Deutschland by Gerhard Baerg

The book is called “DEUTSCHLAND,” published in 1938 by Henry and Holt Company.  The author is Gerhard Baerg of Depaw University.   This is a reader designed for second year students of the German language.  Nothing particularly notable about this book, except for the fact than it dates from the late 30s, just as the Second World War was on the horizon.  

I found it at the Indianapolis Public Library Service Center, on Meridian Street, which is a prime source of used books for my online bookselling business.  It’s miraculously unblemished, and its pages only slightly yellowed, after 73 years.

 Along with passages of prose about all aspects of German culture, it had black & white pictures of exercising youth, pictures of statues, of actors, of architecture, and—on page 248—this translation from the German:

Adolf Hitler owes his success to his ability as leader of political campaigns.  After he had joined the little group in Munich, it grew very rapidly and soon became a great popular movement.  For many years he worked untiringly to unite all Germans and to put an end to all political division.                          

Was the author a member of the Bund? Did he have pro-Nazi sympathies?  At that point in history, it should have been clear to a scholar of German that Germany was persecuting Jews and other minorities, and a warmonger.  It’s unclear, however, whether the author loved Hitler—or if he was just a dolt.

Patrick Buchanan certainly would have been with the Bund.  In fact, he still is; just look at his 2009 book: Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War.   In this book, Buchanan puts forth the proposition that Hitler was a rational actor on the historical stage.

The only reason that he persecuted Jews, he claims, is because Great Britain promised to defend Poland if Germany invaded.

So, reading between the lines, the implication is that—because Jews wanted Churchill to go to war— that the Jews were responsible for putting themselves in the ovens. And of course, the icing on the cake for Buchanan is the insinuation that, because Hitler was a rational actor, he had good reasons for murdering 6 million of them.

But I digress. 

The Palestinian is, in many ways, the new Jew; stateless, without respect or significant political power within U.S. borders.  So when Gingrich said that Palestinians are an invented people to The Jewish News, he didn’t fear any repercussions. (That is, he’s written Palestinians—and Arab Americans in general—off as a potential wellspring of support in the upcoming presidential election.)

And when he extended that remark in the Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011 Republican candidates’ debate to label all Palestinians terrorists, I felt sure that he commanded a respectful sieg hiel from Josef Goebbels in the grave.  While Buchanan’s anti-Semitism’s just a throwback to a déclassé Jew-hatred, Gingrich’s different brand of anti-Semitism (the Palestinians like the Jews being a Semitic people) is something more virulent.  That is because, Gingrich—like Hitler in his time—is all too willing, and able, to step on the backs of the powerless on his way to power.

A Personal and Public Affair: The (Private) Investigation of Steven Libman

On July 29, Steven Libman cited a “personal matter” as the reason for resigning his position as president and CEO of the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, IN.  But if this “personal matter” was a female subordinate with whom Libman was having an affair, and if he was flying around with this “personal matter” to various cities on Center funds for reasons unrelated to the performance of his job, then it’s no longer a personal matter.  

If the aforementioned scenario is in fact the reality, as alleged by the cover story in the Aug. 16 edition of Current in Carmel, then it’s indeed a public matter for investigators and lawyers to sift through.  However, according to Carmel City Councilman Rick Sharp, many of these recent allegations have been made by questionable sources. Sharp also said that these allegations have been aired without evidence of wrongdoing being brought forth, and before an audit of Center finances has been completed.

“The [Center for the Performing Arts] Foundation is doing exactly what it should be doing and that is protecting the interests of the foundation and what they’re doing is they’re not talking,” said Sharp.  “That’s because they haven’t got their audit completed or their investigation completed.  That’s why I pretty much find it irresponsible that we’ve had this reckless speculation.”

“The mayor and Current and The Indianapolis Star have turned this into tabloid reporting, rather than dealing with the facts,” said Carmel City Councilman John Accetturo.  “If there’s evidence that Mr. Libman did something wrong let’s see the evidence.”

Just the Facts?

As reported in Current, Carmel City Attorney Douglas Haney hired International Investigators, Inc. to investigate Libman for an $8,100 fee several months ago. The city sought out the investigative firm after Current had informed Carmel city government that Libman might be having an affair with a subordinate. The private investigators were brought in to verify this information because “initial evidence was deemed insufficient to warrant a criminal investigation,” according to Current. 

