This is the seventh in a series of articles designed to familiarize readers with Jewish communities throughout the state.
“To people north of Racine, [the phrase] ‘Racine-Kenosha’ trips off the tongue,” said physician Dr. Michael Jacobson, president of Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine.
In truth, “They are two different places,” he insisted in a recent telephone interview. “Historically, politically and socially, the general communities don’t have all that much in common.”
Nevertheless, the Jewish communities in and around these southeastern Wisconsin cities have to be considered together, which in itself displays what probably gives them their distinctive character in this state.
No other neighboring pair of Wisconsin’s smaller Jewish communities that we know of has a relationship similar to this one — a combination of attraction and repulsion, collaboration and distinction, unity and diversity.
This observer doesn’t — and members of the two communities don’t — want to make too much of the “negative” aspects of this characterization. The estimated 375 Racine County Jews are not feuding or even competing with the estimated 300 Kenosha County Jews. (Figures from “American Jewish Yearbook 2000.”)
In fact, a remarkable amount of formal collaboration and informal “give-and-take and back-and-forth” — as Rabbi Dena Feingold of Kenosha put it — occurs in this region between Milwaukee and the Illinois border.
Since 1980, the largest synagogues in the two-county region, Kenosha’s Beth Hillel Temple (Reform) and Racine’s Beth Israel Sinai Congregation (unofficially Conservative), have operated a joint Sunday School, which annually alternates meeting at each.
Their youth groups also are combined into the KRICTY (Kenosha-Racine Inter-Congregation Temple Youth); and the synagogues have joint services “two or three times a year,” according to Max Gordon, a Racine native and former Beth Israel Sinai president.
Some residents of each county belong to the main synagogue in the other, some even to both. Some Racinians belong instead or as well to Kenosha’s other synagogue, the tiny Congregation B’nai Zedek (Conservative).
Therefore, “I view both Jewish communities as one,” said Steven Kreines, a marketing researcher who lives in Racine and is treasurer of Beth Hillel. “There are two [main] temples because Judaism is not built around everybody having a single way of doing things…. Yet we’re all Jews; so we come together.”
Energy in Kenosha
Nevertheless, there is contrast and even some mild tension between these communities. They have distinctive characteristics and interests and seek to preserve their separate identities.
Some of this comes from the general sociology of the two areas. Esther Letven, co-president of Beth Hillel and associate vice chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, said that “Racine and Kenosha live back-to-back rather than side-by-side. They have little to do with each other.”
Moreover, she added, “Racine tends to look north [toward Milwaukee], Kenosha south [toward northeastern Illinois and Chicago].”
This geography is helping to change Kenosha, according to Feingold. “When I came here [16 years ago], Kenosha was a blue collar town dominated by the Chrysler automobile industry,” Feingold said. Chrysler pulled out around 1989, which led to “a scary time” in the area.
But “the community reinvented itself in positive ways.” People from Illinois began to be attracted by Kenosha’s lower cost of living. Housing developments and smaller industries and business parks began to grow. The city’s population grew from about 80,000 in 1990 to about 90,000 in 2000.
These changes transformed Beth Hillel, less in absolute numbers of members — the synagogue has maintained about 110 membership units or about 300 individuals — than in demographics.
“When I came here, Beth Hillel was an aging congregation with very few children,” Feingold said. In the joint Sunday School, “most of the kids were from Racine.”
“It has completely reversed since then,” Feingold continued. “Now we have the vast majority of kids” in the joint Sunday School (around 70 of the about 90 total, she estimated).
Beth Hillel now has “a lot of young families with kids…. When I first came, there were seven kids in our Hebrew school and I taught them all. Now we have 40 kids in the Hebrew school and a staff of six teachers.” While most previous bar/bat mitzvah classes had two or three kids, “this year we have 13 … which is unheard of.”
These developments seem to have brought an infusion of creative energy into Beth Hillel. Letven and co-president John Plous, a circuit court commissioner whose grandfather helped found Beth Hillel in 1924, decided about four years ago that the shul was having “a crisis of leadership.”
