Purim of my youth was comprised of three major events: There was shaking my gragger as loud as possible when my father said the name of Haman during his exquisite rendition of the Megillah.
L’iluy nishmas Dovid ben Chaim (Don)
Reprinted with permission of Inyan Magazine from
Hamodia – The Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry www.hamodia.com
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No further reproduction or distribution of this copy is
permitted without permission from Hamodia Corporation.
A MISSION IN MILWAUKEE – How the Twerski family built a Kehilla
Milwaukee, located on the shores of Lake Michigan, is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin. It has gained a reputation in Jewish America as a growing kehillah, under the vibrant leadership of Rabbi Michel Twerski and his wife, Rebbetzin Feige Twerski. Rabbi and Rebbetzin Twerski have not only led Congregation Beth Jehudah faithfully since 1963, they have spearheaded the development of Milwaukee into a well developed, full fledged, Torah community with their sincerity, devotion to Yiddishkeit, and deep, authentic ahavas Yisrael.
Reprinted with permission of Hamodia – The Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry www.hamodia.com
© Hamodia Corporation, All rights reserved.
No further reproduction or distribution of this copy is
permitted without permission from Hamodia Corporation.
Working Magic in Wisconsin – Rabbi Michel Twerski
Milwaukee’s Dynamic Twerski Family
Tucked away in a quiet city in the American Midwest, Rabbi Michel and Rebbetzin Feige Twerski have somehow managed to become major players on the international Jewish stage. What is the secret of their far-ranging influence? Mishpacha’s Yisroel Besser spent an unforgettable Shabbos with the Twerskis and their community, Congregation Beth Jehudah, where he experienced the signature Twerski blend of sublime holiness and total unpretentiousness. As he shares his impressions, we join the Twerskis for a spirited dance in shul, a bursting Shabbos table, a visit to an old-age home, and a quiet talk in a warm kitchen — and we watch them unlock the magical melodies and messages that touch so many souls.
Reprinted with permission of Mishpacha Magazine www.mishpacha.com
© Mishpacha Magazine Inc. All rights reserved.
No further reproduction or distribution of this copy is
permitted without permission from Mishpacha Magazine Inc.
By Alan J. Borsuk
of the Journal Sentinel staff
September 7, 1998
Family patriarch, religious scholar, accountant, jokester with a twinkle in his eye — Rabbi Mordecai Dov Ber (Mottel) Twerski was the behind-the-scenes pillar of a family that has been at the forefront of many of the central issues in American Orthodox Judaism.
Twerski, 73, died Sunday morning in New York and, in line with Jewish tradition, was buried later Sunday in Milwaukee, a few feet from the graves of his parents at Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery near County Stadium.
He was one of five sons born to Rabbi Jacob and Leah Twerski, who moved to Milwaukee in 1922 from Eastern Europe.
The other four brothers became major figures in contemporary Jewish issues — one is a prominent psychiatrist and author, one a lawyer who was formerly dean of the Hofstra University law school and so on.
A brother, Michel, is the rabbi of Congregation Beth Jehudah, 2700 N. 54th St., and an internationally known rabbinical figure.
But Rabbi Mottel stayed away from the spotlight. He was the one the other brothers counted on for support. With the death in 1981 of his older brother, Shlomo, who was an influential rabbi in Denver, Twerski became the de facto head of the prominent Chasidic family. Family members recall him as their biggest booster and the one who almost never missed a celebration or landmark event in the large and far-flung family.
They also describe him as a highly charitable, easily approachable man who loved to stump both children and adults with brain teasers and riddles, to tell stories and to revel in the “nachas” — a Yiddish term for a special form of joy that comes from the accomplishments of children, grandchildren or anyone else you love.
An ordained rabbi with a classic yeshiva education, he did not hold a pulpit. He got an accounting degree from Marquette University and became a certified public accountant, practicing in Milwaukee before moving to New York in 1960.
His many involvements in the Jewish community in Milwaukee in earlier years included operating a store for a few weeks each year that sold the specially handled and supervised foods and supplies for the spring Passover holiday.
