Baltimore Jewish Times  - 09.27.2002

 

Baltimore Jewish Times

Millbrook New Russian Hang Out

By Steve Liebowitz, Special to the Jewish Times

In the front lobby, older men play a friendly game of pool. Round tables are filled in the social hall with elderly men and women eating a free lunch and listening to a younger man sing along with a karaoke machine. Some are watching television in another section, while others merely rest on sofas in a room that formerly served as the Orthodox congregation's beis midrash, or small chapel. 

And almost everyone is speaking Russian.

These are the regulars who arrive daily from nearby Milbrook Park apartments and belong to Circle of Friends, a local adult day health care business operated by Jews from the former Soviet Union to assist lower income and sickly older Jews in the community. Circle of Friends operates a full medical and nursing operation that includes a staff providing daily blood pressure and sugar level tests. While some of the regulars only need medicine, others suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's disease and even terminal illness. Most are indigent and require medical assistance.

Ellen Vezel, program director and co-owner of Circle of Friends, says her outfit, which is also located on Seven Mile Lane, chose its Beth Isaac site because of its proximity to many elderly Jews from the former Soviet Union who live in Milbrook.

"The shul was going down," she says. "We rent the shul from Monday through Friday afternoons, thus giving the synagogue some money. In our year-and-a-half there, we have virtually fixed up the entire building. We put on a new roof, painted walls that had holes in them, replaced plumbing and installed new bathrooms. We gutted it out and started over. Some things were not fixed in 30 years."

Circle of Friends is breathing new life into the Milbrook shul, once a fixture in the community that became the victim of an aging, dwindling membership and Jewish migration to other parts of Northwest Baltimore.

Rabbi Manuel Poliakoff served as Beth Isaac's spiritual leader from 1946 until about 1990. He now serves as the synagogue's rabbi emeritus, and he hopes there will be renewed interest in the congregation. The outspoken rabbi, now in his 80s, cannot make it to the shul himself, but he keeps up with its state of affairs.

"The daily minyan fell apart," Rabbi Poliakoff says. "Services are only held on Shabbos and for the High Holidays. People have moved out of the area. About 30 to 40 people come to Shabbos services, but there is not enough around to make a [daily] minyan."

And what about the Jews from the former Soviet Union who visit the synagogue daily? 

"The Russians were raised in a communist society where Jewish knowledge did not exist," Rabbi Poliakoff says. "It wasn't available, so I really don't blame them. They knew they were Jews but could not practice it religiously. This business of attending a synagogue regularly is alien to them. Hopefully, it will change. The only reason the shul is surviving is because of the Circle of Friends."

At one time, Beth Isaac was a pillar of Orthodoxy for Jews in the area. The congregation was founded in 1923 and operated out of a home on Springhill Avenue in Lower Park Heights. Three years later, the shul purchased a large cottage on Cottage Avenue that was remodeled as its permanent synagogue.


In 1948, Beth Isaac merged with Adath Israel, an older East Baltimore congregation. The congregation then sold the cottage to the Jewish Educational Alliance for a satellite site and built a modern synagogue around the corner on Oswego Avenue.

"When we built that building," Rabbi Poliakoff remembers, "the estimate was that that neighborhood would be Jewish for 30 to 35 years."

But by 1960, Jews began moving from the neighborhood and the area started becoming predominantly African-American. "By 1962-63, I could barely get a minyan," says the rabbi. "I knew we would have to move. When we sold the building in 1965, we took $30,000 less because we didn't want to sell to a church. That was a lot of money in those days to turn down."

Initially, the congregation held services in the back room of a bank on Labyrinth Road until its new building was completed in 1967. At the time, Milbrook — which cradles the Baltimore city/county line — was a largely Jewish neighborhood.

Rabbi Poliakoff fondly recalls that his congregation was the first local shul to host Rabbi Meir Kahane, the controversial founder of the Jewish Defense League, as a speaker. "I was delighted, although I thought he was too radical and could get nowhere with his rhetoric," Rabbi Poliakoff says. 

The congregation had a full Hebrew school that lasted until the late 1970s when the first signs of change appeared. Residents began moving away from the rowhouse community surrounding Beth Isaac, and the remaining older Jews could not be relied on to fully maintain the congregation. In addition, the area became racially integrated.

But Ed Abrams, Beth Isaac's president, says he feels confident that the congregation will survive.

"We see ourselves staying and have no interest in moving," he says. "We have a membership of about 75, and 30 percent of that is Russian. The Russians came to this area in the 1980s, and because of them the building survives. However, their mind-set is different. ... It's a matter of them learning, so we try to initiate them in the Orthodox way."

While the congregation doesn't employ a permanent spiritual leader, Rabbi Donald Kuritsky officiates at services. And Rabbi Pesach Diskind, a local outreach worker to the Jewish community from the former Soviet Union, tends to the Circle of Friends crowd.

Ms. Vezel, of Circle of Friends, says when and if the congregation decides to sell the building, she would like to purchase the facility and maintain a synagogue there.

"Volunteers are now running the shul. They really care about the building and want to keep it alive," she says. "I can understand why some people would want to go to a different synagogue, because they like the rabbi or whatever. But if something like this is happening, where a synagogue is in special need of attention, can't anyone help?

"This is probably the only synagogue in Pikesville that doesn't charge for seats for the High Holidays," Ms. Vezel says. "If people can afford to go to a beautiful synagogue full of people wearing the latest fashions and pay a good price for a seat for the High Holidays, don't forget the synagogues that used to be like that. Don't give them away. Give them a life.

"It's very important for the Jewish people of this neighborhood to continue here." 

Steve Liebowitz is a local free-lance writer.