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We Should Be Building More Jewish Institutions and Buildings — Not Downsizing Them
Rabbi Eli C. Freedman, Senior Rabbi Jill L. Maderer, and Cantor Bradley Hyman lead a service marking Erev Rosh Hashanah at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 6, 2021. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski
A few weeks ago, driving through West Philadelphia with my son, I pointed out the streets where my grandparents once lived and the places where an older generation of our family once belonged.
We ended up talking about my long-shuttered synagogue, Beth T’filah in Overbrook Park. It was a few-hundred-family, postwar shul — modest in scale, but central to the rhythms of Jewish life that shaped my childhood. Later that evening, wanting to show him what that world looked like, I searched online for old photographs.
What I found stunned and troubled me.
Despite being a student of history — Philadelphia history, specifically — I was unprepared for what appeared on my screen. Image after image of synagogues I had never even heard of: scattered throughout Strawberry Mansion, Logan, West Philadelphia, and Wynnefield Heights.
These weren’t simple storefront shuls. They were grand structures with limestone façades, soaring sanctuaries, and stained-glass windows that radiated pride. Community centers that once throbbed with life. Physical evidence of a Jewish world far deeper and more vibrant than I had ever understood; stories of families and countless lives lived mere miles from where I grew up, yet entirely unknown to me.
My son leaned over my shoulder, studying the images with urgent curiosity. “This was all here? We had this many synagogues?” he asked, scrolling through sanctuaries the size of concert halls.
He knows American Jewish life as something smaller, more cautious, more scattered. These images showed him — and reminded me — that we once built with astonishing boldness. That we were visible, rooted, unafraid.
Most of these buildings no longer house Jewish life. Many are churches now; others stand abandoned or have disappeared entirely. Hidden City Philadelphia’s haunting photographs of the last synagogues of Strawberry Mansion capture this painful truth: magnificent sanctuaries built for bustling communities now sit silent, their pasts forgotten by most who walk by.
This is not just Philadelphia’s story. The same pattern of memory and erasure appears in Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. Entire Jewish neighborhoods — once dense, spirited, and civically intertwined — have faded from view.
What They Built, and Why
It is worth remembering how and why these communities emerged. In the mid-20th century, Jewish families, many first- or second-generation Americans, moved to new neighborhoods seeking opportunity, safety, and stability. Veterans returned from war and built small businesses. Women organized sisterhoods and ran charity circles. Men’s clubs held debates, breakfasts, and social events. Hebrew schools, JCCs, Zionist youth groups, choirs, lecture series, and summer camps created the thick connective tissue of Jewish life. These weren’t simply clusters of Jewish families; they were ecosystems of belonging.
At the center of each ecosystem stood the synagogue – not just as a place to pray, but as a civic anchor: a social hub, a public square, a home for both the sacred and the ordinary. People went there for weekday minyanim and Hebrew school pickups, for community meetings and interfaith dialogues, for holiday carnivals and debates about Israel, for fundraisers and grief support. For everything. The synagogue was where American Jewish life displayed its fullness.
Our grandparents and their peers understood something we risk forgetting: Jewish life must be built. It does not survive on good intentions. It does not thrive on nostalgia. They had little money, limited political power, and uncertain futures; yet they erected schools before they had enough students, synagogues before they had enough members to fill the pews, and community centers before they knew how they would pay the heating bill. They assumed a Jewish future and constructed toward it.
The Danger of Our Caution
Today we are more cautious. We consolidate, close, downsize, and strategize. We measure risk before we imagine possibility. We worry about demographics and budgets and “market realities.” In an age of rising antisemitism, cultural erasure, and digital amnesia, the instinct to retreat has never been stronger or more dangerous.
When Jewish visibility shrinks, when communal footprints recede, when institutions atrophy, the void does not stay empty. Others fill it, often with hostility.
I understand the fear. Antisemitism is not theoretical, it’s spray-painted on our synagogues, screamed at our students, legislated in international forums. Jewish communities are smaller than they were. Intermarriage rates are high. Affiliation is down. These are facts, not talking points.
But here’s what else is true: dispersion makes us more vulnerable, not less. When Jews scatter, when we become invisible, when our institutions disappear, we don’t become safer – we become isolated targets. The antisemite doesn’t stop hating because the synagogue closed; he simply faces less organized resistance. A community that cannot gather cannot defend itself. A community without institutions cannot transmit its values, protect its members, or advocate for its interests.
