The New Jewish Neighborhood Project
Yom Kippur 5772 / 8 October 2011
Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am
A couple months ago, I was walking through Reservoir Hill en route to the light rail station. I was on my way to BWI to catch a flight to Michigan where I would join Miriam, the kids and my in-laws for some much-needed vacation. It was a hot day. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and schlepping my Martin “Back-Packer” guitar and roller-bag down the cobblestone of Hendler Lane near my house. A middle-aged African-American woman, well dressed and driving a shiny black sedan, pulled up alongside and rolled down her window. “You know, you should be careful in this neighborhood,” she warned. I paused for a moment and then replied, “I live in this neighborhood.” “Oh, okay,” she said clearly surprised. And then she drove off.
Today, I want to talk to you about the neighborhood, about Reservoir Hill. Perhaps some of you have had a chance to read my “Urban Rabbi” blog over the past several months. My hope today is to pull together some of the ideas and stories I have been exploring and offer us some thoughts about how we might foster and deepen the relationship between Beth Am and our surrounding community. To do so we ought to be honest with ourselves about our own concerns, even our biases. Like the lady in the black sedan, we all make assumptions – this is human nature. If you visit the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, you will find two doors: one marked “prejudiced” and the other marked “not prejudiced.” But if you try to walk through the second door, you’ll find it locked. It is only by walking through that first door, by acknowledging our biases that we can hope to move forward.
In a way, this town was built on prejudice. I know many of you have read Antero Pietila’s important book Not in My Neighborhood which details the discriminatory practices of banks, universities, realtors and politicians during the last century. You know the history of unfair lending, redlining, blockbusting, how Jews were pushed in one direction, blacks in another. There is a reason I am talking about this on Yom Kippur; today is a day to confront our past, to shine an honest and uncompromising light on our misdeeds and begin to mend the brokenness we find there. To be clear, I will not approach this from some place of collective guilt. This is not about t’shuvah for the sins of Baltimore Jews, though there were those who played their part, just as there were others who had the courage to speak up in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitism. Rather, let’s think of this as a chance to heal, to reimagine our role and build on the rare opportunity of a synagogue situated in this particular neighborhood at what I believe is a serendipitous moment in time.
Today I would like to introduce us to what I call “The New Jewish Neighborhood”: a project of chesed and chutzpah, of learning and living. Here’s the basic idea. My hope is to reframe the entire notion of a “Jewish Neighborhood” for the 21st Century. Where once a Jewish neighborhood was defined by a preponderance of Jews and Jewish institutions, I would humbly suggest that we now focus not just on Jewish quantity, but on Jewish quality, not only on Jewish community but a community infused with Jewish values like diversity, education, sustainability and social justice. Let’s be honest: Reservoir Hill will never again return to its former glory when porches were abuzz with the sounds of broken English and Yiddish and the street cars clattered along Madison Avenue up to Druid Hill Park. I would argue this is a good thing because the Jewish neighborhood we can create here will move us beyond some of the parochialism of yesteryear while preserving our sense of rootedness, history and meaning.
In all honesty I feel more than a bit presumptuous talking about the neighborhood at all! So many of you were raised here: Betty Seidel, Buzzy Hettleman, Blanche Schimmel grew up in my own house! David Cordish, Barry Blumberg, Siggy Shapiro and more. You all played on the vacant lot at Brooks and Linden. You played tennis or slept in the park on hot summer nights. You hung out at Manheimer’s, sipping soda and watching Bobby Hess or Hazzan Weisgal play pinball. And more of you were here in the early years of Beth Am, sitting at Louie Kaplan’s feet, watching the neighborhood change around you while Chickie Grayson, Sidney Sakols and a few others remained. And then there’s Efrem Potts, a Mt. Washingtonian for God’s sake, who was raised in Upper Park Heights, but perhaps the only person here who can claim a truly lifelong relationship with this building, and Gil Sandler, the great chronicler of Baltimore Jewish life. So, in the spirit of the Day, to those of you who lived that history, the real Baltimoreans here, I hope you will forgive any overreach on my part.
Let me begin with a personal confession, my own biases. When we first moved here Miriam and I did have some reservations about the neighborhood. We considered issues like safety, cleanliness, food access and recreational space. In the end, there were a number of factors that convinced us to move to Reservoir Hill including being able to walk to shul and a community of inspiring Jewish residents (including the Konheims) who had decided to take a risk and invest in the neighborhood. What’s more we had and have faith in the trajectory of this community: the vastly improved crime statistics, the diminishing vacant properties and the tremendous resource we have in Druid Hill Park whose future looks so much brighter than its more recent past. But above all, living in Reservoir Hill was for us about values, about teaching our children that they live in a world of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Finding ourselves suddenly playing the role of urban chalutzim, we simply figured what we could not find, we would build. John Muir once said of his time in the Sierra Nevada: “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.” As I am in Reservoir Hill, so too it is now in me. And I am more than enthusiastic about the possibility it holds both for my family’s future and for the future of this shul.
