Our Synagogue Is Being Attacked For Renting Space To A Charter School Serving Minorities
East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn, New York. Image by Wikimedia Commons
Our usually quiet Midwood neighborhood in Brooklyn has been roiled in recent weeks by a controversy surrounding East Midwood Jewish Center’s decision to rent our small school building to a charter school called Urban Dove.
That flare-up has been fanned by a misinformation campaign that has promoted fear about non-Jewish children posing a threat to Jews in the area.
The backlash misrepresents Urban Dove and its work and mission — and also why the center’s trustees overwhelmingly voted to embrace this unique school and its students.
East Midwood Jewish Center is a progressive, egalitarian, Conservative congregation that has served this community for nearly 100 years. Our community is made up of married and single people, with and without children, straight and LGBTQ, interfaith families, Jews of color, and others who are exploring their Jewish path.
Urban Dove serves students who did not amass enough credits to complete ninth grade, through a sports-based education model which nurtures these students academically, emotionally, physically, and interpersonally. The student population is made up mostly of black and Latinx children. It has an excellent record of success, far exceeding outcomes for comparable student populations.
Decades of history provide a backdrop to current events. Dating back to the 1950s, our school building served as a Hebrew day school for the predominantly Conservative Jewish population of the Midwood neighborhood.
Over the years, the demographics shifted, and Midwood became largely Orthodox. Last year, the day school went out of business. It was replaced by a Chabad-affiliated school, which was unable to maintain sufficient enrollment and also went out of business. We were left with substantial amounts of unpaid rent, money sorely needed for our daily operations.
When it became clear that we needed a new tenant, we put the word out. Starting in March 2019, we showed the building approximately 30 times to 15 different parties, including eight yeshivot and two non-Orthodox Jewish day-schools.
There was either no interest or no serious offer made (i.e. money down) from any of those parties. When Urban Dove made a serious offer, we were ready to listen. At the same time, some elected officials and others from the Orthodox community were urging us that it was our duty to rent to a Jewish school. But they brought no one to view the building. And rather than work with us and Urban Dove to promote harmony, there came a cascade of threats, along with widely promoted lies about the synagogue and the student body (including a baseless claim that students have a history of violence).
The falsehoods provoked fear and anxiety in the neighborhood: “Troubled” kids would pick fights with the kids at the nearby Edward R. Murrow High School. They would see yeshiva students dressed in their distinctive clothing and “make trouble.” A Pandora’s box was about to be opened in peaceful Midwood.
On November 25, we held an informational meeting to brief our members and neighbors and to address the growing disinformation. Rather than the neighborhood discussion that we had planned, a thousand people from all over Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn showed up to protest. The agitators had turned a matter between EMJC and the residents of one block into a manufactured crisis spanning half of Brooklyn.
So let’s talk about the reality.
First of all, some perspective on the schools in the area: Between Murrow (3,800 students), Midwood (4,200 students), and Madison (3,500 students) high schools, at least 11,500 students of all ethnicities, religions, and nationalities attend public high schools in Midwood. All three of these schools serve some number of children who are “at risk” of not completing high school. Urban Dove’s approximately 300 children are a drop in the bucket of high school students in Midwood, and even among “at risk” students, they represent only a fraction.
What’s more, Urban Dove’s students have chosen to walk an educational path that promises them greater odds of success where before they were failing. They are children who are making a personal investment in their education, a notable mark of maturity for 9th graders. They have a support network that far exceeds what is available to the other students.
The more EMJC learned about Urban Dove, the more we felt their mission was in keeping with the values that our shul espouses. Our growing membership represents a broad spectrum of Jewish practice.
I have had lovely interactions with some of the residents on the block and I understand their concerns: Change is coming and change can be frightening. Some neighbors, unfortunately, have threatened lawsuits and other obstacles, vowing to derail the entire endeavor at any cost.
The energy being put into these threats by one Jewish group against another would be far better redirected toward fostering a positive relationship with our synagogue and its new tenant, an entirely achievable goal. In that way, the entire neighborhood can find harmony.
Let’s model the bedrock Jewish values of toleration and kindness. In the book of Vayikra/Leviticus, 35:25, we read “If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, let him live by your side.” The great 11th century commentator Rashi, in his comment on this verse, says the following: “Do not leave him by himself so that he comes down in the world until he finally falls altogether and it will be difficult to give him a lift, but rather fortify him from the very moment of the failure of his means…” (Sifra, Behar, 5:1).
Let us come together as a community and embrace the opportunity that God has provided to fortify these children and do whatever is in our power to lift them up.
Sam Levine is Rabbi of East Midwood Jewish Center.
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