By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff | November 4, 2006
To the chagrin of many local rabbis, the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston have decided to open their health and fitness facilities during the hours traditionally reserved for prayer in observance of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. The centers will also open on all Jewish holidays except Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the first day of Passover.
The expansion of Saturday hours takes effect today at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton and the Striar Jewish Community Center in Stoughton, which are administered by a single board. The centers have been open on Saturday afternoons, after prayer times, since they were built in the 1980s.
The change ends a policy of staying closed when observant Jews are in synagogue in observance of the Sabbath and holidays. The decision was made as more than half of all American Jews are not affiliated with a prayer community.
"Members were telling us, 'We want to use the JCC at times that are most appropriate to us,' " said Mark Sokoll, president of the centers. "They were saying, 'Please try to remove the barriers, so that we can spend time together as a family doing the things that are important for us and that we choose to do and want to do.' "
Sokoll said there has been a dramatic increase nationally in the number of Jewish community centers open on Saturday mornings. No administrative work will be done at the Greater Boston centers and no money will change hands, he said, avoiding two of the most grievous desecrations of Sabbath and Holy Days.
A recent survey by the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America found that 77 percent of the centers are closed on Saturday mornings, but that the number that open has increased from 10 percent to 23 percent over the past four years.
Among the defenders of the decision by the Boston-area community centers is Barry Shrage, longtime president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.
"It is not a place I would want to be on Shabbat," said Shrage, an observant Jew. "But if it is a place where Jews want to be on Shabbat, it's got some value. Certainly it is a Jewish environment."
Rabbi Gershon Gewirtz of Young Israel of Brookline, an Orthodox synagogue, objected to that reasoning.
"An environment that violates the Shabbat, on Shabbat, may be an environment in which Jews are found, but it is not a Jewish environment," Gewirtz said. "People who are observant wouldn't go anyway, but that is not the issue. The issue is how the community as a whole views Shabbat. It is in the interest of the community to use Shabbat for spiritual endeavor, spiritual growth."
Gewirtz said he received a courtesy call from Sokoll informing him of the new policy after the decision had been made.
Rabbi Joel Sisenwine of Temple Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation in Wellesley, said that he did not have a problem with the change and that he would continue to work out at the Leventhal-Sidman center.
But with the new policy, the center "has ceded its position as the Jewish community center," Sisenwine said. "It is a Jewish community center, a choice people make."
One prominent Reform rabbi, whose congregants are the least traditionally observant of the major streams of Judaism, speaking on condition of anonymity said: "There is not a rabbi who is not going to support the Sabbath, but there is no way anything I say about this won't be misunderstood or misinterpreted by one side or the other. The centers have gone in the direction of survival. . . . They have to respond to the demands of secular Jewish families, or those families are going to go elsewhere."
Sokoll said that the centers, which have a combined membership of about 23,000 people, had significant membership losses in recent years but were rebounding before the decision to open on Sabbaths and holidays. He said membership has not yet returned to its peak levels.
The new opening policy "has been a non issue here," Sokoll said. "Members have been calling to thank us."
But Rabbi William G. Hamilton of Kehillath Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Brookline, said the new policy "was the last straw" for him.
Family schedules and cost considerations had caused him to reconsider his affiliation with the Jewish Community Centers, Hamilton said, and now "we will not be renewing our membership."
Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.
The JCC is a nondenominational institution. Just as observant Jews are a minority within the American Jewish population, observant Jews are also a minority within the population of JCC members. The JCC should not be expected to maintain a schedule which is unsatisfactory to the majority of its members.
I think it would be wonderful if all Jews were observant. I think it would be wonderful if there were no need for the JCC to be open on Shabbat or holidays because none of its members wanted to use it at those times. However, at the same time, I recognize that I am in the minority and I do not have the right to impose my own practices on others. Furthermore, opening the JCC at these times is unlikely to cause anyone to violate the Shabbat who wouldn't have done so anyway. Finally, making a fuss and demanding that the JCC remain closed on Shabbat and holidays would antagonize non-observant Jews, exactly the opposite of what observant Jews should be trying to do if they wish to draw their less observant brethren toward greater observance.
In my opinion, the JCC is losing membership not because it is open on Shabbat but rather because it is not attractive to the Jewish community as a whole (to me it has the feel of a stuffy suburban country club). Its prices appear to be very high relative to similar services from the secular community (case in point: the outdoor pool), and there is not sufficient Jewish content in the center to warrant the added cost.
As such, families who are willing to shell out ~$15,000 per year per child for Jewish day school education, are reluctant to pay the $1,000 family membership fees for the JCC (even if, as in my case, it's practically in their back yard). In its current direction, the JCC has to start competing with similar secular institutions in its neighborhood, both for price and availability, if it wants to survive financially.
On the other hand, if it wants to remain a Jewish community center, it has to strive to become an appealing Jewish scene ... which means, for example, becoming the most logical choice for a broad spectrum of major Jewish events (Jewish lectures, Jewish shows, Israeli folk-dancing, Jewish dating, Jewish text study, Jewish basketball tournaments, etc.), and not just left-wing causes du jour. It has to be a center of Jewish social interaction, learning, and strengthening of the principles that have maintained us as Jews throughout the years. For that, I'd consider becoming a member.
Sure, the JCC is nondenominational, but it purports to be Jewish. Absent a commitment to Jewish values, it's just a health club with CJP funding.
A shared Jewish institution which closes on Shabbat is in fact not antagonistic; it is rather an example to all that Judaism stands for something that transcends the world's 24/7, always-open mentality. Even if Boston's denominations observe Shabbat in different ways, is it not important to send the message that we make a distinction, any distinction, between Shabbat and the rest of the week?
I first learned about Shabbat twenty-two years ago in a JCC preschool class. I came from a secular home, and I bet most of the other kids did, too. I couldn't internalize the lesson at that age, but it doubtless had a lingering impact through two decades of spiritual progress to where I am today.
Even if the beauty and transcendance of the Sabbath is over a preschooler's head, kids have an easy time recognizing hypocrisy. How would today's four-year-olds interpret a lesson that's flouted by the very institution providing it?
So, when you talk about drawing the less-observant toward frumkeit, consider how these "unsatisfactory" little matters can have a tremendously positive effect. Let's not antagonize, but let's not coddle or deceive, either.
You don't get to decide what someone else considers antagonistic. In fact, some of the ideas that you wrote in your message would be perceived as intolerant by some Jews who are less observant than you are, and for the JCC to impose such ideas on its members whould be perceived by some as imposition of observance on those who do not want it.
It is also worth noting that the JCC *does*, as you put it, "make a distinction, any distinction, between Shabbat and the rest of the week." The distinctions that they make were quite explicitly spelled out in the article we are discussing. It is specious to claim that by opening for more hours on Shabbat, the JCC is no longer making a distinction between Shabbat and the rest of the week.
I do not think it is hypocritical for an institution to acknowledge in its practices that not all Jews observe Shabbat or wish to do so, while at the same time teaching preschoolers the positive value Shabbat can have in their lives and the lives of their families, if they choose to accept it.
Observant Jews do not have to use the JCC on Shabbat. Observant Jews are not forced to violate the Shabbat by the fact that the JCC is open on Shabbat. Therefore, there is no issue of intolerance toward observant Jews in the fact that the JCC is open on Shabbat. There *would*, however, be an issue of intolerance if the observant members of the community were to demand that the JCC not be open on Shabbat. That would, definitionally, be an effort by said observant Jews to force their practices on the unobservant, and that's simply not reasonable.