He and members of his family returned to Milwaukee often in recent years.
In August 1997, Twerski, who had been having problems with dizzy spells, fell down a flight of stairs and severely injured vertebrae in his neck. He was left paralyzed and was hospitalized for the 13 months since then, much of the time unconscious or semi-conscious.
Survivors include his wife Sara, seven children, three brothers and numerous grandchildren.
Shortly before the 1997 accident, Twerski told his brother Michel that he did not want any eulogies when he died. He said he always wanted the option of walking out on a speech that wasn’t worth listening to, and he wasn’t going to have that option at his own funeral. At the graveside Sunday night, family members spoke, holding to his request, technically, but making their feelings clear. No celebration would be the same, the loss could not be filled, they said — but their faith would not be shaken.
I live in a village. My children and grandchildren live in this village. I’m deeply immersed in the life of this village. I know the daily habits, the joys and sorrows, of dozens and dozens of people in the village: Our lives are intertwined.
I go into the coffee shop in the village and Dave reaches for my standard order before I say anything – except he pauses, because he knows that occasionally I surprise him and ask for something different.
I go in the drug store and the pharmacists ask me, by first name, how I’m doing.
I go to the grocery store and I usually know everyone in the place. The woman running the cash register makes sure I’m up on the news of the village.
I am not reluctant to speak to my friends’ children when they’re acting out of line or unsafely. They’re my children, too.
If there’s a celebration or a tragedy among the villagers, you can count on people to pitch in and help with
Kristyna Wentz-Graff
whatever is needed, whether it’s baking, decorating a social hall, housing dozens of visitors, you name it. We’re all in these things together.
I like all of this. To say my village means a lot to me is an understatement.
I’ve spent huge wads of time trying to build up the life of the village. So have most of my friends. It takes a village to raise a village, or something like that.
But when I tell you where the village is, there is a strong chance you will wonder about me, at least privately.
That’s OK. I’m used to it.
“How are things going in your neighborhood? Is it safe?” I get asked this often, and the
real question people mean is, “Why haven’t you moved out, like so many other white people? How long are you
going to stay?”
I live in Sherman Park.
To be more specific, my wife, Robi, and I live in a small area generally north and northwest of what we in the neighborhood still call St. Joe’s hospital (officially, now Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-St. Joseph) at N. 51st and W. Burleigh St.
My wife and I moved from Whitefish Bay to Sherman Park in 1983. Why? Religion was the No. 1 reason – we had become involved in the Orthodox Jewish community focused in the neighborhood, and the way to enrich what we were doing was to live there.
But we also liked the neighborhood itself – good houses, involved neighbors, a good location for commuting and other routines. We could get far more house for our money
in Sherman Park than in Whitefish Bay. (Thanks to the lower values on comparable property, we decreased our property tax bills while increasing our home size.)
The immediate neighborhood was just about all-white at that time, but changing.
Today, it is predominantly African-American, and that’s not changing.
A large number of white people left – schools, concerns about safety, the attractions of suburban communities and, let’s be honest, racism were all reasons.
The people in our synagogue stayed. We were a small group, so I suppose we could have left. But there were quite a few elderly people in our congregation then and moving wasn’t going to be easy for them. And a lot of us, elderly and not, didn’t have enough money to buy in Mequon or the North Shore or wherever.
By the late 1980s, the Jewish community in our neighborhood was at a crossroads.
We had grown a bit, but so had our expectations, especially in terms of the educational environment we wanted for our children and ourselves.
We needed either to create institutions to meet those needs (and we were a group with no rich members) or we needed to move on to cities where there were such institutions.
Thus was born Yeshiva Elementary School, a kindergarten to eighth-grade school with a strong Orthodox Jewish orientation, and the Milwaukee Kollel, a center with a half-dozen or so rabbinic scholars-in-residence who generally pursue their own advanced Talmudic studies during the day and work in the evenings one-on-one and in small groups with adults who are less expert but who want to learn more. Both opened in the fall of 1989.
