The Space We Need Now

When I was young, my father, a Jew from Montreal, was transferred by DuPont, his lifelong employer, to work in an explosives plant in Martinsburg, West Virginia. We moved to a tiny town right on the Maryland-West Virginia border, where we were surrounded by farmland for as far as the eye could see. We were the only Jews there in Maugansville, Maryland, and we lived on the same block as a local FBI man. I can remember my mother, who had lived in Queens and then Long Island her whole life, absolutely frantic after this gentleman called her one morning to warn her to stay away from the nearby shopping mall the next weekend, as the Ku Klux Klan was scheduled to march. As far as she was concerned, we couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And so, when we next moved to the little city of Wilmington, Delaware, where I was one of a handful of Jewish kids in my public school, her relief remained palpable for years.

While we were no longer the only Jews in town, there weren’t enough of us to be totally unremarkable. I can still feel the light touch of my friend’s grandmother sweeping her fingers through my hair, searching for my horns. And I can still feel the searing humiliation that singed the tips of my ears when I was informed on the school bus one afternoon, by a regretful peer, that I was bound to end up burning in hell because I didn’t believe in Jesus.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that as soon as I could, I escaped for the big city, first to Philadelphia for college, and ultimately, to New York City, where I knew I’d find no shortage of Jewish culture and people.

But even among the embarrassment of Jewish riches to be found in New York, there was nothing like Makor.

Opened in 1999 and housed inside a beautiful brownstone on West 67th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Makor was a cultural touchstone for young Jews in New York of the early aughts. While it might have looked like any other townhouse on the block, something magical happened when you entered the building. Like a genie’s lamp, Makor somehow felt bigger, more beautiful and welcoming on the inside.

You could find classes on anything from Primo Levi to elementary Hebrew, lectures and arthouse movies, and concerts—oh, the absolutely jaw-dropping concerts! Unbelievably, a top-notch music venue lay nestled in the dim and intimate basement, the Makor café, where I saw Norah Jones, who got her start at Makor, and also Israeli greats such as David Broza, Aviv Geffen, and Ehud Banai. Imagine a neighborhood bar offering great wine and frequent concerts by the hottest Israeli rock stars.

I was there if not every day, then very nearly. And the place was always packed.

After I met the man who would become my husband, we would hang out together at Makor regularly, attending concerts, grabbing a drink after a movie in the vaunted and now long gone Lincoln Plaza Cinema. We celebrated birthdays at Makor and met up with friends, other young Jews who, like us, were hungry for community and culture.

And then, as happens so often in New York, one day Makor was gone, gobbled up by the 92nd Street Y and moved to the East Side, where it quickly fizzled and died.

At first, I was sad. Makor’s absence left a hole in my social calendar, for sure, but I didn’t think I’d miss it that much. After all, I was living in New York; there were shuls and JCCs and other outlets aplenty, in which to “do” Jewish. But this turned out to be untrue, because although synagogues and JCCs have their wonderful purposes—from davening, to working out, to dropping kids at preschool—they aren’t and never can be exclusively dedicated to the practice of just being Jewish.

And increasingly, a space in which we can just be—and be together—is exactly what we need.

After the devastation and tragedy of Oct. 7, it became very evident that people have become desperate for a place to commune. And like it or not, there’s a barrier to entry at shul and even at JCCs: Simply put, not everyone feels comfortable in these spaces.

On the first Shabbat following Oct. 7, my husband and I had the sense that so many of our peers were in terrible pain. Everyone we spoke to was scared and upset and adrift. We certainly were. And we sensed that the best thing would be to come together. So we hosted a Shabbat dinner and invited dozens of people from our neighborhood and families from our children’s day school. And they all came. We squeezed 40 people around makeshift folding tables in our very not large Manhattan apartment. It was crowded, but the need for meaning and togetherness was profound. This same sense inspired me to start a weekly Torah study class, called Torah & Tonic, also for friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends and so on. It just keeps growing. People want to come together and to make meaning together. In an environment free of politics but dedicated to exploration, intellectual seriousness, and real emotional connection. And it doesn’t seem as though the current institutions are offering what people want and need.

While an institution may be one pillar propping up a community, it does not a community make. Synagogue attendance is at an all-time low—according to Pew Research, only “12% of Jewish Americans say they attend religious services weekly or more often” and Jews who attend synagogue services a few times a year or less (i.e., High Holiday Jews) account for “nearly eight-in-ten U.S. Jews (79%).”

Jewish Americans also seem to be turning away from traditional spaces like the local JCC, perhaps in part because these institutions have lost clarity of mission as they assume the mantles of so many other political causes, from BLM to Ukraine. When you try to surf too many waves, you become vulnerable to the tsunami of politics that threatens to wash over everything, diluting brands, diluting missions. In addition, or perhaps because these institutions are too enmeshed in various causes of the day, many of these spaces are seen as … dorky. Whether it is one or both reasons, I believe that in the wake of Oct. 7, Jewish Americans are desperate for spaces defined by a single mission: being unapologetically Jewish.

It does not take a great prognosticator to understand that the next big thing—no, the next urgent thing—in an age so hopelessly tied up in digital communication, will be a need for physical space where people can meet IRL. Face-to-face conversations, always a staple of human relationships and societal building, have become a premium, something that only the few who have the privilege of access to a supportive communal group and a physical space in which to congregate can afford. This is literally an afront to humanity.

Now, more than ever, we must make sure that Jews have a place to be with other Jews. A space with no other agendas, no purpose other than to be a refuge where people can come together, in the spirt of the beit midrash, to sit and talk and learn and laugh and argue and drink and celebrate and simply be together.

We need a space, a brick-and-mortar space, that is beautiful, aesthetically appealing. It should feel cool—and it should feel comfortable. In atomized New York City living, these spaces are hard to find, but one that facilitates community without a specific mission can live as easily in the back room of a restaurant or in a gorgeous townhouse. And it must be a place where politics are not at the fore, but where being Jewish is the full focus. The instinct many leaders at our JCCs and synagogues have to post slogans in their windows becomes off-putting in a moment when the Jewish people are riven by so many political divides. Certainly, artists and speakers will bring their particular views to the door, and there will be occasions when world events necessitate discussion or programming that involves politics. But walking through the door should not mean you’ve consented to a prescribed worldview other than interest in or commitment to being and living Jewish, together.

The true communal space should be a big tent that allows for a diversity of opinions without espousing just one. True community-building requires a space where culture isn’t viral, but it is deep. A space that is unapologetically Jewish and that is fun. Where one can drop by for a drink or a bite whenever they’re off work, or for a lecture or a film or class that has been etched into the calendar for weeks. This is how we fight the antisemitism of the day and how we remain strong and united as a community.

And there’s a beautiful simplicity to this idea: The model is not scalable; it will be expensive, it looks completely different in every market, and it is, in other words, precisely the sort of thing that Jewish funders and foundations have been shying away from for decades. This needs to change. These desperate times call for an innovative approach, and honestly, nothing could be more radical than doing the oldest, most profoundly true thing you could do, the same thing Abraham did: Build a tent that is open on all sides.