In the early 1980s, Rabbi Dovid Rapoport was principal of a successful day school in Houston, Texas. One day, he was walking in 104-degree heat, and decided that Texas weather was too hot for him.
So Rapoport, a rabbi in the Chabad Lubavitch Chasidic movement, went to the movement’s headquarters location, Brooklyn, N.Y., to seek a new assignment.
There he met Rabbi Israel Shmotkin, director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin, who had established a Chabad House in the city of Milwaukee. Shmotkin then was looking for someone to create a Lubavitch establishment in the city’s northern suburbs.
Twenty-five years later, Rapoport acknowledged that he definitely got relief from Texas heat in coming to Milwaukee. But he got more than good weather; he and his wife Fagie on their first visit found “a warm, wonderful community” that “we fell in love with,” he said.
And that love apparently has been returned. Lewis Chamoy, M.D., was one of the first Milwaukee-area Jews to attend services regularly at Rapoport’s then-Chabad of the North Shore, which at first met in the basement of the rabbi’s Fox Point house.
Chamoy has since been a president and board member and has remained active through all the growth of the operation, from Chabad of the North Shore to the present Joseph and Rebecca Peltz Center for Jewish Life.
“My only real disappointment is that I didn’t meet him 20 or 30 years earlier,” Chamoy told The Chronicle in a telephone interview. “I found a very warm, inviting rabbi who took you at your own beliefs and level of observance and treated you with respect.… He helps you grow in so many ways.”
Mark Goldner and his wife Frances were sitting shiva for her mother more than 10 years ago, when Rivkie and Rabbi Motty Spalter, Rabbi Dovid Rapoport’s daughter and son-in-law and also active members of the organization, paid a condolence call.
The Spalters invited the Goldners to a Shabbat dinner, then to a Purim celebration, where the Goldners met the Rapoports. Mark Goldner today is president of Congregation Agudas Achim Chabad, the synagogue operation of the Peltz Center, and Frances attends the women’s classes there.
“They’re very warm people, caring people, friendly people,” Goldner said. “They give you support and I think their love for Judaism shows, and they are not judgmental. Just by seeing how they live their lives, it inspires you to become more observant.”
Much to celebrate
The Peltz Center will be concluding the 25th year since Fagie and Rabbi Dovid Rapoport established themselves in Milwaukee with a celebration dinner on Wednesday, June 25, beginning 5:30 p.m. at the center, located at 2233 W. Mequon Rd., Mequon.
In addition, the event will honor Rivkie and Rabbi Motty Spalter for their “20 years of dedication and hard work” for the operation, which among other things included founding what is now the Mequon Jewish Preschool.
“A huge part of the success and growth of the center is thanks to their efforts and their personalities,” said Rabbi Menachem Rapoport, executive director of the center and one of Rabbi Dovid Rapoport’s sons.
The event will also pay tribute to the late Lynne Hellman, whose first yahrzeit (anniversary of death) was recently, and who was “an incredible community member,” said Rabbi Menachem Rapoport.
Finally, the center will also dedicate a work of art, a mural 30 ft. long by 6 ft. high portraying Jerusalem in ancient times that will be placed in the front lobby of the center’s main building.
Rabbi Menachem Rapoport said that one of the synagogue’s members, Jeff Farkas, introduced him to the artist, Kristina Nemethy Shaoul.
She was born in Germany shortly after the war to an artistic Hungarian family that soon after moved the U.S. She had previously painted murals on the subject of ancient Jerusalem that she had donated to other synagogues.
She and the Rapoports agreed that she should create such a work for the Peltz Center, and the piece is to be installed before the dinner.
“This adds so much,” said Rabbi Menachem Rapoport. “There’s always been a strong connection between the people we serve here and Israel.… I don’t think there is a more fitting theme for the lobby.”
Steady growth
As Rabbis Dovid and Menachem Rapoport recounted the story, it took only about five years before Chabad of the North Shore outgrew the Fox Point house.
So it purchased in Mequon 10 acres of land surrounding a larger single family house, and the Rapoports had that house remodeled to accommodate the greater requirements.
In 1994, Chabad of the North Shore merged with the old Congregation Agudas Achim, then-based on Milwaukee’s West Side, and became Congregation Agudas Achim Chabad.
After “seven or eight years,” the operation outgrew the house. So the organization constructed a 7.5 thousand square foot synagogue building on the site, completed in 1996.
The operation soon outgrew that, leading to construction of the new facility, completed in 2005.
This building has about 30,000 square feet and houses the synagogue, the Mequon Jewish Preschool, the Mikvah Mei Menachem, the Peltz Hebrew School, the Lipskier Judaic Library, the Mequon Jewish Teen Center and the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Intergenerational Center.
Rabbi Menachem Rapoport said that the shul has a membership of about 175 families, and there are about 80 children in the preschool; but otherwise the leaders don’t count the numbers of people participating in the various activities. But “there are hundreds of people learning here on a regular basis,” he said.
The Peltz Center has a staff totaling “30 or 40,” according to Menachem, but it remains a Rapoport family operation.
In addition, to Dovid, whose official title is president and spiritual leader, Menachem, and the Spalters, daughter-in-law Dinie and son Rabbi Moshe Rapoport, and daughter Gila and son-in-law Rabbi Yakov Litvin have leadership roles.
In fact, Chamoy and Goldner both remarked that the Peltz Center feels like an extended family to them as much as it might to the Rapoports.
“It really is like a family there,” said Goldner. “It’s really a community feeling, and that’s one of the things I like about it a lot.”
For more information about the celebration, call 262-242-2235 ext. 202 or visit www.chabadmequon.org.
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