jews,'' he said of his upbringing in Highland Park and Anshe Emeth.

His parents would have never considered keeping kosher, Greenberg said, and during his bar mitzvah the rabbi would not let him chant his Torah portion since he felt that would be ''too Jewish.''

''I don't say this critically, simply descriptively,'' he said.

Greenberg said that as American Jews grew increasingly distant from both their ritual traditions and their immigrant pasts, Jewish identity was originating increasingly from the perception -- real or imagined -- of pervasive, virulent anti-Semitism.

He noted that he still felt that anti-Semitism is ''ever-present,'' recalling his own encounters with the ''whitewashing'' of the Holocaust in contemporary Eastern Europe and the harassment he received for refusing to recite the Lord's Prayer at his Highland Park public school, which was required by state law at the time.

Greenberg, who before joining Rutgers was the executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education in Los Angeles, detailed what he described as the paradoxical development of his own Jewish identity.

Although his already ''weak connection to Jewish ritual'' declined even more after his becoming involved in the Shoah Foundation, his feelings of being Jewish strengthened simultaneously.

Greenberg speculated that the basis of his own Jewish identity is reflected by many other American Jews. He warned, however, that with the widespread decline of tradition ritual observance and distancing from Jews' immigrant past, awareness of anti-Semitism is unlikely a sustainable foundation for Jewish continuity.

Greenberg, a scholar of early American history, also praised the historical society.

''When I first heard of the Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey, it struck me not only as a resident of central New Jersey who grew up in Highland Park, but as a historian,'' he said. ''The records of the past need our preservation, they need our protection.''