Skip ahead 18 years. The school at 5115 W. Keefe Ave. has grown from 64 kids and 26 families to 207 kids and 75 families. We’ve invested several million dollars in improving and expanding the building we bought in 1989. The kollel has become an important catalyst for adult learning, and its small building at 5007 W. Keefe Ave. is packed nightly.
Our two daughters and their husbands now own homes within three blocks of ours. Our grandchildren must really think they are in a village: Their friends, their school, many of their relatives, almost everything they do in their lives – all are within walking distance.
We live close together because, in accordance with religious law, we do not drive on the Jewish Sabbath – from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. That means we need to be within walking distance of our synagogue (for most of us, that’s Congregation Beth Jehudah, 3100 N. 52nd St.) and of one another. We also don’t do our jobs, answer phones and a bunch of other things on the Sabbath.
The Jewish community has been a stabilizing force in the neighborhood. Not only didn’t we leave, we grew. Milwaukee can only benefit from having stable, racially integrated areas. Our neighborhood is one of the few that can make claim to that, and we’re a reason why.
But we’re definitely not the only reason why. There are lots of other people in the neighborhood, good people, my neighbors. We generally get along reasonably well and we share a lot of common needs and hopes.
We all root for the stretch of Burleigh Ave. from Sherman Blvd. to N. 60th St. to get stronger as a business district, a major effort in our neighborhood.
Concerts on summer nights in a little park at N. 50th and Burleigh attract a diverse crowd, and St. Joe’s hospital, the sponsor, remains a major pillar of the community.
The coffee shop I mentioned, Sherman Perk, 4924 W. Roosevelt Drive, is owned by a very community-minded guy, Bob Olin, and offers one of the fairly rare settings for genuine diversity in Milwaukee – people of different races, ethnicity, economic status, age hanging out together.
In many ways, that’s true for the drugstore, Burleigh Serv-U, 5300 W. Burleigh St., where owner Dave Draeger has been committed to being a hold-out against a tide of big chain pharmacies (Now Closed).
Our area seems to be reasonably stable. Compared with 25 years ago, a far higher proportion of my neighbors are African-American or from other minority groups, but the middle class, day-in-and-day-out life of the area really hasn’t changed much.
A labor leader, a couple of high-ranking police officials, an appliance saleswoman, a firefighter, a paramedic, a cab driver, a bank executive, a Christian minister – these are my minority neighbors.
My concerns with all my neighbors are the same, regardless of race, religion and so on: Do they keep up their houses and yards? Yes, quite well. Do they handle their garbage disposal properly? Yes, but not 100%. Do they disrupt people with loud music and such? Rarely an issue, fortunately. Do they pay their share of the tab for snow plowing in our alley? Yes, most of them.
There are quite a few for-sale signs these days and property is moving slowly, but I don’t think that’s unique to Sherman Park.
Safety is OK. It’s an urban neighborhood, and things happen – bikes can disappear if you leave them outside, there have been car thefts and garage break-ins occasionally.
Several people close to me have been held up on the street, but those incidents are pretty rare. I have had to call the police for crime-related reasons maybe three times in 24 years, and each was a minor matter.
I walk in the neighborhood. People don’t go about their daily lives acting as if they are overly concerned. Nothing terrible has happened around us lately.
But safety is a big issue to us – as is police response time, which is, frankly, not good on routine calls. If our confidence in either of those fell too low, that would be a crisis for our village. What’s too low? I don’t know and I hope not to find out.
Housing values were pretty flat through the ’80s and much of the ’90s, even as prices went up rapidly elsewhere. But starting in the mid-’90s, prices rose nicely. Lately, they have flattened out or maybe even fallen. Overall, my house is now worth almost triple what I paid for it in 1983.
But we didn’t buy our house as an investment. We bought it because we wanted a particular lifestyle – Orthodox Jewish in its specifics, an involved, caring neighborhood in its generalities. We’ve gotten that in rich and rewarding ways for many years.