Jewish survival has never been secured by retreat. It has always been secured by presence — visible, confident, communal presence. By building synagogues and schools and youth groups and cultural institutions. By creating Jewish spaces where identity is transmitted, where belonging is felt, where children grow up understanding that they are part of something larger and older and enduring. This is not recklessness. This is how minorities survive in hostile environments: through solidarity, visibility, and the infrastructure of mutual support.
What We Owe the Future
Driving through Philadelphia, I tried to convey this to my son: Jewish life is not something you simply inherit. It must be constructed, sustained, reinforced.
Our grandparents did not build out of sentimentality. They built out of responsibility, conviction, and love. They believed that their children and grandchildren would need places to pray, learn, gather, argue, celebrate, and mourn. They built because they believed Jewish life mattered in America and deserved permanence.
We need that mindset again; not as a wistful tribute to a vanished past, but as a practical and moral imperative. At a moment when antisemitism is resurgent and Jewish visibility is contested, we cannot afford minimalism. We should be founding more schools, not fewer. More synagogues, not fewer. More youth programs, more minyanim, more cultural centers, more visible Jewish infrastructure.
I know the objections. I’ve heard them all, often from people I respect.
“Those synagogues emptied out — why repeat the same mistakes?” We’re not talking about blind replication. We’re talking about recovering the audacity to build while learning from both successes and failures. The mid-century model had flaws — exclusivity, rigidity, the costs of suburbanization itself. But the alternative we’ve chosen — building little to nothing, consolidating endlessly — guarantees decline. You can’t iterate on what you refuse to create.
“Young Jews want something different — they’re not joiners, they want authenticity and flexibility.” Every generation believes it has invented a new kind of Judaism. Yes, forms must evolve. But the underlying need for physical Jewish space where real relationships form, where children absorb identity through presence and participation, where community becomes tangible — that need hasn’t changed. Digital community kept us connected during COVID, but you cannot transmit Jewish identity through a screen. You cannot raise Jewish children on Zoom.
“We can’t afford it — demographics are against us, costs are too high.” Our grandparents were poorer. They faced quotas, discrimination, and far more virulent antisemitism. They built anyway. Resource constraints are real, but they’re often cover for lack of will. And the math works in reverse: not building costs more. Every shuttered Hebrew school is a generation we fail to educate. Every consolidated synagogue is a neighborhood we abandon. Managed decline is still decline, just slower and more expensive.
“Consolidation is smart stewardship — better one strong institution than several struggling ones.” There’s a difference between strategic consolidation and institutional surrender dressed up as prudence. Yes, merge when it genuinely strengthens. But we’ve spent two decades consolidating, and Jewish life hasn’t gotten stronger — it’s gotten smaller, more distant, more fragile. At some point, “stewardship” becomes a euphemism for retreat.
The isolation crisis is real. American institutions of all kinds are weakening. Loneliness is epidemic. These are not reasons to build less — they are reasons to build more.
And it is happening. Despite the challenges, Jewish communities across North America are building. The Stanley I. Chera Sephardic Academy in Manhattan has grown from 20 preschool students in 2011 to 240 students through sixth grade in 2025, adding campuses and expanding rapidly.
New York Jewish day schools saw their largest single-year enrollment increase since 2020, growing by over 4,000 students in 2023-2024. Post-October 7, UJA-Federation of New York launched new subsidies responding to what they call “the surge” — a spike in demand for Jewish schools, camps, and synagogues. Eighteen synagogues across the United States are now operating or preparing Jewish after-school programs, serving nearly 300 students and growing. From Brooklyn to Los Angeles, independent minyanim continue to flourish, creating new models of engaged Jewish community for young adults.
These are not isolated examples — they represent a broader pattern of Jewish communities choosing to build rather than retreat.
The work begins with individual commitment and communal organization. Start by showing up. Attend that weekday minyan. Enroll your child in Hebrew school. Join the board of a struggling synagogue. Volunteer at the JCC. Donate to build, not just to maintain. Support new initiatives even when they feel risky. Push back against the reflex to consolidate and retreat. If your community lacks the institutions you want to see, gather a minyan of committed people and create them.
My son looked at those photographs with amazement, wondering how such a world could exist without him ever hearing about it. The truth is that the Jewish world he will inherit depends entirely on what we choose to build now.
Earlier generations left us institutions robust enough to carry us through a turbulent century. With far greater freedom and far more resources than they ever had, we have no excuse for shrinking our ambitions.
If they built so much with so little, then we — for our children and theirs — must do no less.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Rabbi who coached Adam Brody for ‘Nobody Wants This’ calls him ‘ignorant Jew’ over Gaza ‘genocide’ comments
(JTA) — The rabbi who coached Adam Brody for Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” has bashed him for saying that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, served as a consultant on depictions of Judaism for Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This,” a rom-com in which Brody plays a rabbi who falls for an agnostic non-Jewish podcaster.
