For over two years, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and other organizations have been inadvertently cast in a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”
Spending countless hours and more money than we’re comfortable recalling, they have been seeking approval from the Whitefish Bay Village Trustees for the changes necessary to allow the JCC and other agencies to remain viable. The building plans have been repeatedly revised and scaled back to meet the objections of the neighbors and trustees. One professional study after another has been paid for to ensure against adverse environmental, traffic and safety impact.
But unlike the characters Vladamir and Estragon, the federation finally has seen Godot, and he is ugly! Monday evening, the Whitefish Bay Village Board rejected the federation’s dramatically shrunken proposal.
During this disgraceful display, a murmur has been quietly building; more and more people have begun to timidly wonder aloud whether anti-Semitism might in part explain this situation.
With great regret I can — I must — state that the treatment of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s building proposal is rooted in anti-Jewish discrimination, if not animus.
Certainly most of the project’s opponents are not anti-Semites. There certainly are those who have real, heartfelt fears about the impact of the proposed expansion on what they see as their bucolic suburban existence.
But I have no doubt that the community’s opposition and the trustees’ actions are inextricably intertwined with anti- Jewish sentiment. How can I be sure?
Different standards
First, many who have been involved in this process have received anonymous, explicitly anti-Semitic telephone calls. But more significantly, the federation’s proposal has consistently been held by the trustees and Whitefish Bay community to standards that do not apply to the village’s other religious institutions.
For example, the trustees repeatedly have insisted that existing use limits be extended and strengthened to ensure that “too many” do not use the campus facilities. One trustee even suggested that evening parent teacher conferences in the north building might violate existing use restrictions. Another expressed concern about the importance of developing a mechanism to count the number of campus visitors to ensure that there would be no “excess.”
What can any reasonable person help but conclude when there are no such limits on the use of Saint Monica Church and Dominican High School less than one-half mile away?
Repeatedly, the village trustees and community members have voiced concerns about and sought to limit the number of bar mitzvahs and weddings that might be held on our community campus. Can anyone imagine the Lake Dr. neighbors of Christ Church seeking limitations on daily worship, the number of weddings, baptisms and funerals held there?
Repeatedly, the campus’ neighbors have demanded that large swaths of campus green space not be reduced. Did any neighbor succeed in mobilizing the village trustees to oppose the expansion of the United Methodist Church of Whitefish Bay to within a few yards of its lot line?
The trustees also conditioned project approval on a quarter-century prohibition against the federation darkening the village’s door with new requests to modify the size or use of the campus. After voting to condemn the federation’s proposal, one trustee even had the chutzpah to offer a five-year reduction in the moratorium as a “concession” to the federation’s agreement to a further 25 percent reduction of its building plans for the campus’ south building. Has approval of any other project in Whitefish Bay ever been conditioned on a similar moratorium?
Undoubtedly, there are land use lawyers and other practitioners of sophistry who will explain that the federation’s campus is subject to special requirements that make legal such discriminatory micro-management. But that, of course — even if true — begs the question of how Whitefish Bay can allow such a patently offensive, discriminatory public policy to stand.
The federation’s campus, and the JCC in particular, has been a solicitous community member, enriching the fabric of Whitefish Bay for over 18 years. This generosity has only compounded the tragedy of the treatment inflicted on it by the self-satisfied, self-deceiving residents and trustees of Whitefish Bay.
We Jews are comfortable here. History, however, has taught us, more than any other people, about the perils of comfort.
Bradden C. Backer is a long-time Whitefish Bay resident, a vice president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and a former president of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations. The views expressed here are solely his own.
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