As an Orthodox Jewish community, we go to lengths to insulate ourselves from some of the forces and trends in society that trouble us. This will shock you: The majority of my close friends don’t own televisions. (For the record, I do, but it’s rarely used.) Because we strictly keep the rules of eating kosher food only, there is exactly one restaurant in the Milwaukee area where we eat (not in our neighborhood either – it’s Café Osher, 333 W. Brown Deer Road, Bayside (Now Closed). We dress differently – “conservative” is a mild word for it. The list of things we do that are distinctive could go on.
But we are not immune to what goes on around us, or uninvolved. We want our village to grow and thrive. Some of us have become leaders in Sherman Park and Burleigh St. activities.
I am telling you more in this piece than I ever expected to discuss publicly. But frankly, I think our neighborhood is an asset to the city and I’m proud of our record in making that so.
The traditional Jewish toast is simple: “L’chaim.” To life. The letters in the root word, chai, have a numerical equivalent in the Hebrew alphabet of 18, so 18 is considered a number associated with the good things in life.
This month marks 18 years since we opened our school and our adult education institution and launched our efforts to build our community. So it’s time for a toast:
To my friends. My neighbors. My village. L’chaim.
Alan J. Borsuk was a reporter and editor for The Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel since 1972. He and his wife, Robi, have lived in Sherman Park since 1983. Alan has been retired from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a number of years now.
By Michele Derus
of the Journal Sentinel staff
September 15, 1996
Congregation Beth Jehudah last week completed a west side neighborhood wiring
project that will allow its Orthodox members greater freedom of movement among
their homes and the synagogue on Shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath.
A non-visible wire fence called an Eruv connects a 144-square-block area that
encompasses the temple, 2700 N. 54th St., its Yeshiva Elementary and Milwaukee
Hillel Schools, 3447 N. 51st Blvd., with congregants’ homes, mostly north of
W. Burleigh St.
“The Eruv uses present telephone cable and electric wiring, religiously
forming a system of doorways that demark the boundaries of this community,”
explained Benzion Twerski, Beth Jehudah’s assistant rabbi and project supervisor.
The Eruv creates an official community and an accompanying travel freedom that
until now, the Orthodox congregation didn’t have on Shabbos, the Jewish period of
rest that runs from sundown Fridays to sundown Saturdays.
During that time, congregants are not allowed to carry anything, including
children, except what is defined by religious law as a “private domain.”
This often results in men walking to temple and social functions, while women
with young children remain home.
Beth Jehudah’s Eruv creates a community-wide private domain. Other American
cities, including Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore, have Eruvs, but Beth Jehudah’s
is the first in metropolitan Milwaukee, congregation members say. Orthodox Jews
in Glendale and Milwaukee’s East Side have discussed installing an Eruv.
“The social aspect of Sabbath is one of the most critical elements in
creating community bonding; this will greatly enhance that,” the assistant
rabbi explained. “Families with children who don’t walk will now have the
ability to socialize. The same with the wheelchair bound.”
The project, financed by donors, entailed four years of planning and fund-raising,
five weeks of construction to plan and design and “thousands of details that
needed to be tended to because of religious restrictions and laws,” Twerski
said.
It cost “many thousands of dollars,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s
wise to give a figure,” nor construction details, as a precaution against
vandalism.
M&I Northern Bank and congregant Suzanne Zigun’s family were major donors,
he said.
The line runs from N. 45th to N. 60th Sts. between W. Capitol Drive and W.
Burleigh St. and from N. 48th to N. 54th Sts. from Burleigh to W. Center St.,
he said. Those boundaries allow inclusion of St. Joseph’s Hospital, he noted.
No public celebration is planned. But, as project completion came just before the
Sept. 13-23 High Holiday Days, which includes the Jewish New Year, Twerski said
“every family is going to be celebrating its own freedom, being able to go
out to each others’ homes.”
This article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This version has been abridged.
For some who dress in dramatically different ways, what’s outside expresses what’s within
By Catherine Fitzpatrick
of the Journal Sentinel staff
February 14, 1999
He has been chased by ruffians wielding knives and stones. Been screamed at, jeered at, questioned brazenly by strangers.
Once, in autumn, he entered a public elevator alongside two teenage girls. They eyed him head to toe, giggly with curiosity. Then one of the girls piped up: “So, who are you supposed to be?”