As in many communities and institutions, the same few volunteers were doing most of the work. Moreover, “a lot of families who didn’t grow up in Kenosha have moved in; and they don’t have the same connection to the building and the ways of doing things,” said Letven. “They have new ideas, perspectives and needs; and the congregation has to adjust to that.”
At the instigation of Plous and Letven, the synagogue’s board of trustees created a “leadership team” that for two years studied and considered everything about the synagogue, from whether to keep the building to how to train volunteers for leadership positions.
At the end, the synagogue transformed its internal organization, having now a “leadership council” rather than a board of trustees. It has also embarked on several projects, such as creating a $2 million endowment.
Not only have these creative efforts won the approval of the congregants, said both Plous and Letven, but Feingold gave them a vote of confidence by recently signing a ten-year contract. “That to me exhibits a commitment on her part to spend her working life in Kenosha,” said Plous.
Tapping into Racine’s future
This energy may also be affecting B’nai Zedek. The nearly 100-year-old congregation of about 30 members recently selected a new president, Jan Spiegelman of Pleasant Prairie.
Moreover, the shul is changing orientations from Orthodox to Conservative. Spiegelman said that B’nai Zedek recently instituted mixed seating, and its board voted to affiliate formally with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
Spiegelman dreams of expanding the synagogue and creating a Sunday and Hebrew school. “We know there is a bright future here,” Spiegelman said. “We just need to tap into it.”
The Racine community, in contrast, is struggling. Racine itself declined in population from about 84,000 in 1990 to about 82,000 in 2000.
Beth Israel Sinai has about 65 membership units, or about 125 individuals, according to Jacobson. Gordon, 55, said the congregation used to be much larger, some “300 families when I was growing up.”
Gail Varhula, co-director of Beth Israel Sinai’s religious school and a Racine resident for about seven years, said that “From what I understand, Racine Jewry was a social community. The temple was the center of people’s lives. That’s gone by the wayside.”
How much of the difference in character and size of the communities is due to the different religious orientations is hard to say, but it certainly is one of the ways the communities maintain separate identities.
Letven said there used to be “an unwritten rule” that Racine and Kenosha Jews should join their local synagogues. Now “people are joining because of ideology. Conservative Jews join Racine, and Reform Jews join Kenosha,” she said.
Varhula said that “a lot of my peers feel strongly about belonging to a Conservative synagogue.” Some members left for B’nai Zedek because they thought the Racine shul was “not Conservative enough,” she said.
Beth Israel Sinai does not officially belong to the movement. This gives it some flexibility; as Jacobson said, “We are Conservative, but we try to meet the needs of everybody…. That’s one of our biggest positive points.”
However, Gordon said that not being affiliated with a movement makes it more difficult to find a rabbi. Beth Israel Sinai has not had a staff rabbi for about two years, and that lack is “a major disadvantage,” said Jacobson. (Cantor Martyn Adelberg of Morton Grove, Ill., has been officiating at services part time since last October.)
But Beth Israel Sinai is not giving up and is beginning efforts similar to Beth Hillel’s. Last winter, the Racine shul’s board began a strategic planning process with the University of Wisconsin Extension, said Varhula. “There is a lot of work going on in Racine to build the membership up,” she added.
Whatever the differences, Racine-Kenosha Jews share the disadvantages and, especially, the advantages found in other small Jewish communities in small cities.
They encounter ignorance, curiosity and some insensitivity — though seldom outright anti-Semitic hostility — from their non-Jewish neighbors. They have sizable intermarriage rates. Their children tend to leave when they become adults.
Yet in both cities they also have with their congregations and fellow Jews “a special relationship and intimacy” that they would not have in larger communities, said Audrey Bernstein, a resident of Burlington about 30 miles west of Racine and co-vice president of Beth Israel Sinai. “We’re a very small congregation, but we’re like family to each other.”
And they know with Kreines that “the key to living in a small Jewish community and still have a Jewish identity is to be involved…. Living life in a community like Racine or Kenosha as a Jew, you have to work a little bit to keep your Jewish identity; but it’s a very good place to do that.”
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