What the investigators found, according to unnamed sources for this weekly Carmel paper, confirmed that Libman was not only involved in a relationship with a subordinate but that—on more than one occasion—he took flights with her to various cities on the Eastern Seaboard with expenses paid by the $175 million arts center. (These charges were echoed by Brainard himself who was quoted extensively in a front page article in The Indianapolis Star on Wed, Aug. 17)  

Libman was confronted with these allegations about inappropriate activities by the board of the Center for the Performing Arts on the afternoon of July 29. That day, Libman tendered his resignation after agreeing to a settlement deal.

Current also brought to light another accusation by Mayor Jim Brainard—apparently unearthed by Indianapolis-based International Investigators, Inc.—that Libman had inappropriately promoted his subordinate.  As quoted by Current, Mayor Brainard stated, “He [Libman] promoted her and paid her more money in the middle of their dating relationship without posting (the position) or making it available to other employees.”

Regarding the mayor’s allegation and the Current story as a whole, Sharp said, “I don’t know if it’s accurate or not…  I have a difficult time putting my stock in a story that’s based almost entirely on unknown sources, a terminated employee, and speculation on the part of the mayor.”  

“In essence the mayor has become the story,” continued Sharp. “He is the lead on the story.  He is the source that has gone on the record and made all the allegations and I know that I for one am going to expect to see the evidence to back up each and every one of these charges because aside from the allegation of infidelity or an inappropriate relationship…  The other items that the mayor alleges are rather damning for the man’s career.  By the man, I’m saying Mr. Libman.”

Sharp also implied that the allegation that the mayor made might be very hard to prove in a court of law. “I’m sure that was a rather dynamic period of time for the center [when] they were building an organization from the ground up,” he said.  “The allegation that the individual received a promotion and a pay increase is quite damning but if you were to dug into it and you found that 30% of the people who worked for the center initially evolved into different job titles and job descriptions and 40% of the people received pay increases as a result of that, that suddenly makes the allegation against Mr. Libman have a little less substance to it.” 

On his Facebook page, Sharp speculates that the reason Current in Carmel started investigating Libman in the first place is that the free weekly was “miffed” at the Center for the Performing Arts for withholding information from them.   But then, Current had, in Sharp’s words, previously “leaked this year’s entertainment lineup,” at the Center so it’s possible that the Center for the Performing Arts didn’t want any more information to leak prematurely.  In any case, as indicated on his Facebook page, Sharp continues to believe that the investigation into Libman’s activities is politically motivated.   See http://www.facebook.com/ricksharpforcarmel

(One of the people used as a named source in the Current article was Anne Poynter, a former Center employee who is now the director of the Downtown Westfield Association.  Poynter called Libman’s spending “irresponsible.”  Current neglected to mention that Poynter is Republican congressman and gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence’s sister.)        

If the Allegations Are True, Then What?

Another issue the Current cover story raises is the potential legal action that might arise because of potential violations of state and federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provisions from the activity that Mayor Brainard alleged.

Sheila Suess Kennedy, Professor of Law and Public Policy at IUPUI, indicated that, whether or not there are EEOC violations, there could potentially be legal ramifications due to violations of employment law provisions.     

If I am a current employee that applied for that position but didn’t know about it, I could bring a lawsuit alleging it is unequal treatment, certainly,” she said.

Would Carmel taxpayers on the hook?  Protecting taxpayers was the justification Current used in its story as a reason to bring its preliminary findings to the city of Carmel.  But according to Accetturo Carmel taxpayers are protected by a contract. 

“There is a contract signed between the Carmel Redevelopment Commission and the city and the Center for the Performing Arts,” says Accetturo.  “That contract is a public document so it’s not anything secretive or anything like that. In there, the city’s indemnified against anything the Center for the Performing Arts does.”

But his main concern is focused not on Libman's activities, but the city's.  “I’m worried about illegal activities of private investigators hired with city money following people around,” said Accetturo.

Another City Council Member’s Perspective

At-Large Carmel City Council member Ron Carter is of two minds about the former Center for the Performing Arts president. “As far as Mr. Libman is concerned, I’ll tell you what I’ve told other people and that is that I’m angry,” he said.  “I’m disappointed.  If I see Steven Libman, I would tell him that.  I would not let that take away from some things that I think he did in regard to getting the whole performing arts center online.  He put together an excellent opening season. He did an outstanding job of marketing.  And brought some divergent entities together.” 

Carter sees the role of oversight of the Carmel City Council, in regard to Libman’s tenure at the Center for the Performing Arts, as a limited one.  “Libman is not an employee of the city of Carmel.  And the role of the city council should not be one of jumping into the middle of this fray that was handled appropriately by the Performing Arts Foundation board and the board is doing a very good job from a due diligence standpoint of looking at the financial records of the center.”