He replied sharply, “What?”
As a rabbi, he was more bewildered than angry.
Then he remembered. It was Halloween.
Such are the pinpricks that can be suffered by those who dress in a fashion so dramatically different from the rest of us that their clothing might be mistaken for costume.
Yet throughout the Milwaukee area, a number of citizens spanning a broad spectrum of backgrounds and beliefs eschew current style trends. Rather, they clothe themselves every day in the traditional attire of their native country or their ancestral homeland, or in a manner of dressing prescribed by their religion.
Here’s a closer look at an area resident for whom substance determines style.
Like all teens, Benzion Twerski yearned for new clothes. Like many parents, his father made him earn them.
It took the boy years.
At 13, youths in the branches of Hasidic Jewish life with which the Twerskis are associated receive a four-piece ensemble. It will be their wardrobe for life.
“When I was 10 or 11, I told my father I wanted to dress, at least on Shabbos (the Sabbath), in a more Hasidic garb,” said Benzion, now an adult.
His father, Rabbi Michel Twerski, said he would buy young Benzion a Shabbos bekeshe (long tailored coat). But first, the boy was to learn a tractate of the Talmud, the collection of writings constituting Jewish civil and religious law. Such a project normally takes a year of study.
Working with a special tutor every day during the lunch hour, Benzion concluded the tractate in 7 or 8 months, and received his bekeshe. Repeating this arduous process three times earned him a Shabbos hat, a weekday coat and a weekday hat.
Benzion Twerski is a Hasidic Jew, the third generation of rabbis to guide Congregation Beth Jehudah on Milwaukee’s west side.
Hasidic Jews are Orthodox Jews, Benzion explained. Chassidism differs from other types of orthodoxy in its flavor, not in any fundamental capacity, he said:
“It is much more of an attitudinal, atmospheric type of movement, easily identifiable by dress most of the time.”
Of all the aspects of Hasidic life, the dress code is the most widely embraced because it is the easiest, Twerski said. “The others are far more soul-searching and involve much deeper commitments.”
The clothing, he explained, is intended to drive home to the person that there is something expected of you:
“The hope is that the garb will influence (the wearer) and bring about the things that Hasidic Jews hold dear: joy, intensity in service, kindness to others, love of the Torah.”
By Benzion’s count, five or six Orthodox Jewish men in Milwaukee dress in traditional Hasidic manner.
During the week, the wardrobe consists of a wool bekeshe (a suit with long tailored jacket) in black, dark gray or dark blue; a white shirt; a brimmed felt hat. Formal Shabbos attire differs somewhat, in that the bekeshe is black satin or silk, and the hat (called a streimel) is circular and made of fur. As an Orthodox Jewish man, he also wears, under his jacket, a rectangular prayer shawl with tassels (tzitzis) at each corner.
Orthodox Jewish women take care to dress modestly, but have no proscribed garments. Married Orthodox women, however, cover their natural hair at all times — even in the home — with either a scarf or fashionable hairpiece.
“One of the concepts of Jewish law is that the beauty of the hair is something that should be preserved for the husband’s sake only, something to be shared between husband and wife,” Benzion explained.
Benzion and his wife, Chanie, have five children. Their sons, who wear long side curls, have been teased. “My kids will come home sometimes very upset,” Benzion said. “It’s cruel.”
And yet the third generation of Milwaukee Twerskis expects the fourth generation to adhere to the Hasidic rules of dress, rules that dictate full beards, long side curls, yarmulkes, bekeshes, streimels, scarves and hair pieces.
“Garb is an expectation that’s almost inbred, it’s unquestioned,” Benzion said. “What would I do (if they chose not to follow the rules of dress)? I wouldn’t do anything. It would be their choice, but it doesn’t even occur to me to be an item in question. The track record speaks with power: We’ve been dressing this way for about 11 generations.”
The Twerski family lives in a stone home on Milwaukee’s west side. There, an elegant lace tablecloth, a collection of candelabra, and kiddush cups for wine-blessing give the dining room an Old World ambience. Seated at the table, Benzion could be mistaken for a man of the 18th century, until he checks his phone messages on a palm-size pager, and quiets his toddler with bits of kiddie breakfast cereal.