Leder denounced Brody on Wednesday over recent comments in which the Jewish actor for the first time publicly expressed his views on Israel’s actions in Gaza. Brody told GQ, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”
Leder said in an Instagram video that Brody’s statements were “truly shocking,” “flippant” and “disgusting,” asserting his own view that “there is no genocide in Gaza.”
“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” said Leder. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you ought to know what it means.”
Leder appeared to be referring to Brody’s previous descriptions of his limited Jewish education. Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it,” adding that he prepared for the role of rabbi Noah Roklov in “Nobody Wants This” by attending a Shabbat service and working through books, podcasts and documentaries about Judaism.
Brody played high-profile Jewish characters including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” before “Nobody Wants This,” which returns for a third season on Oct. 22.
The show itself has conspicuously avoided the subject of Israel. “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster — who converted to Judaism in Leder’s synagogue — told The Free Press last year that she made a deliberate choice not to deal with the issue.
“We never say Israel or Palestine in the show, and that’s intentional because I think it would be a distraction and that this is just not the show to tell that story,” said Foster.
Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises in recent years, revealed that he and his Hollywood peers were not as “like-minded” as he previously believed.
“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said.
Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry — and Jewish stars. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel subsequently committed genocide, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn.
The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. Israel rejects the accusation.
The post Rabbi who coached Adam Brody for ‘Nobody Wants This’ calls him ‘ignorant Jew’ over Gaza ‘genocide’ comments appeared first on The Forward.
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How Netflix’s ‘East of Eden’ handled its ‘Timshel’ problem for Hebrew speakers
The crux of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, now a splashy Netflix miniseries, is a Hebrew word that doesn’t exist.
At one point in Steinbeck’s 600-page tome, as rife with biblical allegory as the Salinas Valley is with natural beauty, the character Lee offers a midrash on Genesis 4, and the moment God rejects Cain’s offering.
Speaking with Samuel Hamilton, the neighbor of the Trask family at the center of the generational drama, Lee said he was bothered by a passage where God says, in the King James Bible, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
Lee says he compared translations and finally returned to the source: Hebrew, by way of some learned Chinese elders who consulted a rabbi.
In the Hebrew, they found the word “timshel,” which they translate as “thou mayest. Thou mayest rule over sin.” (The word, the last one of Steinbeck’s book, is the title of the final episode of the Netflix series.)
“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance,” Lee tells Samuel, scholar to scholar. “The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel — ‘Thou mayest’ — that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ — it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’”
This interpretation, in a book about how sin may be transmitted from one set of Cain and Abel-like brothers to the next, is the core of Steinbeck’s philosophy. So central is it that he carved the word onto a wooden box containing the manuscript.
But as I am hardly the first to note, “timshel” is a corruption of “timshol,” תמשל, and it doesn’t mean “thou mayest.” It means something like “you will rule” — future tense, second person, a more complete thought.
That said, the sages did debate whether the word was truly determinative or implied a sense of choice. (Ramban and Rashi are among the ones to suggest free will factored into the equation.)
While quoting the whole phrase in English, Steinbeck evidently thought the word “timshol” only indicated how one might rule, and did not encompass the piece about the ruling. As our language columnist Aviya Kushner has written, Steinbeck’s explanation “reveals an ignorance of the basic fact that Hebrew is more concise than English.”
Steinbeck was writing for an English-speaking audience. Zoe Kazan released her miniseries on Netflix and to a global audience that includes around 9 to 10 million Hebrew speakers. How did they adapt the passage for the Hebrew subtitles?
In the show, the scene plays out much the same way. Lee (Hon Lee) and Samuel (Ciarán Hinds) are at the kitchen table of the Trask homestead in the valley.
The King James has God tell Cain “thou shalt” rule over sin. It sounds, as Lee says, like “a promise.” The American Standard Bible translates it as “do thou.” “More of an order” from the Almighty, says Samuel.
Lee said Jewish scholars in San Francisco found the original in “timshel,” which, as in the book, is translated as “thou mayest.”
In the Hebrew subtitles, the word is correctly rendered as timshol, תמשול. Netflix translated his reading as “thou mayest” as, literally, “a choice is in your hand,” which, while not actually what the word means in Hebrew, suggests it’s something a bit more layered than “thou mayest.”
(Netflix did not respond to a request for comment about how the Hebrew translations were decided on.)