But Carter does see some oversight role for the Carmel City Council.  “Since the city council has provided some funding in the way of tax dollars,” he said,  “the city council certainly needs to make sure that the entity to which the money was given, which was the performing arts foundation, has the appropriate safeguards in place to make sure that taxpayer money is spent in an appropriate fashion.”

(In 2010 and 2011 the city, with council approval, funded theCenter for the Performing Arts’ operating budget at the rate of two million dollars per year.)

Appropriate Oversight  

Sheila Suess Kennedy is not convinced that there has always been appropriate oversight in Carmel over the past decade.  This was a time when Carmel transformed from a sleepy bedroom community to a “premier setting for the arts and design industry” and the home for a “world class” performing arts venue—to quote some Carmel- affiliated websites—under the leadership of Mayor Jim Brainard.  Detractors and supporters of the mayor both tend to agree on one thing; without Brainard’s leadership the Center for the Performing Arts would have never been built.
And yet, according to Kennedy, “There has not been at least so far as I can see the kind of attention to process that would make me feel comfortable if I were a Carmel taxpayer.”

Would greater attention to process (and oversight) have prevented the current scandal?  And, perhaps more importantly, was (or is there still) anyone lining their pockets at Carmel taxpayers’ expense?

“The issues that have been raised in the press reports that I’ve seen suggest that there might have been a certain sloppiness in the decision making process all along,” said Kennedy.  “In the decision to build the facility, and in the entities created in order to effectuate this particular development, perhaps they didn’t dot every i and cross every t. But I don’t think it was intentional.    I think that sometimes when people are trying to get something done, which is admirable, they don’t always [act] as we might hope they would.”                                           

                                                       City Councilman Rick Sharp

How Borders was "Maked"

The former northeast side Borders at River Crossing Indianapolis, where I worked on and off for the last 15 years, was the ultimate “third place.” You’re probably familiar with the meaning of this term, even if you're not familiar with the term itself. It was coined in the late 80s to define a space outside work and home that provides a free platform for public interaction.

The Borders café was particularly inviting with its wide tile floor, high ceiling, and plentiful seating. It attracted a diverse clientele; an ESL group met almost daily at their favorite table caddy corner to the service counter. There was also a women’s discussion group that attracted quite a few foreigners and newly naturalized citizens. These women used the open-ended discussion format of their meetings as an opportunity to improve their English skills and to express their mostly left-leaning political viewpoints (often this particular group was too large for the café and met elsewhere in the store) while the Indy Libertarians turbocharged their monthly meetups with liberal doses of espresso.

But maybe you just came to Borders to relax. And you could’ve done so while reading any of your favorite books or periodicals (you didn’t have to pay just for browsing) or the text on your laptop. (Free wireless was also available in the store.) You could’ve hung out all day if you wanted while drinking your favorite espresso-based drink. The River Crossing Borders, in particular, was a place that you might have appreciated for its relaxed ambiance. It was, in essence, a private-sector-supported public square. No other bookstore came close in providing such a service to northeast side Indianapolis—a built-up area of strip malls, apartment complexes, and office parks.  There’s just not a lot in this area in the way of parks and other types of public spaces where people can congregate. This is one reason, I think, that the River Crossing Borders was such a popular hangout.

Among the regulars were some unforgettable slacker characters. One guy in particular spent many hours wandering the shelves and reading business books. When he found a particular concept particularly enlightening, he usually felt the need to share it with a Borders employee. I recall the evening when he came across Clutch by Paul Sullivan. This book, which describes the qualities necessary to avoid being a klutz in a pressure situation, nearly made his eyes pop out.

I was something of a klutz for staying so long. Borders was both my path of least resistance and my safety net when other jobs didn’t work out for me. There were, believe it or not, some advantages to working in a bookstore (although my paycheck was not one of them). I didn’t take my work home with me, for one thing. Largely because of this, I had been able to pursue a moderately successful side-career in freelance writing and editing. And lately, I had found something of a niche at Borders fulfilling corporate and school orders. Somewhat quixotically, I had thought of this position as a stepping-stone to some administrative job somewhere that paid a living wage.

When my letter of separation came on March 17, 2011 signed "Sincerely, Human Resources," it wasn’t a total shock. Borders Group Inc. was already liquidating two of its Indy-area stores—the Carmel and the Downtown locations—and this liquidation announcement came in February 2011 simultaneously with the declaration of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A third of stores nationwide were also slated for liquidation at this time. My fellow employees at River Crossing had been relieved to escape the first round of store closings; we didn’t think that we were headed towards the same downward spiral (At the time of this writing, the Castleton, Noblesville, and Greenwood Borders stores are open and are not in liquidation mode.) But the statistics weren’t on our side; most corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcies end badly. It’s no comfort to me that thousands of Borders employees—booksellers, supervisors, and managers alike—now find themselves similarly cast adrift in the rough waters of the current economy.