Benzion Twerski’s clothes are meant to convey this message:
I am in your world . . . but not entirely of your world.
This is one of our early “In The Press” features of a historical nature that relate to the Twerski family. It is from a newspaper article dating back more than 42 years ago…
By Sylvia Bernstein
Of The Journal Staff
The house numbered 2720 North 54th Street is a very modest white bungalow. You would never dream that royalty lives in it. But to those persons who practice Orthodox Judaism in Milwaukee, the occupants, Rabbi and Mrs. Jacob I. Twerski qualify as royalty.
On Sunday evening,members of Congregation Beth Jehudah, founded by the rabbi and located next door to his home, will sponsor a dinner party in honor of the Twerskis’ 50th wedding anniversary. It will be held at the synagogue.
Judging from past celebrations, it would not be surprising to find representatives of all professions, all faiths attending.
During the more than 40 years he has been in this city, the rabbi has been more than a spiritual leader. For years he has acted as mediator in and out of the courts when the cases involved those of the Jewish faith.
The Twerski home serves as a haven for the homeless, a friendship center for the friendless and the vortex of countless human tornadoes that have been calmed and quieted within its walls.
The rabbi’s ancestors have been rabbis since the days of Peter the Great. His is a heritage of Chassidism (a sect with strict observance of rituals) dating back more than 250 years and distinguished by ancient forms of dress and worship.
Mrs. Twerski, or rebbetzin as she is respectfully called by observers, has shared more than marriage with her husband. Theirs is also a shared heritage since they have mutual blood lines.
Although she was born in Bobowa, Poland, and he in Hornostaipol, Russia, they were betrothed as children by their relatives.
“I was 10 and the rabbi was 12,” she recalled. “I was playing outside our home when my family came out. ‘Take this white handkerchief,’ one of them said to me, and I did.”
The handkerchief is a Biblical symbol signifying the closing of a contract. In this case, it was followed by an exchange of classical gifts: a pendant set with diamonds and a ruby for her and a pocket watch for him.
The families were then content to allow a respectable period of time to elapse. The world was not. With the outbreak of World War I, all communication stopped between them.
Eventually, the rabbi’s family was smuggled out of Russia to Cracow, Poland. Mrs. Twerski, the eldest of 12 children, fled with her family to Vienna when Russian troops occupied their village.
“When we came back, after the war, we found our floors scarred forever by horses’ hoofs. They had been riding them through the house… All of our belongings were gone, even my grandfather’s plush chair which my father had hoped would be my bridal chair,” said Mrs. Twerski.
Somehow, magically, the chair was recovered as it was being taken out of the village on a cart. It was indeed her bridal chair.
The young couple were reunited at last and the wedding was held on a Wednesday, a popular custom of the pious.
The rites were performed under the sky, as prescribed by Biblical edict, under a wedding canopy. Everyone was invited. In the “shtetl” as small towns were called, it was considered a deadly insult not to ask the total community.
“There were 50 or 60 rabbis there,” said Mrs. Twerski, “and I remember that my girl friends had to climb up into the trees so they could see what was happening.” She wore a long, pale yellow gown, since white was not then the accepted mode, and her face was heavily veiled, her hair covered. It was cut, also in the prescribed manner, the day after the marriage. A bride’s hair is the symbol of virginity, hence the haircutting is done the day following the nuptials.
“I was very fashionable. I had a wig long before It became so popular,” she quipped.
With their marriage, Jacob Israel and Leah Devorah, each named for ancestors who themselves had been husband and wife long years before, reunited the names once again.
The young Twerskis came to Milwaukee soon after. Here they raised their five sons: Rabbi Shlomo, a Talmudic researcher in Denver; Rabbi Abraham, clinical director of St. Francis Psychiatric Hospital and Gateway Rehabilitation Center, Pittsburgh; Rabbi Motel, public certified accountant, Brooklyn, N. Y.; Rabbi Aaron, professor of law at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; and Rabbi Michael, assistant to his father.