Perhaps the spirit of it — if not the letter — is what matters. And indeed, the rejection of evil as an inborn element of human nature has more in common with Jewish tradition than the Episcopalian concept of original sin and agency linked to God that Steinbeck grew up with.
Lee reasons that “timshel,” a Steinbeckian invention, may be the most important word there is.
“It offers a choice,” he says. “Our future isn’t determined by God or by our past. Even Cain in his weakness and his filth at the murder of his brother can still choose his course. Because timshel. Thou mayest.”
It’s a worthwhile message that of course resonates. But, of course, thou mayest also consult Hebrew speakers.
Mira Fox contributed research and translation.
The post How Netflix’s ‘East of Eden’ handled its ‘Timshel’ problem for Hebrew speakers appeared first on The Forward.
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Even Adam and Eve weren’t satisfied
האָסטו אַמאָל געטראַכט: „ווען איך וואָלט נאָר געהאַט דאָס אָדער יענץ, אָדער ווען מײַן מצבֿ וואָלט נאָר געווען אַנדערש, וואָלט איך געווען גליקלעך…“?
עס איז זייער אַנטמוטיקנדיק צו גלייבן אַז עס פֿעלט אונדז דאָס וואָס מיר דאַרפֿן כּדי צו דערגרייכן אונדזערע צילן און צו זײַן גליקלעך. און נאָך מער: ווען מען קומט צו אַזאַ מסקנה, פֿילט מען זיך ווי אַ קרבן פֿון די אומשטענדן, אוממעכטיק צו בײַטן די מציאות צום גוטן.
אָבער איז עס טאַקע אַזוי?
אין טיפֿן איז דאָס אַ פֿאַלשער חשבון. פֿרייד איז ניט אָפּהענגיק פֿון דעם וואָס מיר האָבן אָדער האָבן ניט, נאָר פֿון דעם ווי מיר קוקן אויף וואָס מיר האָבן און אויף וואָס עס פֿעלט אונדז.
אין דער וואָכעדיקער סדרה, בראשית, לייענען מיר וועגן בריאת־העולם און איר שפּיץ — די באַשאַפֿונג פֿון אָדם און חוה.
וואָס קען זײַן אַ בעסערער בײַשפּיל, אַז גליק איז ניט אָפּהענגיק פֿון אויסערלעכע אומשטענדן, ווי אָדם און חוה אין גן־עדן?
האָט זיי עפּעס געפֿעלט? ניין.
און דאָך האָבן זיי אַליין באַוויזן צו פֿאַרפּלאָנטערן דעם מצבֿ.
עס איז געווען בלויז איין בוים, פֿון וועמענס פֿרוכטן ג־ט האָט זיי פֿאַרווערט צו עסן, און זיי האָבן זיך ניט געקענט אײַנהאַלטן פֿון עסן דווקא פֿון יענעם בוים!
און נאָך מער: לויט דעם תּנא רבי מאיר איז דער בוים געווען אַ ווײַנשטאָק. זיי האָבן זיך געדאַרפֿט אָפּהאַלטן פֿון זײַנע פֿרוכטן בלויז עטלעכע שעה, ביז שבת וואָלט זיך אָנגעהויבן; דאַן וואָלטן זיי געקענט מאַכן קידוש אויפֿן ווײַן און אַזוי אײַנפֿירן אַן אייביקן שבת.
פֿאַר וואָס האָבן זיי ניט געקענט זיך אײַנהאַלטן?
עס איז אַ טייל פֿון אונדזער נאַטור צו וועלן דווקא דאָס וואָס מיר קענען ניט האָבן, און ניט אָפּצושאַצן ווי געהעריג דאָס וואָס מיר האָבן יאָ.
עס קלינגט כּמעט אומגלייבלעך — כאָטש דאָס געשעט צו אָפֿט — אָבער ווען ג־ט קומט צו אָדם און פֿאָדערט בײַ אים אַן ענטפֿער פֿאַר וואָס ער האָט געגעסן פֿון בוים, באַשולדיקט ער „די פֿרוי וואָס דו האָסט מיר געגעבן צו זײַן מיט מיר“, ווײַל זי האָט אים געגעבן צו עסן פֿון בוים.
וואָס פֿאַר אַן אומדאַנקבאַרקייט!
ג־ט האָט אים געגעבן אַ פֿרוי, ווײַל ער האָט געזען ווי שטאַרק אָדם לײַדט פֿון זײַן איינזאַמקייט. און אַנשטאָט אָפּצושאַצן דעם אוצר וואָס ער האָט באַקומען, קריטיקירט ער זי און באַשולדיקט זי.
