Why was the Jewish Times singled out? The Jewish Times, after all, is just one part of Alter Communications, a diverse media group including Style Magazine, Chesapeake Life Magazine and an array of custom publishing magazines.

Being Jewish had nothing to do with the request we made of the city. Yet based on the comments I read on the Sunpapers website, it seems to some to have everything to do with it.

Great reporting job there.

Of the intellectually charged comments I loved the best was the one asking where was the Jewish community in keeping libraries, pools and Police Athletic League Centers open in the city? Excuse me. Open your eyes. Read the names on some of the buildings around the city, names like Meyerhoff and Weinberg. Check the left hand margins on the letter head of organizations within this city. The stake in this city from Jewish community members can’t be questioned except by those with an agenda of hate.  This week’s Jewish Times cover story is an interview with the Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. Guess what? He’s isn’t Jewish. But he’s working with a public safety group, made up largely of Jewish citizens, who are hoping to assist him in the saving of the financially strapped mounted police unit.  The one comment about the city having funds for bankrupt newspapers and movie theaters, but not for police and firefighters comes to mind. Well, we’re not bankrupt. And we’re hoping that funds can be raised for the police department.

How could any publication not know that when there is a question of economy and the need for someone to blame, just dial up the Jewish community. It’s not hard to stir up the hate that’s out there. It’s lazy and it’s easy. That’s why I wonder why it wasn’t Alter Communications that was reported on, it was the Jewish Times. Good reporters get good information. Doing it on the cheap, results in thin information.  The question should have been asked, why is the Jewish newspaper based not in the center of its circulation, but instead in the city?

Nowhere, however, do I read any story or comment anywhere asking why the Baltimore Jewish Times would locate itself for decades at 2104 North Charles Street, leave for Owings Mills for one year and then return to the city. It would have been easier to stay in Owings Mills on 90 Painters Mill Road. We certainly wouldn’t have had to pay the price of moving expenses to relocate twice.

Every day, our employees would spend money at local restaurants like Tony’s or Trees, Cleo’s or the Golden Temple. We’d walk up to the Safeway and purchase groceries. We’d make use of the advertising studios that used to call that part of Charles Street home. We’d get our cars repaired or buy tires from the businesses along Howard Street. We’d walk to Memorial Stadium or restaurants in Charles Village. When Camden Yards opened, we’d sometimes walk there. We walk to the central branch of the library. We could have just as easily found a nice, comfortable home in Pikesville in the center of our readership, but we didn’t. And we didn’t because the company for generations has made a commitment to the City of Baltimore. We believe in Baltimore. The Jewish Times pumped its share of tax money into the community. We employ people in the city.

We literally left the city for one year. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to move a company. We did it twice. We were the first occupant of the building we moved into. And guess what? We’re out there again spending lunch money, taking long walks to Mt. Vernon Place, and sometimes walking to the Mitchell Court House when we serve on city juries. We take the Light Rail, and we pay rent in the city. Because we believe this is where we belong.

Didn’t read that anywhere today.

When almost all of the businesses we knew left or went out of business, we stayed. It wasn’t until our employees had to worry about a serious increase in area crime, that it came time to leave.

Of course we’re struggling. Who isn’t struggling? Yet our readers look to the JT for their news of their community. It is “their” Jewish Times. They remind us of that, be it in positive or negative ways.

So, are we paying back the City?

Yes. But we give back to this city every single day in every single way.

We report news of the city from the inside out, not as observers from the outside looking in.

Oh, and that need to get a quote from the Poynter Institute saying, “the problem is that if you are in debt to a powerful organization, you may be inclined to not cover them. You may not ask the tough questions.”

I can’t even dignify that a reporter would get a quote like that without even checking the issues we’ve been covering here. It makes me think that the comments I hear more and more about our lone daily newspaper, are unfortunately not biased, but are true.

Are we struggling financially? Who doesn’t have to re-invent to survive.

We’re better for it.

But “City gives Jewish Times financial break”

Give me a break.

Come on, you guys can do better than that.