Each is married and has children. All are steeped in a tradition of trying to alleviate human problems. It is what they learned and absorbed all the time they were growing up in their unique home.
“Even Motel, the accountant, takes more charity cases than paying ones,” commented his brother Shlomo, who is here for the Sunday event.
The kosher Jewish home is the container of the family, just as the synagogue is the container of the Jewish spirit. In her home, Mrs. Twerski has practiced all of the precepts ingrained within her.
Strict adherence to the laws of “kashureth” (kosher) is observed. There are two sinks, two stoves and two refrigerators to accommodate milk or meat meals which can never be mixed. In fact, there are two of everything —dishes, towels, pots and pans. There is also a category called “pareve” (these utensils can be used for either since the foods eaten from them contain neither animal fat nor milk products).
Mrs. Twerski is now a great-grandmother. There is a serenity in her face born of devotion to prayer and a twinkle in her eye. “I don’t think you age outwardly … I believe one ages from within.” She obviously has no intention of doing that.
By Andrew Muchin
MILWAUKEE, Jan. 24, 2003 (JTA) — Rabbi Michel Twerski, the soft-spoken scion of a Hasidic rabbinic dynasty, began 1988 as the victim of his own success.
His quarter century teaching traditional Judaism to liberal Jews had resulted in approximately 100 local families becoming ba’alei teshuva, or newly observant.
A dozen of the families even had moved to the Sherman Park neighborhood, a five-square-mile area near Twerski’s Congregation Beth Jehudah on Milwaukee’s west side.
However, most had left for Israel, New York or other major Jewish communities to access the “institutions and programs they would need to preserve a rich, fruitful traditional lifestyle, which were not available in Milwaukee,” Twerski explains.
Twerski concluded that Beth Jehudah — founded in 1939 by his late father, Rabbi Jacob Twerski — had reached a moment of truth.
“I called the remnant together, roughly 35 families,” Twerski says. “I said, ‘You know what, folks? I have an aversion to presiding over a moribund community. It’s very frustrating not to be able to build.’ ”
Twerski proposed the creation of a yeshiva-preparatory day school and a kollel, or adult learning center, to meet local needs and to attract and retain families from other cities.
Building two institutions simultaneously “was sheer insanity” for a congregation that “didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” Twerski acknowledges. “But as an imperative for the continuity of the Orthodox community, I didn’t see any alternative.”
Howard Karsh, a Beth Jehudah leader, agrees.
“We couldn’t attract the kollel rabbis unless the school was in place,” he recalls. “Our goal, of course, was to have the kind of community that after the rabbis completed their two-year commitment to the kollel, they would stay.”
Fourteen years and nearly $20 million later, Twerski’s vision has been realized.
The community has tripled to 120 families. They worship daily in a refurbished synagogue purchased a decade ago from a congregation that moved to the suburbs.
The Yeshiva Elementary School opened in 1989 with 64 students. Enrollment has tripled, and the school building recently underwent a $3 million expansion.
The Milwaukee Kollel Center for Adult Jewish Studies employs eight rabbis who teach individuals and groups in its west side headquarters and in offices and homes throughout the city.
The community also founded a girls’ high school, Torah Academy of Milwaukee, which has a mostly local enrollment of 24. There also is a kosher grocery store, the Kosher Meat Klub.
Twerski’s community is the largest of four Orthodox pockets in this Jewish community of 22,000.
Beth Jehudah’s community is unique nationally for quickly reaping the seeds it had sown, says Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, a national Orthodox organization.
“Rabbi Twerski is something of a legend in the Orthodox world for establishing an Orthodox community not from scratch, but from a small synagogue,” Shafran says.
Robi Borsuk, who moved to the neighborhood with her family in 1983, remembers Twerski’s plea for the two institutions.
“That seemed to me like an awful lot of work,” she says. “But my thinking was, ‘I don’t know anything about this but the rabbi does, and he seems quite sure of the need for both of these things.’ And I could see the need for the school. I remember there was discussion but that people felt this was a good thing to do, and went along.”