In retrospect, you can chart the decline of Borders back to more than a decade ago when Amazon shipped its first book. In 2001 Borders scrapped its own online book-ordering site and teamed up with Amazon only to wind up—surprise!—getting the short end of the stick.

Borders finally detached from Amazon in May, 2008.  The newly revamped Borders.com was launched a month later.  Borders couldn't compete with Amazon on pricing, but Amazon didn't have a brick and mortar presence. The thinking at the store level, at the time, was that the company could turn this presence into an advantage in the online world (despite a very late start) by luring store customers to order online with incentives like deep discount coupons and free shipping.

Not long after the Borders.com launch, Ron Marshall became CEO.  The most generous thing you could say about Marshall is that he seemed very dedicated to his misguided ideas.  His most notorious mandate to store level employees was to accost customers with a pre-selected slate of books chosen at the corporate level—"make books"—and try to hawk them. Effectively, he attempted to turn the ranks of Borders associates into an army of hucksters. I mean, wouldn’t you feel a little weird being approached by a barely post-adolescent bookseller enthusiastically recommending Kathryn Stockett’s The Help to you as if he’d actually read it? And believe me, this kind of thing happened all the time. I know, because I was also forced to hawk books I hadn’t read, and had no intention of reading.

The setting for all this, you may recall, was the tail end of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Most people basically stopped buying books (at least at retail) during that time. As a result, Borders Group Inc. started to accumulate massive debts with publishers.

At the same time there was a revolution going on; the e-book revolution that is, led by Amazon’s Kindle. This was yet another tectonic shift in bookselling for which Borders was utterly unprepared. The fact that you could download your books in a few seconds for a modest price, without going to a bookstore and paying retail—without even going to your mailbox for product ordered online—meant, essentially, that the revenue lost during the Great Recession, as it’s now called, could never be regained by Borders no matter how many "make books" were designated. And while Borders associates were still accosting customers with said books, and while Borders corporate was trying to work out the kinks in the Borders.com website, Barnes & Noble unveiled its Nook Reader. This was in October 2009.

Borders jumped in too late in this game—almost a year later—with a selection of e-reader products. Most of these did not come close to the Nook (let alone the Kindle), in terms of ease of use and versatility. Even the ones that offered a comparable alternative could not compete because they hadn’t been branded effectively.

When Ron Marshall unceremoniously left the company in January 2010, after only a year in that position, the "make book" program stopped. Things didn’t really get much better, though, under the reign of the next CEO Mike Edwards. By this point there was little he could do except cut costs. The really important decisions had already been maked, as it were. One of Mike Edwards’ cost cutting solutions was to get rid of outsourced cleaning crews in the stores and get booksellers to scrub toilets. But that was before he decided that declaring Chapter 11 was a better solution to scrubbing away a billion or so dollars in debt that roughly equaled, in early 2011, the company’s assets.

Still, this company, mismanaged though it was, had legions of loyal customers. Throughout its history—from its beginnings in Ann Arbor in the mid-Seventies up to the present—Borders managed to maintain a loyal clientele that appreciated the bookstore for its wide selection as well as its inviting ambiance. Until fairly recently, Borders stores had a selection—not just in books but also CDs and DVDs—that was far superior to what you’d usually find at B&N. The problem was that these loyal customers didn’t want to pay full price for their books. They wanted to hang out all day at Borders while buying their books at Amazon. Borders tried to cater to such customers with its Borders Rewards Plus loyalty program and an avalanche of email coupons. But such incentives cut the profit margin to less than zero.

During the liquidation sale that lasted from late March to early May, many customers expressed their sadness to me, as if they were losing an old friend (while buying books at progressively greater discounts as the sale neared the end). And in fact, there were lots of friendships made between booksellers—many of whom were walking encyclopedias of genre literature and popular media—and customers. It’s this severing of contact that was one of the most painful things for many of us.

