No matter how that vote goes next Wednesday at the Associated, it cannot mean the separation of one part of the community from the other.
Twelve years ago, there was a tremendous amount of pride among the Orthodox that the JCC Owings Mills opening was overturned. It wasn’t just here, it was across the nation.  I was sitting in a suburban Detroit congregation, and this was the focus of the rabbi’s sermon with the inference of how Baltimore was the example for the nation.
May I suggest that how we come out of Wednesday’s vote is an opportunity to again be that “example for the nation.”
I suspect that this time the vote will pass.
Where we’ll be as a community the day after the vote, and the day after that and the day after that. This is what concerns me.
Open lines of communication between Orthodox and non-Orthodox shouldn’t always seem to happen in a condition of panic, anger, official meetings in board rooms or even in polite presentations to decision-makers.
Instead, there has to be a casual, every day adaptation to relationships.
Twelve years ago there were real efforts on the part of the Orthodox to reach out to the Owings Mills Jewish population. There were friendships that came out of those efforts. I’m wondering, though, if there was a feeling in place that perhaps the ultimate goal was to make Owings Mills just like the Park Heights, Greenspring areas where the main streets are flooded with Jews walking to synagogues on Shabbat or the homes of friends for meals.
Perhaps that wasn’t realistic for 21117 where the “Main” streets are a very commercial Reisterstown Road and Owings Mills Blvd. Owings Mills has stretches sans sidewalks. There really are not Orthodox shuls to within walking distance, outside of the Etz Chaim Center. The closest center of Orthodox life is really Ner Israel Rabbinical College, but even that is a prohibitive walk.
Maybe it is important that the relationship be reinvented.
There are many Jews living in 21117. The last Associated demographic study showed an increase in Jewish population way over 100 percent. Many of those Jews moved from 21115, 09 and 08, perhaps to get away from what they might have grown up with, more closely packed-in neighborhoods. So maybe that traditional Jewish feel of Upper Park Heights and Pikesville isn’t what works for Owings Mills. Maybe that’s what some of the residents there wanted to leave behind.
So maybe, must maybe, it’s going to come down to treadmills, gyms, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, coffee shops, Italian ice parlors and other locales to bring Jews together. As long as the current paradigm stays in place, Orthodox Jews are unlikely to worship or for some even walk into 21117 synagogues.
If you’re Orthodox, reach out of your comfort zone a little, and go exercise at the Owings Mills JCC. Talk to the person on the treadmill next to you, maybe you’ll find something or someone in common. Enjoy the JCC programs such as its film festival and the Jewish Theatre Workshop production.
If you’re not Orthodox and live in Owings Mills, come to the Park Heights JCC, get on that treadmill and have that conversation as well.
I know it sounds so simplistic. The point is, we as a community are guilty of turning these issues into board room discussions instead of every day life encounters.
We are people, neighbors with similarities and differences. We raise children, we pay bills, we have hobbies, we love art, we read, we pray, we are healthy, we are infirm, we try to get the best out of our days during this gift we call life. We want our children to get good grades, we clip coupons and most of us hang mezuzot on our door frames.
We can meet one another on grounds that are common, be it the coffee shop or the library, the tennis court. We worked together to build a new playground at Fallstaff School. We actively support political candidates on a local or a national level. We board planes together sometimes to visit Israel. We pick up the phones together on Super Sunday and solicit gifts so that the Associated can help our brothers and sisters in need.
In these difficult economic times, there is so much for us to do within the Jewish community to help without judgment, without condemnation. Donated gifts aren’t labeled from a Reform, Conservative or Orthodox person and neither are the recipients of the services these gifts provide.
So when the vote is taken on Wednesday, and whether or not the Owings Mills JCC is open or closed, we can still be the talk of the nation, because we stayed together as Jews as a community, the Baltimore Jewish Community.
We can be that example.

He officiated at many weddings, including my own.
He officiated at many bar and bat mitzvahs, including my wife’s.
He officiated at my sister-in-law’s wedding. He also asked that same sister-in-law out on a date. He was 52. She was 21.
Okay, but that was the rabbi, well, being the rabbi.
None of us longtime Jewish Baltimoreans needed to be reminded that there was always a wink or a permissible zone of conduct not reserved for many others that we permitted with him.
His reputation as a hugger, a kisser, and a ladies’ man happened in public view. We thought it was cute. He’s 50 and he still likes the girls.
But then it became he’s 60 and he still likes the girls. Then, 70. He was 85 when he was convicted for fourth-degree sexual assault.
Is it cute now?
Let it not be ignored that we allowed this to happen.
One victim told me that she begged her parents that she not have to go into the rabbi’s office when she was 14. She thought he was “creepy.”
When she returned to her mother and told her the rabbi kissed her on the lips and touched her, she was asked to keep it quiet. The rabbi didn’t ask her to keep it quiet. Mom did. He knew something. The young teen’s word wouldn’t be believed.
This was the rabbi who married her parents. He eulogized her grandparents. He was the rabbi who wasn’t going to pass judgment on their religious practice.
We receive phone calls and e-mails, some from women who see his conviction as a vindication for a secret that’s tormented their lives.
We also receive comments from people who call the reporting of this crime, and possible others, “one-sided,” and that the rabbi has done so much for so many over the years.
Maybe all along, through the years, we were a little too one sided in our past reporting of the rabbi. A Baltimore Jewish Times cover story lists all of the wonderful accomplishments and contributions he has made to this community. That’s not the only story like that over the years.
We didn’t ask him then about difficult topics, such as, there is this community feeling that you have been a bit too familiar with the ladies; yet we knew well about the “big elephant in the room.”
There’s also this discussion focused on the women who bring about the allegations. Some people have all but compared their victimizations to acts of prostitution, like they deserved it. Others pretty much have told us that these women led the rabbi on. Maybe a person freezes when they feel someone they trust place a hand on their breast without consent.
All of this might have been prevented. We enabled it to get this far. The smnirks, the eyeball-rolling, the comments. Instead, maybe we’ve had spiritual leaders who, on one hand, do great things, but who maybe, just maybe need help. And because seemingly nothing was being done, there was more reward than risk. He knew that. After all, who was going to tell? Certainly nobody in the Jewish community. Perhaps that’s why one victim, who isn’t Jewish, felt unencumbered to press charges. She doesn’t have to go home to this community. Her parents were not married by him. Her grandparents weren’t buried by him.
Another longtime community rabbi, when asked about these recent allegations, perhaps said it best: “This is an old story. It’s a story that is part of the culture of this community. In some ways, it was true of Rabbi [Ephraim] Shapiro as well.” The late Rabbi Shapiro allegedly molested hundreds of boys and girls while spiritual leader of Agudas Achim and then the Talmudical Academy.
“The norms of our society have changed over the years,” said the community rabbi. “One would expect the norms of behavior of an individual would change to adapt to the new rules and, if they don’t, then they have to pay the price. He should have been smart enough o know that behavior which might have been acceptable 20 years ago isn’t anymore. He has to go to every person he hurt and ask them for forgiveness.”