But, that future is dependent on our willingness to make courageous choices. There are three choices in particular that I feel help to define Beth Am’s relationship with Reservoir Hill: to bein the neighborhood, to be for the neighborhood and finally to be of the neighborhood.
We should not underestimate what it meant for Beth Am to make the choice to remain in Reservoir Hill. Surely, we can point to many examples in Baltimore and around the country of synagogues that fled, that relocated to the new population centers as the Jewish community migrated from city to suburbs, or in the case of my own childhood, from suburb to deeper suburbs. And staying hardly meant guaranteed success. Many of the synagogues that stayed did not make it. A few weeks ago, I took a walk with my kids back home in Niles, IL. We passed by the neighborhood shul, a once-vibrant congregation that had not been my own synagogue, but where I attended several b’nai mitzvah and other services from time to time. The past decade had been particularly challenging for this shul, and (in the absence of a nearby constituency) they were finally forced to close their doors last year. My children and I witnessed a building in transition, a cross now adorning the exterior brick of the sanctuary, even before they had had a chance to remove the shofar and Torah depicted on the adjoining wall.
It is no small thing that Beth Am is still a shul. It easily could have gone the way of several great Baltimore congregations whose erstwhile buildings are now adorned with crosses. In a recent blog post, I shared my enthusiasm for working in such a place. “The muted tap tap of little feet on the carpet, the soaring ark and eternal flame, the wooden pews with tarnished name plates from yesteryear merge into the visceral and temporal richness of Jewish experience here. Indeed, the intersection of Baltimore’s Jewish past and present seems to saturate the very walls of this historic building.” I concluded the post by admitting: “My heart grieves a little for the synagogues that are no more, but it celebrates this shul that was… and is.
And staying in the neighborhood also means remaining true to who we are. It means erecting our Sukkah. It means children dancing on Eutaw Place at Simchat Torah. It means the chatter of young adults as they make their way to local homes for Friday night dinner and the shofar’s call gliding through the open windows on Rosh Hashanah and out into the streets below. It was this pride and sense of purpose that kept us here in the first place. Inspired by our building and committed to one another, the founders of Beth Am and its members for the next three and a half decades continued to make a commitment to this location, and we should be proud of that.
But being in the community is, of course, insufficient for a long-term relationship with the other residents of Reservoir Hill. At some point we needed to clarify our role and choose to be for the neighborhood. And choose we did. With leaders like Don Akchin and Miriam Tillman, now Jackie Donowitz, Arthur Shulman and so many others, we made a commitment to serve the community and to advocate on its behalf. We host and send representatives to gatherings for the Lakeside Neighbors Coalition and the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council. We volunteer at the John Eager Howard School and the St. Francis Center. We work with the police toward increased safety and with housing officials to rehab vacant properties. Barry Kessler and Leonard Sachs advocate on behalf of the Park. And then there is the inspiring new playground, the community farm and Whitelock corridor revitalization which are unfolding as we speak.
I also had the opportunity to contribute to the neighborhood recently but without even knowing it! A couple months ago, Miriam and I finally decided it was time to take the plunge and get a minivan. I would give up my old car and inherit my wife’s Subaru. We contacted an organization called Vehicles for Change which accepts donated cars, repairs them when possible and distributes them across three states. Two weeks later, a flatbed truck met me on Eutaw Place, across from the shul, and drove my car toward the highway. A couple weeks later, I got an email from Rabbi Konheim who lives across the alley from us. “I think I saw your car in the neighborhood today,” he said. “No, you must be mistaken,” I replied, “I donated my car.” But sure enough, parked around the corner from my house is my old car with the same familiar stickers on the dash and the telltale portion of the key I once broke off in the trunk. Rambam tells us that it is a higher level of tzedakah to give anonymously – and I certainly tried. But the story reminds me how powerful it can be to support our neighborhood, our community – to know that our dollars, our time and our energy can have a local impact, even when we don’t realize it. The Talmud says: Ani’ei ircha kodmim, the poor of your own community come first, and we are reminded that we should construct our dwelling places so as to provide access for the poor. Rashi adds that a gatehouse must be situated in a way that ensures the owner of the home will hear the tza’akah of the ani, the cry of the beggar looking for food (Bava Kamma 7b). This is how we harness the Jewish values of tzedakah and gemilut hesed. This is how and why we are for the neighborhood.
