Did you grow up in a neighborhood that is "no more"?

amother

Purple

Fri, Dec 01 2017, 9:55 am

Yes. It really hurts me every time I go back there. There are a few mostly elderly people still there but for the most part the neighborhood is all immigrants. It bothers me so much that I don't even want to specify the neighborhood because I feel like if I do so I'm putting the final nail in the coffin by officially proclaiming it dead.

Whenever I hear that another shul can't get a minyan anymore I feel so guilty and that maybe we should move back.

leah233

Fri, Dec 01 2017, 10:00 am

cnc wrote:

My neighborhood is a thriving community but it's a completely different one than the one I grew up in.

That description fits most neighborhoods that are around for a long time. It is very rare for a shul in America to stay in Jewish hands for over seventy five years. The few that do almost never house the original kehila that built it.

amother

Wine

Fri, Dec 01 2017, 10:17 am

Yes.

I grew up in a thriving Conservative community. We didn't attend day schools, but we attended after-school Hebrew school, 3 days a week, through at least Confirmation (part way through high school). Each grade had 3 classes of 15 to 20 kids. Except summer, there was a bar mitvzah and a bat mitzvah every weekend. Shabbat services, including Junior Congregation, were packed. Even the non-Jews didn't send their kids to [public] school on the chagim, because the classes were empty.

The synagogue finally moved about 3 years ago; it's renting space a few miles away in the basement of a Reform Temple in the suburbs. Almost no one is left; 2 families (one not Jewish) I can think of, maybe a couple of more that I don't know.

It's sad. My father always says that Jews can destroy a neighborhood, and he's right.

He grew up in a different thriving Jewish area. There were more than 20 -- TWENTY -- synagogues of various flavors in the area. Countless kosher butchers (one of the many places Dad worked as a teen) and Jewish culture. Gone, as if it never existed. They moved to neighborhoods like the one I grew up in, and then they moved again. Dad's old neighborhood is now blighted. The few synagogue buildings that remain have long been churches. Its sad.

Same for the area where my mother grew up. Smaller area, just a couple of synagogues. Gone.

amother

Silver

Sat, Dec 02 2017, 5:52 pm

I grew up in the same neighborhood my father grew up in, and his grandparents lived there too. Its changed a lot but its still a Jewish area. When my father was young it was traditional but not necessarily frum Jews living there plus some chassidim and frummer Jews. When I was growing up it was a mix of chassidim, frum litvish people, and a few traditional sefardim, plus a sprinkling of elderly not frum Jews leftover from before. Now its almost completely chassidim, even the frum litvish and yekkes have moved to another area. On the flip side its become more gentrified so a lot of completely secular Jews are moving in as well.

amother

Powderblue

Sat, Dec 02 2017, 8:55 pm

So curious where all the other people here are from.

OP mentions the Lower East Side - I'm from there. I wouldn't quite say it "is no more." It's definitely not what it was when my parents were young but it's not that much smaller than when I grew up there. A lot of the Jewish stores closed down - there used to be more bakeries, a couple of restaurants, a couple of Judaica stores, among others. Now there are hardly any Jewish stores. But other than that the community seems only a little shrunken. There are still families with kids, the school enrollment is only a bit smaller than in my days, the shul scene is similar too - when my parents were younger there were many more shuls but I haven't noticed any significant change over the last 30 or so years. A couple closed, a couple of others revitalized.

I doubt there will be any further growth, though, because real estate in the area is much more in demand. A lot of the remaining frum families are living in apartments bought many years ago. It would be very difficult for a growing young family to enter the neighborhood at this point. I thought about renting there but the costs were astronomical and have only gone up. Not a good predictor for frum community growth or even maintenance... shame.

amother

Violet

Sat, Dec 02 2017, 9:07 pm

Love this thread,it's do interesting
I'm from Melbourne, Australia. I moved 10 years ago though my parents still live there
Every time I go for a visit I am completely blown away how many new faces there are... I don't know so many people. I feel really out of it

flowerpower

Sat, Dec 02 2017, 9:09 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

The neighborhood I grew up in used to be a thriving MO community. Now the MO community is basically dead (literally, a lot of people died, others retired to Florida or Israel or just moved out) and it's now a thriving chassidish community.

Can I ask where that is?

amother

Ruby

Sat, Dec 02 2017, 9:14 pm

amother wrote:

Why do neighborhoods die out?

1. Cost of living

2. Shul/community not attractive to the young

3. Safety

So what’s the big deal, it’s only a house, a block...

Move on.

the big deal is that empty shuls cost the prior generations lots of money to build. That's why its sad to me atleast.

cbsp

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 12:30 pm

amother wrote:

Please elaborate on the bolded.

Also, can you pinpoint why your thriving neighborhood was abandoned by the next generation?

Ruchel

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 1:43 pm

The big deal is that it might have been a kehila since the Middle Ages.

I grew up in a certain Parisian arrondissement. There was a shtibel down there, a family with ten kids above, the local public school one street away had frum kids... Many Jews left, if they could afford/get another social apartment, when they relocated people from a bad area there. I happily saw that it's being re-born though.

amother

Mistyrose

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 2:00 pm

My mother grew up in Washington Heights, once a large, thriving yekke community. My mother told us how Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur time, they would double up people to one seat because there was no room.

There's still a community there, but it's nothing like it once was. The KAJ shul is 3/4 empty on a typical shabbos.

A pity because they have such wonderful minhagim. Anyone who's davened in KAJ there has enjoyed the beautiful chior singing licha dodi on Friday night, etc (which they still do).

The primary reason it got so much smaller was because families grew, and they grew out of their apartments. There are no houses there (other than the 1 single house that the Rav lives in).

It's sad because the rich yekke minhagim are not held together in a community sense as they once were.

flowerpower

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 2:47 pm

amother wrote:

I wanted to ask what is happening there. I remember how much it thrived as a yekke community back then.

amother

Linen

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 3:04 pm

flowerpower wrote:

Can I ask where that is?

If I'm not mistaken Boro Park used to be very modern before the chasidim moved in.
My parents remember moving to Boro Park from Williamsburg because our Rebbe told us to move away the whole kehila to Boro Park because of fighting that went on with our and another chasidus. It was all modern then. Became chasidish afterwards.

flowerpower

Sun, Dec 03 2017, 6:30 pm

amother wrote:

Before the Chasidim invaded Boro Park many American Jews lived there. They weren't modern.