I depend on my gym buddies to help me get through my regular workout at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC). Recently, I spoke to one of them, Sam Zunder, about the weekly breakfast of eggs, toast, juice, and coffee he shares most Sunday mornings with 12 to 20 other guys. They are old Ottawa friends, many of whom have been breakfasting together for 25 years. They used to meet downtown at the Bay Street Bistro, but now they gather on Sunday mornings at Sam’s retirement residence.
Sam generally enjoys where he lives. He’s in a beautiful part of the city a short drive from one of the synagogues where he enjoys an associate membership, but there’s something lacking for him. “I want more Jewish culture. I want a kosher place,” Sam told me.
A few years ago, with his wife’s health in decline, they moved from their condo to a retirement residence. But he wishes there was a Jewish retirement residence in town, one located even closer to a synagogue and to other cultural activities.
Perhaps it is Sam’s storied history working for decades in his ByWard Market family business, Zunder’s Fruitland (originally, Zunder’s Quality Fruit Supply). Sam was profiled by Shawna Wagman in an Ottawa Magazine (November 2008) feature on the history of the ByWard Market’s Jewish food vendors.
“‘We were happy. There was never a locked door, and everybody helped each other out,’ recalls Zunder. ‘It was all Jewish people. You could just walk into anybody’s house, just like that.’”
This is the sense of community that Sam tries to recreate with his weekly breakfasts with his buddies, and on his regular visits to the SJCC.
Hearing Sam tell it, now is the time for the Jewish community to think creatively about new possibilities. Perhaps some shuls should consider land sharing. But, most importantly for Sam, the community – backed by a creative-thinking real estate developer or two – should consider adding a retirement residence to the property.
Others have been writing in a similar spirit of co-ordination. Although she works at one of Ottawa’s shuls, Marie Levine’s letter to the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin (published December 12, 2011) was written in her capacity as a private individual. She suggested “one spiritual centre encompassing many shuls.” In a letter in the following issue, David Kardish went further, calling for a “community shul on campus."
Looking around our community, it’s a fact that some shuls need to move – whether because they’ve recently sold their site or because they are outgrowing their space – while others have an adequate building but a surplus of land. Still others may wish to contemplate a new location, or a differently-sized building. Some denominations are growing while others are not.
Maybe a synaplex model, in which multiple shuls share some common banquet hall facilities, office staff, and classrooms, but have separate sanctuaries in a hub-spoke model, is the way to go.
Maybe some more informal outdoor recreational aspects could be added, like the basketball court Stephen Fried wrote about in his book, The New Rabbi. For regular post-kiddush pickup basketball games with other congregants and clergy at Philadelphia’s Temple Har Zion, Fried would keep his gym shorts and runners in his bag. In Ottawa winters, an ice rink might be appealing: think Shacharit & shinny.
Perhaps there are others like Sam who feel their specific needs aren’t being met by the current institutional structures. In addition to a retirement residence, maybe shuls should explore some affordable housing, perhaps co-ordinated with the Multifaith Housing Initiative. Maybe clergy housing – designed with the needs of a rabbi or cantor and his or her family in mind – could be envisioned.
Maybe some congregations will consider merging.
In Ottawa, Beth Shalom was, in fact, the product of two congregations which merged in 1956, with a third added 15 years later. Mergers are not easy. The pull of institutional memory can be strong, and compromises sometimes end up appearing to privilege one organization over another. Because of an amalgamation across three synagogues, the Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg – where my parents met, where I had my bat mitzvah, and where I said a final goodbye to my grandmother – was able to retain its building, but had to take on a new name. Winnipeg clearly saw potential for growth in a kind of Eitz Chayim (literally tree of life), a tree of synergy and possibility. But, it surely was with some sense of a fallen limb.
I hope Sam gets his infusion of community. And I hope that as a community we keep getting infusions of creative and caring thinkers like Sam and the many others who are trying to keep the conversation going. Maybe, if Sam’s dream becomes a reality, his weekly Sunday breakfasts will be right after minyan, with a bit of schnapps to chase the eggs and toast.
**A version of this appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**
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