LEFT: Rabbi
Robert Levy
entertains.
BELOW:
Nursery
schoolers
paint.
Shifting
Center
Ann Arbor's new JCC has
opened to high expectations
A
LAURA FOL KMAN
Special to The ewish News
nn Arbor's Beth Israel Nur-
sery School has moved into
new quarters, but the three-
and four-year-olds aren't complaining.
Their school, now located in the new
Jewish Community Center on Birch
Hollow Drive on Ann Arbor's east
side, seems to suit them just fine.
After its highly successful fund-
aising campaign, during which
$700,000 was raised, the Jewish Com-
munity Center of Washtenaw Coun-
ty was able several months ago to
move into its new -facility, a former
Ann Arbor public school building.
The challenge the JCC now faces is
to provide programming needed by
the community, thereby continuing
the momentum it created with its
capital campaign.
The new center, occupying 32,000
square feet on six acres of land, hopes
to become the Jewish communal ad-
dress for the Ann Arbor and wider
Washtenaw community. Its goal, says
interim director Carol Hoffer, is to
provide trips, athletics, regular
meeting places for groups and such
services as senior and toddler pro-
gramming not offered elsewhere in
the Jewish community. Some ques-
tion still lingers, however, whether
the needs of the community were ful-
ly assessed before a group of in-
terested individuals launched the
campaign last September to purchase
the building.
No formal survey of the communi-
ty was conducted, says Rabbi Robert
Levy of Temple Beth Emeth in Ann
Arbor. Yet, despite the lack of stud y,
he cites the tremendous response to
the capital campaign. Rabbi Allan
Kensky, of Beth Israel Congregation,
says that although they may not have
gone through the formal steps to
ascertain the community's need for
the new center, the grass-roots sup-
port seems proof enough to undertake
the project. Alan Cotzin, Beth
Emeth's president, feels that there
was "little community involvement"
in the decision to purchase the
building, but acknowledges the short
time frame the center's supporters
had in which to place a bid for the
desired building.
An assessment of the community's
needs was conducted seven years ago,
maintains Hoffer, and then again
prior to this year's merger of Ann Ar-
bor's Jewish Community Council —
the former umbrella for the area's 17
Jewish organizations — with the
United Jewish Appeal. That merger
created the United Jewish Appeal-
Jewish Community Association, bet-
ter known in Ann Arbor as "the
association?'
One significant conclusion from
these studies, Hoffer adds, is that
there are few communities the size of
Ann Arbor, with its 1,200 to 1,400
Jewish families, without a center.
Support from the local rabbis to in-
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