And yet, there’s something larger at stake here than just the failure of one certain bookstore, or of a certain bookstore chain. If it’s a lack of public meeting places in cities like Indy that leads people to congregate in places like Borders, then maybe it’s time to think of possible solutions to this problem. That is to say, if you value the notion of the public square and what it represents, then you—we—need to pay for it somehow. The bookstore-as-public-square model only works, really, if customers are willing to buy their books at retail. The public sector model isn’t faring much better these days. Just consider all the public libraries that are now in jeopardy all across America. In fact, the very idea of public space itself seems to be under assault by a certain sector of the body politic. The Libertarians who used to meet at the River Crossing Borders would probably have a different take on all of this. In the closing of their monthly meeting place, however, they have a glaring example of how the private sector failed them.

(Note: It's now official: Borders Books & Music is now going out of business and all stores are now in liquidation mode.)

Exodus: The Northward Drift of Indy’s Jewish Community

Originally written in 2007

When the marketing staff of the Indianapolis-based Jewish Community Center (JCC) wanted to advertise its Indoor Triathlon, a public event meant to showcase its state-of-the-art fitness and aquatic complexes, they hung a banner in Carmel—at the intersection of East Carmel Drive and South Range Line Road.

The JCC has good reason to advertise in Hamilton County.  At one time the center’s address at 67th and Hoover roughly corresponded with the population center of the Indianapolis Jewish community.  This is no longer the case.  It hasn’t been the case, in fact, for around 30 years. 

While Indianapolis is still the city with the largest number of Jewish households in Central Indiana, according to the Jewish Federation mailing list (with Carmel coming in 2nd), the community has made such significant inroads into Hamilton County that it may be on the verge of a tipping point. This ongoing population shift is one of the more significant challenges that the JCC must contend with, even as it celebrates its 50th year at the Hoover Road location.

While the exact rate of this population shift is unclear—there is no current population study available to cite on this topic—it nevertheless is apparent enough to be of concern to the men and women who run the nonprofit institutions, schools, and synagogues that serve Central Indiana’s estimated 10,000—12,000 Jewish residents. 

This is because most of Central Indiana’s Jewish institutions are located within a mile of the JCC and share its demographic issues.  The Jewish Federation offices and the Bureau of Jewish Education building are actually attached to the JCC physical structure.  Other facilities are within walking distance (or at most a mile drive) of one another.  This population shift affects some of these institutions more than others, and as we shall see, their responses vary.

Looming large in the background is the fact that the “core” Jewish population of the United States is declining, according to the American Jewish Identity Survey of 2001, while the number of intermarried families has increased.  Another less quantifiable factor is the decline, as JCC Executive Director Ira Jaffee puts it, in “a sense of belonging.” 

“If you were a part of the Jewish community [in the past] you felt like it was an obligation to be a JCC member,” says Jaffee, who joined the JCC as Youth Services Director in 1978.  “Today it seems to be such a consumer-driven society, my feeling is, given the Jewish families in [the search] for quality preschool, childcare, youth sports, or fitness they’re consumer-driven first where they’re going to shop around for various types of services.”

Not only does the JCC have to contend with the competition of the dozens of day care facilities and commercial fitness facilities within close proximity, but the city of Carmel has built a facility that provides many equivalent fitness services within walking (or biking) distance of many Carmel residents. 

Half a mile southwest from the intersection where the JCC advertised its Indoor Triathlon, is Carmel’s Monon Center, which opened in early 2007.  Among its amenities are a water-park, indoor pools with waterslides, indoor track, and a skateboard park.  It offers on-site day care (although it is strictly a drop-off while working out service) along with many other programs and activities.  It is, in addition, conveniently located on the Monon Trail. 

So, for Ira Jaffee and his marketing staff, one of the emerging challenges is to convince the (not necessarily Jewish) family living in Carmel to become members—or to retain memberships—despite the presence of the Monon Center and other facilities within close proximity.  

“In order for us to be competitive,” says Jaffee, “even for being a not-for-profit, we’re very, very market driven so all our programs first and foremost have to be the best.  There’s no question about that.”

In 1997 the JCC underwent a transformative renovation that quadrupled the size of the facility, adding a new fitness center, infant/toddler center, and auditorium as well as new offices for the Jewish Federation.  In 2003 the Center added a new water park and indoor therapy pool.  

The statistics show that these renovations were highly effective in attracting new memberships—both inside and outside the Jewish community. In the early 1990’s JCC memberships were at about 1400 households.  Of those 60% were Jewish. Currently the JCC has close to 3000 households in their membership database, but the Jewish population is now at 40%.  The Jewish memberships, nevertheless, are up from about 840 households to 1200. 

“I’m willing to bet that with 1200 Jewish households we’re the largest Jewish organization in the city,” says Jaffee.  “The other thing related to that is that [there are] 3500 [Jewish] households in the whole city so… 33% penetration which for a city our size is typically 25 –27% penetration.”

