On My Mind
Executive editor — issues and opinionsJCC Open or Closed, We Can Still Be The Example
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.
