On the south side of Milwaukee are countless churches, even a couple of mosques — but not a single synagogue. The south side hardly seems like a place to find Jews.
Indeed, the authors of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s “1996 Jewish Community Study of Greater Milwaukee” found so few Jews in that area that they didn’t list them separately as a region within the community; they merely grouped them with others in the Milwaukee “metropolitan ring.”
But don’t underestimate the intrepid tendency of Jews to wander and settle in different locales. Though Jews are often identified with the north shore or west side of Milwaukee, some do live on the south side, proving that a “Jewish south sider” is not an oxymoron.
Air National Guardsman Paul Weprinsky and his wife Barbara moved there because the guard transferred Paul to Wisconsin and it was easier for him “to stay on the south side because I worked at Mitchell Field …” he said.
The Weprinskys, native New Yorkers, came to the south side in 1977. After leaving Long Island’s large Jewish population, the couple said being one of the few Jewish families in their new neighborhood never posed a problem, though they have at times felt disconnected from the Jewish community. They are former members of Temple Menorah.
For Renee Radoff, a graduate of John Marshall High School who grew up in the once heavily Jewish west side of Milwaukee, moving to the south side was an economically sensible way to own her own home.
“I moved to West Allis in ’86,” she said. “I went through a difficult divorce…. I wanted to be independent, to have a home of my own and not have a roommate. I was afraid at the time that financially I couldn’t afford Glendale.”
Rising crime rates in her former west side neighborhood was another factor accounting for Radoff’s move south.
“I guess I felt less threatened there [in West Allis]. The crime rate was low, and there are friendly people. It was just a whole different feeling. But it was a good feeling; I never felt that I was not accepted,” she said.
Her sister, who lives in Chicago, found that hard to believe. “My sister said, ‘Aren’t you afraid that you’ll have some cross burning on your lawn?’ and I said ‘No, [and related a story to her about] a woman I lived near that made a wooden Star of David for me and she decorated it with lights … and I displayed it in my window during Chanukah.’”
Radoff said she likes the area, and describes her neighbors as hard working, nice people. “My neighbors are working class, but a majority went to college and are professional to some extent. There is a mix.”
Feeling disconnected
Phillip Musickant said living on the south side makes him and his wife feel “very disconnected from the Jewish community.” Musickant will be moving to the north shore by August.
But he admits the decision to leave his Bay View home has left him and his wife “torn.” “We love our home, it is a beautiful home … a ten-minute walk from the lake,” he said. “We have great neighbors. It is a really difficult decision to go.”
“Initially our impulse to live on the south side was twofold: I had to live in the city as an employee of [Milwaukee Public Schools]; but when we went to buy a house, we couldn’t afford the east side and we didn’t want to live on the west side or really far north,” Musickant said. “Bay View is called ‘the other east side’ and, being right on the lake, it is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Milwaukee.”
Partly because he now teaches at Hillel Academy, Musickant decided to make the more expensive move north to feel more a part of the Jewish community. “There is something kind of lost in schlepping all the time to every event,” he said.
Some Jews, while proud of their Jewishness, do not feel — or want to feel — connected to the greater Jewish community and thus feel no pressure to live in a Jewish area.
Ilan Sasson, 35, said that he feels “alienated from American Jews.” Sasson, a self-trained “electro-mechanical assembler” and motorcycle enthusiast who once “owned nine bikes,” said he does not fit the profile of a north shore resident.
“I have Jewish tattoos: my whole back is a Star of David, and my family name is [tattooed] in Hebrew letters,” he said. “I lead a very secular lifestyle.”
Sasson was born in San Francisco and moved to Israel with his Israel-born father after his parents divorced. From age six to 13, Sasson lived in Jerusalem. He made his way to Milwaukee nine years ago.
After living on Milwaukee’s north and east sides, Sasson moved to Bay View partly because he was working on the south side and because Bay View is “right on the water and I love it here.”
But Sasson plans to move back to Israel. “I always made excuses on why not to go [to Israel],” he explained. “Now I’m out of excuses.”
Deborah Rosen and her husband Larry Marx also live in Bay View. Rosen said she used to joke with her friends that “I’m the Jew in Bay View,” until she learned — to her disappointment — that other Jews were living there. Rosen said once in a while people seem curious about her last name but that she has never experienced any anti-Semitism on the south side.
Marx, who is from Champaign-Urbana, Ill., has been living in Bay View since 1988. He is executive director of Wisconsin Citizen Action, and in 1989 he ran unsuccessfully for state assembly.
“I knocked on 17,000 doors while campaigning. There were a couple of times when [my Jewishness] came up.” Marx related that once “somebody said, ‘Marx … Marx … hmmm… is that a Jewish name?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said ‘I got nothin’ against those people.’”
Another time, an elderly Polish man asked Marx if he was Jewish. When Marx said he was, the Pole “rolled up his sleeve and showed me his concentration camp tattoo. He was in the Polish resistance…. He invited me in and we had a great conversation.”
Ironically, Marx believes he lost the election not because he is Jewish, but because he “was not as progressive” as his opponent.
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