One of the goals of the February 3 Indoor Triathlon (as well as a similar competitive outdoor event for kids this past June) was to increase this penetration.  It was also meant to highlight the transformation of its run of the mill sports facility/aquatic complex to a state of the art one.  

Jaffe says of the Indoor Triathlon, “It gave us much more exposure… in terms of where the Jewish community is and where it’s going…. A lot of times the core of any particular community is based on where the activities and services are, not necessarily where people live.  It’s been known that people are willing to drive 15…20 minutes [to get to these services].”

Of course, the JCC is not just a fitness facility with a day care center and summer camp. According to its mission statement, "The JCC shall enrich the lives of the Jewish and general communities by developing programs for their recreational, educational, cultural, physical, and social needs."  It provides many services that might go unmet if it didn’t exist.  The assimilation and cultural activities offered for Russian Jews are but one example.

Jaffee emphasizes the role the JCC plays in the general community.  The thing that is important to understand about the JCC, he says, is that it is not only open to all regardless of race or faith background, but it is a stronger organization because of it.  It gives the general community an understanding and appreciation of the Jewish community, he says, and it helps combats anti-Semitism. “It’s the JCC, it the Jewish [in the Jewish] Community Center that stands out to the general community,” says Jaffee.  “So it’s very subtle intervention.  I don’t know if we could do this if we were at 116th and Keystone.”

But there is little possibility that the JCC could or would make such a move north, at least at this time. Even if there were a sufficiently large tract of land to build on in Hamilton County, its price would be prohibitively expensive, no matter how many fundraising campaigns launched.  The last window of opportunity for the JCC to change location was in the early 1990s, according to one source.  It is not clear if this was ever considered to be a practical option, however, especially considering the prohibitive price tag of relocation. 

Since the existing 35 acre JCC complex is all built out, with little open space left, Jaffee is considering the options for day camp services in Westfield, Zionsville, or possibly some other location.  The JCC is also considering the possibility of renting space for an infant-toddler program offsite in points north of the Hoover Road location.

 

Should We Stay or Should We Go?

The JCC is not the first Jewish organization to consider off-site activities in Hamilton County.  The Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation (IHC) already holds regular off-site services in the Carmel Civic Building.  Congregation Beth-El Zedeck also offers services in Carmel. Significantly, both of these congregations have made the decision to renovate their current facilities rather than to move north.  In the case of Beth-El Zedeck this process is ongoing while the IHC, having not yet begun to renovate its facility, is preparing to do so.

The IHC, during the past year, went through a debate about whether it would be better to change locations or to revamp their existing facility, which is approaching its 50th birthday.  

“We all knew that we had to something with the existing facility in terms of capital improvement.  We also knew that a lot of our members live in Carmel,” says Senior Rabbi Jonathan Adland.  However, many of the older members, who are mostly Indianapolis residents, didn’t want to move.  

“The demographics of this community is not growing,” says Adland.  “I’m sure that if we had some demographer he’d probably say we’re probably maybe peaking and we’ve started to shrink a little bit.  I assume that other communities in the “rust belt area” have lost Jewish population.  We seem to have, at this point, stayed about where we are, but we’ve stayed where we are for 30 years.  That’s not a good thing. Because that usually indicates that you’re an aging community.” 

If they were going to move, then where?  Since the congregation is about evenly split between Marion and Hamilton County residents, the fact that the IHC owns a 33-acre swath of land (including a cemetery plot) at 161st and Meridian couldn’t be ignored. Building at that site, however, would be leapfrogging well ahead of the population trend, since relatively few of their congregants live north of 116th Street. So this proposition wasn't taken very seriously.

This discussion started in earnest about three years ago, when some property was offered for sale north of the IHC's 6501 N. Meridian St. address.  But, upon reflection, moving to a proposed 96th Street
location really didn’t make a whole lot of sense either, according to Adland.  “Our congregants not only live directly north but they live northeast, they live northwest.  If you go a little bit one way you’re going to tick off some congregants, if you go the other way you’re going to tick off other congregants,” he says.

Since the current facility is a straight shot down N. Meridian Street, it is arguably well within a 15-25 minute drive-time from many congregants who live between 96th and 116th St, just inside the bounds of Hamilton County.  Says Adland, “So the discussion really began to …[instead about being focused on where to move] focused on whether should or shouldn’t move.  It was overwhelming… to stay right where we were.”

This is a fateful choice for the IHC.  Renovation of the existing facility will require such an investment of capital, running into the millions of dollars, that the infrastructure must be fixed into place for decades to come to justify a return on the investment.