At least I thought you could.

The one about affording day school education.

There are just so many difficult nuances to all of this.

I, at one time, sat on a tuition committee.

We’d weigh a family’s request for tuition reduction. We’d ask for full financial disclosure, check important financial documents and then do what we could do to fulfill the mandate of educating every Jewish child Jewishly.

There would be that instance when someone would submit an application and yes, there would be that trip to Florida that acted as a red flag to their request.

Then there was the family where the parents were both working full time and part-time jobs and would request just something to make the tuition more affordable.

The nuances have broadened.

A couple earns six figures, but they have three or more children in yeshiva or day school. They have a comfortable home. Okay, so they are holding on to their cars longer than they have in the past. The kids go to camp, and they do take a week’s vacation, because let’s face it, we all need some sort of respite some time.

So now in this paradigm, this family could very well ask for tuition reduction. Why shouldn’t they? Or better phrased, why should they be penalized for having a nice house, two cars and a vacation?

See, this is relatively new to the paradigm. Upper middle class incomes not being able to fully afford tuition?

In many cases, these people are afraid to even ask for the scholarship form. It could be embarrassing and they aren’t really seen as people in need
We need to blow up that paradigm.

You and I don’t know what’s going on in the lives of people who live in any of these houses. There could be unemployment. There could be furlough days. Salaries based on commissions could be down. There are plenty of fathers, and yes mothers, waking up in the middle of the night worrying about how they are going to keep the lights on, not to mention their kids in school. Sometimes the person asleep by their side doesn’t even know the extent of the family’s financial issues.

Parents look at children with guilt, and worry. Bar and bat mitzvahs have to be paid for, weddings, Jewish holidays.

It doesn’t make sense to blame the day schools or yeshivas if they are asking us to pay tuition. How can they possibly survive without tuition?
I don’t think the Associated during this time in our economic crisis, is the place to go with hands out either. The Associated is working from the other end, in many cases, providing job counseling, emergency survival assistance, therapy, and even avenues of foreclosure avoidance.

So without any reluctance, I’m going to bring this up again.

We’ve got public schools in the middle of the Jewish neighborhoods. They will teach your children AP English, get kids ready for the SAT, and college applications,  provide special education services, speech therapy, college prep, phys ed and vocational tech. If you own a home, you are paying for this anyway.

Why don’t we use it?

Is it because we’re afraid of the worldliness of these schools? Are we afraid to mix our Jewish children with Christians, with Muslims, with kids of different races?

Yeah, I think we are.

I think it’s visceral and I think it’s prejudicial.

What I really think is that’s it’s a bad decision, and a costly one.

When many older generation Jews left Park Heights and moved to Pikesville or Owings Mills, a solid core of Orthodox families moved in. CHAI and the Associated helped facilitate the Jewish rebirth of these areas. City services and County services know who lives in these neighborhoods.

But it took a faith, a belief by the early “pioneers” of the CHAI programming to bring people into the neighborhoods and actually create a viable presence. We had streets that were left behind by Jewish people now vibrant with Jewish life.

We have Cross Country Elementary School and Fallstaff and Northwestern and Pikesville Middle and Senior High School. There’s Wellwood and Summit Park.

We have Jewish private schools, some perhaps on the brink of financial insolvency.

Why do we pressure these schools? Why do we keep going back to an already overly stressed Jewish community system and ask it for yet more, more money. It’s like a shark with an insatiable appetite.

We moved into neighborhoods given up for dead Jewishly, and we created Jewish neighborhoods. That, in itself, took risk and commitment.

A critical mass of Jewish families willing to place their children in some sort of workable modality for secular education only in the public schools would save millions of dollars. It could keep Jewish private schools alive, because they would be doing what they do best, offering the Jewish side of education.

The public schools, with a critical mass of Jewish families involved, could offer such positive potential, such possibilities.

We tell the story so often of the man who was drowning, and how God sent him a helicopter with a ladder and a life raft, but the man refused to take the help. And then the man asked God why he didn’t save him? God said, “I tried. I sent you a helicopter, a ladder and a life raft”
We have these buildings, these educational facilities right here in our own neighborhoods.