Borsuk has served on the YES board since its inception. Her husband, Alan, was a board president.
One of Twerski’s first steps was to create a fund-raising organization, the Torah Foundation of Milwaukee, in 1989.
The rabbi began traveling throughout the United States and Canada to meet with potential supporters. He and his wife, Feige, already had earned a national reputation for kiruv, or outreach work to non-Orthodox Jews.
Money flowed in, but the early days were difficult.
“Every time a Catholic school closed, I was standing at the front door” to buy the used equipment for YES, recalls Karsh, who was the school’s first administrator and who accompanied Twerski on some of the forays.
“What kept us afloat were barely concealed miracles from the Almighty,” Twerski says. “We saw the splitting of the sea many times over.”
He remembers when the community was $400,000 in debt, with no idea how to find the money. Unsolicited, a supporter of Twerski’s from Chicago “sat down with the few friends we had, and in two hours had generated commitments of $300,000.”
The Milwaukee Jewish Federation provides funds, but significantly less than go to the other two local day schools.
YES even has received help from non-Jewish sources. Parents Advancing Values in Education, a privately funded school choice program for low-income children, provided cash grants.
Then the Wisconsin Legislature expanded the Milwaukee Parental Choice program to provide vouchers to parochial schools in the city. Families earmark some $400,000 in these government funds to YES each year.
Still, Milwaukee wasn’t exactly a household word among Orthodox Jews. With Twerski’s support, Karsh founded the Sherman Park Jewish Initiative in 1995.
That non-profit organization is behind the “Think Milwaukee” ads that have appeared regularly in Orthodox publications. The SPJI also ensures that visitors receive hospitality and meet real estate brokers, and sends visitors’ resumes to potential employers.
Approximately 70 new families have arrived from throughout the country since 1989. Karsh cites factors such as the Twerskis, the community infrastructure and affordable housing.
Not only are most of the homes in Sherman Park well-kept and large enough for a big family, they cost half of what they would in larger cities, and thousands less than similar homes in Milwaukee suburbs.
The influx of Jewish families helped to stabilize the neighborhood, according to Steve O’Connell, executive director of the Sherman Park Community Association, an educational and social-service agency. The neighborhood is 60 percent African-American and just under 3 percent Jewish.
“With their school here, the synagogue, the kollel, people are walking around all the time in the neighborhood,” he says. “They’re purchasing houses. I’m very impressed about their willingness to be out on the streets, at block parties, at Sherman Perk,” a kosher café that attracts non-Jews as well.
Primarily through Karsh, Beth Jehudah participates in the Sherman Park Area Religious Congregation, which has published three fund-raising calendars featuring photos of the diverse neighborhood population.
The newest cooperative endeavor is the Burleigh St. Community Development Corp., a non-profit organization spearheaded by Twerski; his son, Rabbi Benzion Twerski; and congregant Jim Hiller.
The CDC includes an array of religious and ethnic representation in an effort to spur economic development on one of the major Sherman Park roadways.
Its first project is a 12,000-square foot building, currently under construction. The CDC is negotiating for a kosher pizza restaurant, a non-kosher restaurant and a clothing retailer to occupy the first floor. Upstairs will be office space and a community hall.
A twin building, not yet begun, will hold retail businesses and Twerski’s planned family counseling center. Discussion of the Beth Jehudah community always seems to return to the example set by Twerski, his son and their wives.
“The uniqueness of the community is because the Twerskis create a family-type atmosphere, a close-knit community where everybody is cared for and nurtured on their level,” explains Rabbi Akiva Freilich, who moved to Milwaukee to teach at the kollel in 1991 and moved on to a parallel outreach organization two years ago. “There’s a tremendous connection between people. People don’t fall through the cracks.”
Twerski points out that he and his wife simply try to carry on his father’s “very genuine love for people.”
But communities can’t live on love alone, and Twerski is the first to admit to the community’s ongoing fund-raising challenges. Yet he recommends his formula for growth to other mid-sized communities, regardless of their wealth.
“It can happen any place,” he says.
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