A Move Not So Far North

While IHC was debating whether or not to move, Etz Chaim Sephardic Congregation moved.  But they moved north only several blocks—out of their aging synagogue to a brand new facility adjacent to the JCC.  Many of its Orthodox Jewish members, who observe Jewish law more strictly than their Reform and Conservative Jewish counterparts, live within walking distance of the synagogue out of necessity.  This is because they are prohibited from driving on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) and must walk to synagogue on this day.

Most Orthodox children go to school at Hasten Hebrew Academy across the street from the JCC.  Orthodox families either attend Etz Chaim or the adjacent B’Nai Torah Congregation.  While the Orthodox Community is not moving north to Hamilton County anytime soon, they are something of an anomaly.  That is, they constitute only about 10% of the Jewish population in Central Indiana.   Nevertheless, the nearby presence of the Orthodox community pretty much guarantees that there will be a Jewish institutional presence on Hoover Road for the foreseeable future.

Other core Jewish institutions have limited ability (or desire) to go north with their infrastructures but for different reasons, as we have seen.  This has, however, not always been the case.  

When Shapiro’s was the Center of the Jewish Community

As Joe Ofengender tells it, this northward population shift is not a new story.  Ofengender, a sales officer for a promotional products company, lives with his wife and  children in North Willow in Northwest Indianapolis.  This Washington Township development still has a substantial Jewish population.  However, there is some evidence of Jewish attrition.  Ofengender himself knows of roughly a dozen families from North Willow that have relocated to Carmel.  

“What a lot of us in this generation have got to realize is that this is the 4th geographic shift,” says Ofengender.  “My mother, who was born in the 20s, lived in a house 2 miles south of where the downtown Shapiro’s [a popular Jewish deli] is.  That was the center of the Jewish community.  Mainly because the train station was there.  My grandparents arrived here by train.  My wife’s grandparents came by train.  The area that was accessible to them was the area within a couple of miles of the train station.  The synagogues were down on the south side of town.  Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation was the first one to move north in 1912-13 when they built their building at 11th and Delaware.  That was the far north side of town.   So from south of Monument Circle to the area of Shortridge High School [that was] midtown.  A lot of people when they could afford to move moved to midtown.  And the next shift was where IHC and B’Nai Torah… etc… are now Hoover Road, Meridian Street. Spring Mill.  [That was in the] 60s, 70s.” 

The history of the JCC mirrors the northward push of the Indianapolis Jewish community in the first half of the century. The community’s first building dedicated to leisure time activities was on 801 S. Meridian Street.
The Jewish Community Center Association was established in 1926.  It was tasked with managing a community center based in a building acquired at 2314 N. Meridian.  After the northward expansion of the community accelerated after WWII, the JCC acquired the land on Hoover Roadon which the current facility now sits.  Its doors opened in 1958.

While Joe Ofengender and his family are members of the JCC, time management concerns keep them from using the facility on a regular basis. “We don’t use it as often as we should,” he says. “We need to schedule it.  Our lives don’t always let that schedule happen.” 

The First Synagogue in Carmel—Ever

More significant to the Offengender’s Jewish communal life is their synagogue affiliation. The Offengenders are members of Central Indiana’s newest synagogue, Shaarey Tefilla, now located at 3085 West 116^th Street in Carmel. This congregation was started in 1992 by a group of observant Jews outside the Orthodox community who were not happy with either IHC or Beth-El Zedeck. They wanted to establish a synagogue with “Conservative” modes of observance such as those found in congregations in cities with larger Jewish populations.  They originally established their synagogue on 5879 Central Avenue, in Indianapolis, in the former home of the United Orthodox Congregation.  But it was a small, cramped facility. 

“Our old facility was just not functional for a synagogue, a young synagogue,” says Rabbi Arnold Bienstock of Shaarey Tefilla.  “We knew that we would have to move.  Our old building had no classroom.  Our old building didn’t have a functional kitchen for a kosher synagogue.”

There was absolutely no hesitancy about moving to a new location: the synagogue founders had always intended to move elsewhere, when circumstances permitted.  Since a plurality of the membership already lived north of 96th Street, Carmel was the natural choice in which to build a new synagogue.  

In December 2007, on Hanukah, the brand new Shaarey Tefilla was dedicated at 3085 West 116th Street, becoming the first synagogue ever in Hamilton County.  It’s currently a small congregation of 170 families, about evenly split between Hamilton County and Washington Township residents.  Rabbi Bienstock sees good potential for growth in his synagogue.  He also sees the Jewish community continuing to make inroads well north of 96th Street.