אין אַ בריוו צו איינעם וואָס פֿלעגט זיך אָפֿט באַקלאָגן וועגן זײַן לעבן, שרײַבט דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי — זכותו יגן עלינו:
„אין דער וועלט אין וועלכער מיר לעבן, געפֿינט זיך אין אַלע זאַכן אַ געמיש פֿון גוטס און שלעכטס. דער מענטש דאַרף אויסקלײַבן אויף וועלכן פֿון די צוויי צדדים ער וויל לייגן דעם טראָפּ, אויף וועלכן ער וויל טראַכטן, און וועלכן ער וויל נאָכגיין…
„ווי באַלערנדיק איז דאָס וואָס אונדזערע חכמים זאָגן וועגן דעם וואָס אָדם איז געווען אַן אומדאַנקבאַרער: נאָך איידער ער איז פֿאַרטריבן געוואָרן פֿון גן־עדן — ווען ער האָט זיך נאָך געפֿונען אין אַ ממשותדיקן גן־עדן — האָט ער זיך שוין באַקלאָגט וועגן זײַן מצבֿ.
„פֿון דער אַנדערער זײַט זענען געווען ייִדן, מענער און פֿרויען, וואָס האָבן געדאַנקט און געבענטשט דעם באַשעפֿער, און געזאָגט די ברכות השחר יעדן אינדערפֿרי, בשעת זיי האָבן געלעבט אונטער די שרעקלעכסטע באַדינגונגען אין די דײַטשישע קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגערן.
„אין דער ווירקלעכקייט וועט דער מצבֿ פֿון יעדן מענטש זיך געפֿינען ערגעץ צווישן די צוויי עקסטרעמען.
„מײַן כּוונה איז ניט אײַך צו מוסרן, נאָר אונטערצושטרײַכן אַ מציאות: וואָס פֿאַר אַ לעבן מיר לעבן — אַ לעבן פֿול מיט צופֿרידנקייט און באַדײַט, אָדער פֿאַרקערט — איז אין אַ גרויסער מאָס אָפּהענגיק פֿון אונדזער ווילנסקראַפֿט, וואָס באַשטימט צי מיר וועלן לייגן דעם טראָפּ אויף דעם פּאָזיטיוון אָדער אויף דעם נעגאַטיוון.“
מיר זײַנען מסוגל זיך צו באַקלאָגן אויף די באַדינגונגען אין גן־עדן און צו פֿילן הכּרת־הטובֿ, דאַנקשאַפֿט, אַפֿילו אין די אוממענטשלעכסטע באַדינגונגען פֿון אַ קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגער.
איינער פֿון די פּערזענלעכע געהילפֿן בײַם רבין, הרבֿ בערל ע״ה יוניק, האָט דערציילט, אַז דער רבי האָט אים אַמאָל פּריוואַט געזאָגט:
„איך האָב געאַרבעט אויף זיך צו זען שטענדיק די זאַכן אין אַ פּאָזיטיוון ליכט; ווען ניט, וואָלט איך ניט געקענט איבערלעבן.“
ווען מען ווייסט וויפֿל פּערזענלעכע ליידן פֿון פֿאַרשידענע מינים דער רבי האָט אַליין דורכגעמאַכט, אין צוגאָב צו דעם ווייטיק פֿון די המונים מענטשן וואָס האָבן מיט אים געטיילט זייערע פּערזענלעכע צרות, קען מען פֿאַרשטיין, אַז אַזאַ בליק אויפֿן לעבן איז גאָר ניט קיין קליינע דערגרייכונג.
דערפֿאַר איז די „ווערקצײַג“ פֿון דער וואָך צו טראַכטן וועגן די פֿאָלגנדיקע פֿראַגעס:
זענען די אומשטענדן פֿון דײַן לעבן גוט אָדער שלעכט אומאָפּהענגיק פֿון דעם ווי דו קוקסט אויף זיי — אָדער ווערן זיי פֿאַר דיר גוט אָדער שלעכט דווקא צוליב דעם ווי דו קוקסט אויף זיי?
ס׳איז דאָ אַ וואָרט וואָס מען האָט געהערט אין נאָמען פֿון דעם דריטן חב״ד רבי, דעם צמח צדק זצ״ל: „אַזוי ווי מען שטעלט זיך אַוועק שבת בראשית, אַזוי גייט אַוועק אויף דעם גאַנצן יאָר“. דריק איך אויס די האָפֿענונג אַז מיר זאָלן אין דעם אַלע מצליח זײַן און האָבן אַ גוט געבענטשט יאָר.
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