New growth planned for South County

By Jonathan Rubin

SOUTH KINGSTON — What’s similar between the Jews of South County and the desert dwelling Bedouins of Israel’s Negev desert?

“South County parents feel they have a nomadic existence” in terms of Jewish life, said Richard Winkler. They need to travel to one city for a bar mitzvah, another for Hebrew class and someone’s home for a knitting class. The results: the majority of the Jewish population isn’t getting involved.

Winkler is the president of the South County Jewish Collaborative (SCJC), a lay-led organization that is trying to build the first Jewish center to service the 1,000 or so Jewish households in the area. They’ve purchased the land, built a small constituency of donors and are now plowing through numerous legalistic and zoning hurdles towards the planned $1.5 million dollar facility.

Winkler has community building in his blood – his grandfather helped found the Providence Hebrew Day School in Providence more than 70 years ago.

“We all benefited from someone who built something when we were kids. Now it’s our turn.”

Summer community

What used to be merely a “summer Jewish community”  for Providence and New York Jews is now an area that sports a year-long population.

But the infrastructure hasn’t caught up yet; the Hebrew school rents a few classrooms at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston and puts up magnetic mezuzahs before each class begins. Rhode Island’s remaining Hadassah chapter holds its meetings in various synagogues.

And the area synagogue, Congregation Beth David, couldn’t hold the Hebrew school there if it wanted to; it isn’t much more than a kitchen, a small sanctuary and a set of bathrooms. It holds High Holiday services at a nearby church or a high school when things get too crowded.

“Every year we need to carry the Torahs and all the prayer books over there,” said Sara Nelson, president of Beth David. “People say, ‘Gee, it’d be nice if we didn’t have to do this every year.’”

Southern Snapshot

South County, officially known as Washington County, includes towns such as North Kingstown, Narragansett and Westerly. Jews there are comparatively young (according to the 2002 R.I. Jewish demographic study, the median Jewish age in Southern Rhode Island is 40.8 years old, compared to 43.8 years old in Providence and 50.8 years old in Newport) but also typically lacking in Jewish ritual observance — only 60 percent participate in a Passover seder, 12 percent light Shabbat candles on Friday and 8.4 percent keep kosher, some of the lowest rates in the state.

Sprawling and largely decentralized areas like South County often face other Jewish community building challenges as well — 54 percent of Jews there are intermarried; two in five have a Christmas tree in their homes.

“There’s no population center,” said Miriam Ladin, communication director for the Collaborative. “The need is absolutely there – I know by the kvetching!”

The 40 or so families enrolled in the South County Hebrew School face similar challenges, but people put up with it because “they want a Jewish education without having to drive for an hour,” said Nelson.

She said the community does occasionally receive assistance for its senior population from Jewish Family Service, located in Providence, but that “there’s no real place to house it.”

The area also briefly had a Jewish teen program, Gesher, a satellite extension from The Harry Elkin Midrasha Hebrew High School in Providence, but the program dissolved a few years ago.

Building a dream

So for the past six years, community members have been trying to build something that could bring all the community’s religious, educational and social activities together under one roof.

In 1999 the organization bought a piece of scenic lakeside property from the First Baptist Church of Narragansett for $190,000. Located near the rotary where Routes 1 and 108 intersect, on the South Kingstown-Narragansett town line, the property included a small home; after updating the electrical, water and heating systems, it’s now used to hold meetings and small functions. After a period of some drop-off in activity, Winkler said that now the SCJC is seeking the zoning ordinances to expand the property and drain some swampy areas.

The Collaborative is the most recent of many groups that have tried to raise the level of Jewish activity in the area. Winkler said that it’s a very diverse community – from retirees to young families, including many educators at the University of Rhode Island looking to join a Jewish community.

They sport a listserve of about 600 emails and have knitting circles, book clubs, speaker events, sukkah buildings and pre-Passover potlucks; their next event is a winter gala on Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. (see www.jewishcollaborative.com for more details)

Thanks to a number of donors who have stepped up to the plate, and a grant from the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island, the mortgage has been paid off.

The plan would further call for Beth David, a former Orthodox synagogue that now serves about 130 mostly Conservative families, to relocate their congregation to the new facility. Plans for the Beth David building are undetermined.