We have a critical mass of families who just like they saved and changed the very streets they live could save and change the public schools in their neighborhoods.

We are in a box of financial despair. Our schools aren’t equipped to handle the depth of this recession. The definition of Jews in financial need has gotten bigger and broader.

Let our wonderful day schools and yeshivas teach Jewish subjects to the children in a less financially pressured environment.

Let’s let our local public school facilities, educators, special educators, college preparatory teachers and guidance counselors take care of the secular studies.

It’s free.

It’s there to be used.

Use these facilities.

Or don’t complain.

Somewhere in a synagogue close to home, the phrase “love thy neighbor as thyself” was said during Rosh Hashanah services.
When it was heard, the congregants all probably automatically nodded in agreement.
And then the thought was gone, and it was about turning the page to the next passage.
Why is that sometimes we can read or hear a phrase like “love thy neighbor,” a clear instruction from HaShem, and so fervently agree with it, then do nothing to live it.
When it comes to actually loving our neighbors, well maybe we don’t always.
This morning, I came to the intersection of Strathmore and Cross Country to make my usual left turn on my way to work.
As we’ve reported in the Jewish Times, this isn’t an easy intersection. There have been a handful of drivers coming from the area of Taney Road in one direction or Clarks Lane in the other, if driving too fast, can have a difficult time slowing down. So making that turn is often a dangerous “adventure.”
Today that adventure had another little twist to it. A driver in a minivan was at the intersection going the wrong way on a one-way street.
We both waited for traffic to clear as best as possible, but instead of taking an easy right turn, she went left.
Beyond her van I saw at the corner house a zoning hearing notification sign. The zoning sign it turns out is notifying neighbors of a public hearing that will enable the home to house a day care center. The van didn’t help the cause of the day care center.
Mind you, this house sits on a corner where a car plowed through a fence and into its yard.
There is no implication here that the people who own the house will run anything but a stellar day care center. But all the planning in the world can’t prevent a person in a van from going the wrong way down an already busy, dangerous intersection, and making the more difficult left instead of right.
The recent accidents at the intersection happened during the warm months. There was no ice on the road…yet. The approach on Cross Country of that intersection is known to be slippery as black ice forms near the sewage drains.
While many neighbors certainly don’t mind the presence of a daycare center at the corner, there still are others who fill find it objectionable. Most, if not all, of the neighbors have been in their homes long before this house was even constructed.
Love thy neighbor?
Everything will be done on the up and up and legally. The zoning hearing will come before people who possibly don’t walk the streets on Shabbos and look both ways twice before they even think of walking or pushing a stroller through the intersection.
In the past eight weeks, there has been a utility pole knocked over, the fence smashed in and pieces of automobile wreckage strewn many yards away.
And what else is this going to do?
It could open up a can of worms that I don’t think many of the neighbors would care to face. And that is the operation of several basement businesses, perhaps some without appropriate licensure, creating foot and car traffic in neighborhoods zoned only for residential use.
If this day care center proposal gets more than a cursory look by neighbors and elected officials then it isn’t beyond the impossible, that oppositional neighbors will start making the authorities aware.
However, if the City doesn’t care, and doesn’t look into it, then there is nothing that will ever change in the spirit of the “love thy neighbor?”
And why is it that on the same street on the corner intersecting Park Heights Avenue, that the construction of a building has caused so much angst among its neighbors and the Cross Country Neighborhood Association leadership, City Council Woman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector and even CHAI?
The strewn remains of construction debris are a common site on the construction grounds. It seems as if little if any effort has gone into the care and concern of the people who live adjacent the property. There’s nothing anyone can do. There aren’t any laws or codes that have seemingly been broken.
The only code broken is the one asking for civility. People have lived in the vicinity of this construction site for generations. They deserve better than the disregard for their dignity as homeowners and tax paying citizens.
“Love thy neighbor? Maybe it is more of a case of loving thy neighborhood.