In the late 1970s, Congregation Beth Jehudah was a survivor. It had once been part of Milwaukee’s thriving West Side Jewish Community. Most of the community had moved to the suburbs, leaving the Orthodox synagogue standing almost alone.
Rather than following, Beth Jehudah’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Michel Twerski, decided his congregation was going to stay in the Sherman Park neighborhood. Because of his determination and that of the small group who worked with him, there is again a thriving West Side Jewish community.
Depending on who is providing the estimate, today there are somewhere between 125 and 150 Jewish families living in Sherman Park. While that is much less than the hundreds of families who once lived in the area, it is a notable increase from the 35 active families once clustered around Beth Jehudah.
The Sherman Park Jewish community has survived and thrived due to two anchors: the institutions of Congregation Beth Jehudah, Yeshiva Elementary School and the Milwaukee Kollel-Center for Jewish Studies; and the people themselves.
“There is a sense of community here that is very hard to create in a larger city,” Beth Jehudah congregant Dana Margolis said. “It is a very welcoming place.”
Beth Jehudah is in the middle of an area that once contained more than half a dozen synagogues, kosher butchers, bakers and all of the other merchants that provided services the observant community needed. Those businesses disappeared when their customers left.
Twerski wasn’t going to tear up the roots his late father, Rabbi Jacob Twerski, Beth Jedudah’s founder, planted in 1939.
“My father said that unless everyone could afford to move to the North Shore, he wasn’t going,” Rabbi Benzion Twerski, Rabbi Michel Twerski’s son, said.
At the time, Rabbi Michel Twerski and Rebbetzin Feige Twerski taught traditional Judaism to anyone who wanted to take their class. The problem was that when many of those families became more observant, they left Milwaukee. The community did not have the Jewish infrastructure those families wanted.
However, some of those who took classes had strong ties to Milwaukee and Wisconsin. They stayed. When they became more observant, they moved to the Sherman Park neighborhood to be close to the shul. Alan and Robi Borsuk were one of those couples.
In 1981, Alan Borsuk was the assistant metro editor of the old Milwaukee Journal. He had learned of Twerski from Robi and a non-Jewish friend who lived in the area.
Deciding that the rabbi would make a good profile piece for the Journal’s Sunday Magazine, Borsuk contacted him. That led to an invitation to spend a Shabbat with them.
The story was never written. However, through that Shabbat and subsequent meetings, the Borsuks became more observant and moved to Sherman Park in 1983.
The Twerskis held a series of lunches to discuss traditional Judaism. Some couples that joined Beth Jehudah had their first in-depth exposure to it at those lunches.
Many people became more observant and moved to Sherman Park. They created a place that in some ways harkens back to the 1950s and in others resembles the tight-knit Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
“People move here because there is a closeness that you do not always find in a larger city,” Margolis said. “Many cities have a much faster pace than Milwaukee.”
Cost is also a factor, community leader Todd Miller said. Sherman Park housing is much cheaper than many cities.
There were some negative remarks from those who could not understand why their friends were moving into the city and into an area their grandparents and parents had left.
“As much as people have negative feelings about living in a city, at times it feels like we are living in the 1950s,” Margolis said. “Kids can go from house-to-house in the neighborhood without any problems. We all watch out for each other.
“There are people all around. I don’t worry about my kids playing outside. They can go to shul and school by themselves. We work hard to create a safe feeling.”
The area around Beth Jehudah is also a very diverse neighborhood.
“There are 15 Jewish families on our block,” Margolis said. “The rest are African-American.”
Not just Milwaukeeans are moving to Sherman Park. Families have come from Chicago and the East Coast.
The growing population around Beth Jehudah eventually created a critical mass. That in turn provided the impetus to take steps needed to cement the community.
In the summer of 1988, Twerski held a series of meetings with some community members. He told them what he felt the community needed to both survive and grow.
According to the Yeshiva Elementary School’s website, Twerski said that “either we made ourselves into a full-service Jewish community that would attract people and grow, or we could just sit and watch the community wind down…”
That led to creation of new Milwaukee Jewish institutions.
Yeshiva Elementary School, a day school with a yeshiva preparatory curriculum, opened in the fall of 1989. It started with 64 children. It has a current enrollment of approximately 195 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, Rabbi Aaron Gross, YES’s director of development said.
“YES was one of the things that stabilized the neighborhood,” Gross said. “It was one of the reasons the middle class did not leave.”
At the same time YES was being organized, Twerski said the community also needed a kollel, and that “we couldn’t have a successful community without both,” Borsuk said.
A kollel is an institute for full-time, advanced study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature. It has six full-time rabbinical staff.
The Milwaukee Kollel also opened in the fall of 1989. It was not easy to build and keep both institutions going, Miller said. No one in the community had any experience in creating or running a school. There also wasn’t any money, he said.
That did not stop them, Miller said. In 1989, Twerski formed a fund-raising organization, the Torah Foundation of Milwaukee. He traveled the United States and Canada raising money. Others in the community did their part to find the funds needed.
“I do remember at one point we went to Rabbi Twerski and said we did not have enough money for both YES and the Kollel,” said Miller. “We said we might have to close the Kollel.”
In a gentle, but firm way, Rabbi Michel Twerski said that was not going to happen. The money was found, and both institutions kept working.
Those institutions have become a magnet that attracts even more families. Recently, another group has been moving in, Rabbi Benzion Twerski said.
“We call them FFBs,” he said. “Frum [observant] From Birth.”
It is not a perfect neighborhood, Miller said. There are incidents, just as there would be in any major city. However, Sherman Park is safe, he said.
“My children are all gone, but we have no plans to move,” Miller said. “We embraced a better way of life for us when we moved here. I think it made me a better person.”
Jeff Cole is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer. He is at work on his first novel.
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