Photos by Dav id Ca lton Professor Lupovitch speaks to the crowd at the Oak Park JCC. Neighborhoot Anchor Oak Park JCC hosts lecture on the role of Jewish Community Centers. Louis Finkelman Special to the Jewish News T he Committee to Save the Oak Park Jewish Community Center hosted a talk by Professor Howard Lupovitch titled "Anchoring the Neighborhood and Other Reasons Why Community Centers Strengthen Jewish Life" at the JCC in Oak Park on June 29. A crowd of about 180 attended, many wearing T-shirts with the slogan: "I am the Oak Park Jewish Community Center:' Lupovitch's talk comes against the back- drop of the imminent closure of the Oak Park JCC. In January, the boards of the JCC and of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit voted to close the Oak Park JCC to help close a $1 million annual deficit. Community members responded by convening the Committee to Save the Oak Park JCC to find alternatives to closure. The Jewish Federation has tendered a request for proposals for taking over the facility, which will close Aug. 31. Lupovitch, director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University, began his talk by sharing that he learned to swim at a Metro Detroit JCC, he rode his tricycle to a JCC, attended nursery school at the Oak Park JCC and learned to run a football route at a JCC. Though personally involved in the JCC, he spoke as a historian, giving context, back- ground and perspective to the controversy of the Oak Park JCC's closing. He built the talk around three themes: decision-making, neighborhoods and the Jewish center move- ment. Decision-making, as Lupovitch sees it, involves a balance between emotion and logic. Every community needs mechanisms for community members to advise leaders, 14 July 9 • 2015 Oak Park Jewish for those leaders to make decisions Center as a place and for commu- where secular and nity members to Orthodox Jews provide feedback, come together. although some New constituents always feel dissat- Challenges isfied, he said. According to Neighborhoods Lupovitch, JCCs present a prob- face new problems. lem in modern Even Mordechai Jewish history. Kaplan, he said, John R. Klein, Ron Aronson, Paul Levine and Rarely in antiq- did not anticipate Aaron Tobin uity, Lupovitch a time when Jews said, did we have would feel welcome different Jewish neighborhoods in the same getting the services of a community center urban area. Now, many cities have old Jewish in non-denominational settings. Now Jews neighborhoods, new neighborhoods and can just as well belong to an athletic club even newer up-and-coming neighborhoods. as to the JCC. The center must now have a Each neighborhood typically has its own high-quality gym and an attractive pool just constituency with its own needs and inter- to compete. ests. Trying to make a unified community Another challenge is the changing popula- out of disparate neighborhoods rarely works, tion. Metro Detroit has to figure out where Lupovitch said. Jews live now and where Jews will live in the Detroit Jewish history has long gone future. In Detroit, a JCC could just go north- "North by Northwest:' As each new Jewish west. Now the situation is considerably more complex. neighborhood appears, the old neighbor- hood disappears. In most other cities, Jews "This calls for rethinking, and rethinking do not totally leave the old neighborhood. is never easy:' Lupovitch said. Regarding the Jewish center movement, At the question-and-answer session, one Lupovitch noted that in the open society of woman asked, "What do we do when we no America, Judaism is voluntary. longer feel confidence in the elders?" A century ago, the visionary Rabbi Lupovitch called that a perennial difficulty Mordechai Kaplan realized that to retain a in leadership. When a problem gets too great, Jewish community, we have to offer the wid- we sometimes depose our leaders, which est possible range of options. We need a syn- rarely solves the problem. We need modern agogue and a Beit Midrash, and we also need techniques to empower individuals to bring sports facilities, libraries, cultural activities their grievances before the community. and art classes to bring together Jews with Someone else asked how the Jewish different interests — a JCC. community can deal with population loss. According to Lupovitch, Jewish centers Lupovitch noted that Jewish communities anchor neighborhoods. People praise the periodically experience growth and shrink- age. The freedom of urban existence allows Jewish life to flourish and allows disaffected Jews to drift away. In periods of decline, communities rely on wealthy families to maintain services. Detroit — not just Jewish Detroit — has undergone a period of decline, but now seems on the rebound, he said. Yehudis Brea noted that the Oak Park Jewish community is actually growing. Lupovitch added that he saw growth of other Jewish neighborhoods in Ferndale, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods and even Downtown Detroit. Lupovitch ended by observing that we do best as a community when we compromise. The most effective policies typically leave everyone feeling somewhat dissatisfied, he said. Ron Aronson, a leader of Committee to Save the Oak Park JCC, observed that the committee, like the Oak Park JCC itself, has created a sense of community among Orthodox Jews and Jews of other traditions. "It is the only such community in the Detroit area',' Aronson said, "and if the Oak Park JCC isn't preserved, including the health club, that sense of community will die:' ❑ The Save the Oak Park JCC com- mittee presented scholarships for membership in the JCC to Ethan and Ashira Solomon and to Sam Molnar. The committee raised money for these scholarships to demonstrate the viability of the center and to attract the interest of young people. The scholarships, paradoxically, pay for one-year memberships in an organization that plans to close in two months.