But there is one final piece, one critical choice if we are to fashion this New Jewish Neighborhood, if our project is to succeed. And this one is a choice we are just beginning to make. The Gemarra (Bava Kamma 50b) tells the story of a man who once observed a farmer picking errant stones from his field and throwing them into the street. Said the stranger to the farmer, “Why are you throwing stones from land which is not yours onto property which belongs to you?” The farmer dismissed the comment as the confused ramblings of a simpleton. Sometime later, the man fell upon hard times and had to sell his farm, and as he walked down the street, he tripped on one of the stones that he had thrown there. Only then did the man begin to understand the stranger’s prescient comments. To be of the neighborhood means to recognize not just our responsibility for it but our connection to it and, ultimately, our dependence on it. Beth Amers often hear me say, “what is good for the neighborhood is good for the shul.” You don’t have to live here. The playground we helped build is a resource for our children, a beautiful play space for Beth Am kids after religious school, a place for all of us to hang out after services on Shabbat. If you buy produce from the Whitelock farm stand or take a Yoga class at St. Francis, that is being of the neighborhood too. And if we – through advocacy or investment – can help to convert the vacant land on Lake Drive into retail shops, or woo businesses to North Avenue and then shop at those businesses, that too is how we can be vitally of the neighborhood.
Now I don’t want to imply that this is primarily about our selfish motives, nor that what I am talking about is gentrification. The blessing (and it is a blessing) of this neighborhood is its diverse housing stock. We are not becoming Fells Point. The modest homes on Brookfield share a zipcode with the mansions on Eutaw and the newly rehabbed mixed-income high rises on Lake Drive. Our efforts must be to preserve the diversity of Reservoir Hill: racial, religious and socioeconomic diversity as well. But diversity is only that when people of diverse backgrounds interact. And that, too, takes a certain amount of courage – not just to say hi to someone after shul, to be polite and a good neighbor, but to delve deeper. To get to know our neighbors. To hear their stories. To tell them ours. To recognize that we are all in the same boat.
There’s a good reminder of this in the Haftarah that we’ll read later this afternoon. The storm rages, but Jonah is fast asleep in the bowels of the boat on his way to Tarshish, away from God’s call. When bailing water is no longer sufficient, the sailors rouse Jonah from his slumber and call on him to pray to his God. They ask him to identify himself and he does, telling them that he is a Hebrew who worships the One God of heaven and earth. And then Jonah does something quite remarkable: he recognizes his responsibility to the collective and suggests that they must sacrifice him to save the rest. Jonah teaches us a valuable lesson: none of us can simply stowaway hoping to avoid our fate. Ironically, it is through Jonah’s particularism that he comes to embrace the universal – he awakens, he admits his origin, his people and his God, and then he speaks up on behalf of his shipmates.
In a very real way, because the choice was made to stay, the fate of Beth Am is inextricably bound to that of Reservoir Hill. It is not simply enough to avoid throwing stones; we need to pick them up from the street. It is not enough to sit quietly in the bowels of our stately building; we must stand simultaneously proud and humble and then stroll the sidewalks outside. The good news is that our fate demands of us a sacrifice less costly than that of Jonah. We need not cast ourselves overboard; we just need to pay attention! I put it to you, what are your ideas about integrating Beth Am into our community? How will you help us to be not just in and for the neighborhood but increasingly of the neighborhood? Will you live here, play here, plant, build or shop here? Will you play tennis across the street where Buzzy Hettleman once defeated Arthur Ashe? (Of course, Buzzy was 20 and Ashe was only 12). Will you join us at the Whitelock Revival Festival one week from Sunday? I’ll make it easy for you: come to our open house between 11:30-2:00 and then walk over to Whitelock Street from 2:00 on. We have great people here and I bet you have a thousand ideas. In the coming weeks and months we will be convening members of our community to brainstorm thoughts about how to move this New Jewish Neighborhood Project forward. Information will be forthcoming. Please lend your voice to the conversation.
Haverei, now is the time. Yom Kippur reminds us today is the day. The piyyut (liturgical poem) from the end of Musaf includes the line: Hayom t’gadleinu! Today, help us grow! Help us take this next critical step in the life of our congregation. There are people in this neighborhood who need our gifts, but they also need our presence and our confidence. It is about this neighborhood, our neighborhood, but what we do here has implications for many other neighborhoods as well. What if we created a national model of what it looks like to reimagine urban life and create values-based Jewish community? Hayom t’gadleinu, Today, help us grow! My friends, this used to be the shining Jewish neighborhood of Baltimore. I do not believe that I am exaggerating when I say it can be again.