The primary reason for this movement north, according to Bienstock, is the deteriorating quality of schools in Indianapolis. “Basically the Washington Township schools [in North Central Marion County] have changed tremendously,” he says.  “The elementary schools of Washington Township are really very, very similar to IPS [Indianapolis Public Schools] at this point in time. They have an inner city population they meet the needs of inner city children.  So basically middle class individuals are going to opt for suburban schools.  And Jews are going to opt for suburban schools. So that’s basically the issue.  So here we are in Carmel.”

Rabbi Adland, on the other hand, does not make nearly so direct a statement. “A number of our congregants have their kids in private schools and that’s an option that they choose regardless of whether they live in Hamilton or in Marion County,” he says.  But he also says that he knows of no IHC member families, within the IPS districts, who do not send their kids to private school.

Two Jewish Centers? 

Pierre Atlas, Director of the Franciscan Center of Global Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marian College, is a Carmel resident and member of Shaarey Tefilla.  His family joined because of its “homey” atmosphere that, he says, is informal and family friendly.  The Atlases are also members of the JCC and their kids go to Hasten Hebrew Academy.

For Atlas, the 20 minute or so drive to the JCC from his home in Carmel is no big deal. This may be because he grew up in Los Angeles where hour + commute times are not unusual. Quite a few of the members, like Atlas, have recently moved to Carmel from other cities where long commute times are par for the course.  He sees Carmel as a separate enclave but also as an easily accessible extension of Indianapolis.  He nevertheless sees where the population trend is heading.

“What you might have in 20 years,” he says, “is two centers [of the Jewish community], one center at Hoover Road and one center in Carmel. I don’t see a problem with two centers.”      

Marsha Goldstone, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, disagrees with this assessment.  “I would tell you my own response is that would be too bad.  If we have two centers then that means the kids form Carmel won’t meet kids from Indianapolis.  I think that would not be great for the spirit of the community if we have two cores.”

 

The emergence of such a Carmel “core” is not something that many (or any) movers and shakers in the Indianapolis Jewish Community have discussed at this point.  However, the activities being considered by the JCC, as well as the religious services currently offered in Carmel by IHC and Beth-El, may provide some hints of things to come.

Marsha Goldstone speculates that Shaarey Tefilla may be a sort of bellwether in its ability to attract unaffiliated Jews. “I would say that would be a factor that all other agencies will consider [in terms of consideration of providing services north of 96th Street].”  Joe Offendender, for one, suspects that there are a number of Jews in Hamilton County “trying hard not to be found.”  Whether or not Shaarey Tefilla can attract these unaffiliated Jews is an open question, however. 

From Shapiro’s Indy to Shapiro’s in Carmel

The JCC may soon follow Shaarey Tefilla’s lead if it opens satellite facilities north of 96th St.  But another important Jewish institution  has already been established in Carmel for some time. In 2003, the popular delicatessen Shapiro’s relocated from northwest Indy to the Carmel city center.   Is it possible, based on these developments, to say that another Jewish “core” has already begun to emerge?

To explain the Jewish community’s demographic dilemma in Central Indiana Rabbi Bienstock recalls a German-Jewish expression.  “‘As Christian World does, Jewish world does even more so,’” he says. “So as basically the general community in Indianapolis suburbanizes the Jewish community will suburbanize even more because it’s a middle class, upper middle class community…. So basically I’d say if anyone who’s Jewish moves to Indianapolis now, where are they going to buy a house?  They’re going to buy it in Carmel.  That’s going to be the reality.  Or if they can’t afford Carmel they’ll go to Fishers.  Or Noblesville.”    

If what Rabbi Bienstock says is accurate, then the Jewish population center in 20 years could move well into Carmel.  Many Jewish families, then, would no longer be within a 15-30 minute drive of the Indianapolis-based institutions. High gas prices and time management concerns might trump feelings of Jewish commitment for families, say, living in Noblesville and considering the JCC as an option for their fitness needs or considering the IHC for their spiritual needs. The Indy-based Jewish institutions would, then, most likely have to find new ways to adjust.  They have never failed to do so in the past.

(Note on the story: I tried publishing this piece about 3 years ago and my life has been so hectic that I haven't had time to do anything since that unsuccessful publication attempt. Since that time there have been a couple of developments.  First off, Rabbi Adland is no longer at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation.  Secondly, the Aaron Ruben Nelson Mortuary--Indy's Jewish mortuary--has moved up from 86th and Ditch to Zionsville, following the Jewish population trend northward.)