Put the shtetl aside

Editorial

For centuries in Eastern European shtetls, Jewish residents built organizations to respond to every need, for orphans and widows, for the hungry and homebound, for the poor and the elderly. There was a place to study and a place to pray.

When Jews settled in the United States, they brought this model with them, moving into discrete neighborhoods and creating organizations to foster community and address identified needs. The shtetl/neighborhood approach worked well for decades, and in some long-established metropolitan areas it works well today.

But the Valley of the Sun is a long way from the shtetl. The side-by-side model for community that works elsewhere simply doesn't exist in our widespread Valley.

The findings of the 2002 Greater Phoenix Jewish Community Study bolster this reality. The number of Jews calling the Valley home has skyrocketed: of 44,000 Jewish households, 10,000 have arrived in the past five years, and they have settled throughout Maricopa county.

Jews are arriving too rapidly for the existing organizations to welcome them, identify their interests and needs, and foster connections. Indeed, the Jewish infrastructure is challenged to create a new development strategy for our far-flung community.

One concept would be to create a locus for Jewish families in several geographic areas. The Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus recently opened in Scottsdale is a beginning, serving as a place for Jews to gather. But what will draw Jewish residents of the Tri-Cities? Central Phoenix? the Northwest Valley?

The Valley's Jews face formidable challenges. The data in the new demographic study provide an essential tool to enable us to clearly define one of America's last Jewish frontiers, and then to meet the challenge of serving it.

One woman's legacy

With the death this week of Beryl Morton, we have lost a selfless visionary, a leader who made the documentation of the Arizona Jewish community's historical record her personal mission.

She devoted her energy, passion and expertise, first to the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum and in recent years to the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.

Morton spearheaded the community's recent purchase of the Culver Street synagogue, which will serve as the home of our Jewish Heritage Center. This site will endure as the legacy of a woman whose single-minded commitment made the impossible happen.

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