Once there was the Jewish Jubilee at the old Jewish Community Center campus on Prospect Avenue. Later there was the Family Fall Festival on the grounds of the Albert & Ann Deshur Rainbow Day Camp in Fredonia.
And now the community will gather at the Karl Community Campus in Whitefish Bay for the first Shalom Milwaukee: A Festival for Jewish Culture.
The community-wide event, co-sponsored by the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, will take place Sunday, Sept. 12, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., at the JCC.
And the intent of the organizers is that this will be the kind of event that will welcome people from the full spectrum of Milwaukee Jewry, “singles or families, Jewish or just interested,” according to the event’s slogan.
“It is the perfect outreach event” and “a big, open-arms welcome,” said Marge Eiseman, Jewish outreach professional at the JCC and co-coordinator of the event with Susan Roth, JCC family services director. “It’s a combination fall holiday festival and celebration of Jewish culture.”
Admission to the overall event is free. Planned activities — most of which will be outdoors, weather permitting — will cover interests of all ages, from storytelling, sing-alongs and drumming to a wine-making demonstration, Jewish art fair and Judaic learning opportunities for adults.
Some of these events will be related to the coming autumn Jewish holidays, like a sukkah-building demonstration. Area synagogues and other Jewish community organizations will be represented and will run various activities. Musician families will perform on a family entertainment stage (see sidebar). Food will be available.
“We want people to come and have a great day and great memories about being part of the Jewish community,” said JCC executive vice president Jay Roth. “If it goes well, we will do it annually.”
Apparently, there were two tributary sources of the idea for Shalom Milwaukee, according to Susan Roth and Eiseman. Eiseman said that the JCC “used to do a fall holiday festival at the Albert & Ann Deshur JCC Rainbow Day Camp in Fredonia.
As part of her outreach work, Eiseman is staffing a newly organized JCC Grandparents Club, which considered holding the kickoff event at that Fredonia festival. However, the JCC is planning to do some construction work at the camp this September.
“So we had to move the festival to the JCC campus,” Eiseman said. “That’s when it all started going” and started to grow in scope.
Roth added that she and Eiseman had attended a conference of the national Jewish Outreach Institute in Boston.
This event “opened my eyes to what people are doing around the country,” such as a “Jewish cultural street festival” in the San Francisco area, and stimulated ideas for Shalom Milwaukee.
“We’re doing this as an outreach and ‘inreach’ program,” Roth said. “We want to ‘inreach’ to people participating already [in the Jewish community], but we’re also looking at inviting everyone.”
And organizers decided to call the event Shalom Milwaukee “because it is so welcoming,” said Eiseman. “Even people who are not engaged [in the Jewish community] know that word.”
Jay Roth added, “We know from other times [the JCC has] initiated these kinds of things that the community really enjoys coming together and that it’s a real benefit for all the community institutions to come together.”
Volunteers are still needed for various tasks involving the festival. For more information, call Susan Roth at the JCC, 414-967-8216, or visit www.jccmilwaukee.org.
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