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Orthodox Community growing in Manhattan's West Side

In a sign of the growing reach of the Orthodox community in New York
City over the last decade, the Jewish character of the Upper West
Side — often perceived as the heart of progressive Judaism — is being
recast by an Orthodox boom.

Since 1990, according to figures not yet released from the Jewish
Community Study of New York 2002, the number of Orthodox households
on the Upper West Side shot up by 66 percent. In New York City
overall, the Orthodox population rose from 13 percent in 1990 to 19
percent in 2001, according to the UJA-Federation-sponsored study.

The overall Jewish population on the Upper West Side dropped by 5,000
in the last decade, to 71,800, but the percentage of Orthodox
increased significantly, from 8 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in
2001. There are now 5,194 Orthodox households on the Upper West Side
among the 37,100 Jewish households.

And while it is not yet clear how many of those households are "black
hat" and how many are Modern Orthodox, anecdotal evidence suggests
that the black hat numbers are growing, though not in the traditional
sense of the term.

The kind of so-called Modern Orthodoxy that once was prevalent on the
Upper West Side is gone, by and large, replaced instead with a more
rigid stream, according to Samuel Heilman, a Queens College
sociologist and Jewish studies professor who has written extensively
on the fervently Orthodox community.

"There has been a move to the right in Orthodoxy, there's no question
about it," Heilman said. "The West Side may be one of the last
strongholds of the young Modern Orthodox person. What we're seeing
here is that even in this stronghold [of Modern Orthodoxy], you
already have evidence of some haredization.

"The difference, and it is a critical one, is that while it may be
cool to be haredi in Borough Park, it's still not cool to be haredi
on the Upper West Side."

The distinction between Modern Orthodox and black hat, at least on
the Upper West Side, may no longer even be valid as lines blur in a
post-denominational age, observers say. The Orthodox population of
the Upper West Side, they agree, is largely fervently observant, yet
fundamentally different from more traditional, insular Orthodox
communities such as Brooklyn's Borough Park or Williamsburg in its
willingness to embrace cultural diversity, pluralism and openness.

"The main difference between the Orthodox Jews on the Upper West Side
and the Borough Park crowd is that the Upper West Siders would be
more reluctant to call themselves black-hatters," Heilman said.

"What the Orthodox on the Upper West Side want is to be both in and
of America, and in that sense they're different from the people who
tend to live in Borough Park ... and want an insular enclave," he
said.

Manhattan, Heilman adds, is precisely the place where an Orthodox Jew
can have a foot in both the Orthodox and the secular world.

Straddling Two Worlds

Y. David Scharf, 36, clearly straddles two worlds. His colleagues, he
said, joke that whoever saw him in the office, wearing his power
suit, would never know he was Jewish, and whoever saw him on his way
to shul, wearing his black hat, would never imagine he was one of the
city's more prominent attorneys.

Recently named by Crain's, a leading business publication, as one of
the 40 most influential young New Yorkers, he is an attorney to such
high-profile clients as Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley. Scharf is
also, he said, a strictly observant Orthodox Jew. In 1990, when he
and his wife were married, the two, then living in Queens, debated
which neighborhood to choose as their future home.

Scharf's wife suggested Flatbush; a native of the Upper West Side,
she had grown up in the neighborhood when its Orthodox institutions
were few and less than dominant. She said she wanted her children to
grow up in an Orthodox environment.

Eventually, however, the prospect of a short commute and the slump in
real estate prices in Manhattan triumphed, and the couple settled on
the Upper West Side.

"I would disagree that being Orthodox means you're self-contained,"
Scharf said. "I would say that I'm a professional, I'm out in the
world, I represent high-profile clients, I'm in court, I attend
functions — both Jewish and non-Jewish ones — and I run in various
circles. Living on the West Side mirrors my professional life; it is
a confluence of everything."

As an example, he offered a hypothetical weekend.

"You could attend kiddush in one shtiebel, then a kiddush in another,
then run off to The Jewish Center synagogue to be with more Modern
Orthodox, and then to the JCC for a cultural event that may or may
not have Judaism interspersed into it," Scharf said. "Then it's off
to Lincoln Center for a charity event, a symphony or an opera. You
can do all that within 36 hours."

This, he said, is particularly appealing in regard to his four
children.

"I think there's an opportunity on the Upper West Side to expose your
children to all walks of life," he said. "They experience everything,
from different streams of Orthodoxy, such as chasidim, black-hatters
and Modern Orthodox, to non-Orthodox Jews and secular people. I
personally think that being in an atmosphere such as this breeds more
understanding, breeds a higher level of tolerance."

The emphasis Scharf places on children is a prominent theme crucial
to the understanding of the shift in demographics. The influx of
Orthodox Jews to the Upper West Side, said Rabbi Alan Schwartz of the
Ohab Zedek synagogue, one of the neighborhood's most prominent and
rapidly growing Orthodox congregations, began a decade or so ago. At
that time, the neighborhood mainly attracted singles who wanted to
avoid long commutes to their offices while still enjoying a modicum
of Jewish institutions. Those singles, however, soon wed and started
families.

As a result, Rabbi Schwartz said, the Orthodox contingence grew
exponentially.

"In the 16 years I've been here," he said, "the congregation has
grown from approximately 140 families to over 800 families."

The high rent is often prohibitive to growing families, Rabbi
Schwartz added, and the birth of the third or fourth child forces
many to move to the suburbs, but many still choose to stay in the
neighborhood.

One such resident is Richard, who declined to provide his last name.
He is a 41-year-old banker, and he moved to West 88th Street with his
wife nine years ago from Kew Gardens Hills, an Orthodox neighborhood
in Queens. Back then they had two children; now they have four.

While his apartment is getting crowded, Richard said, he does not
contemplate leaving.

"I have a lot of friends who moved to Riverdale or somewhere like
that," he said, "but I don't think I want to do that. I want to stay
here. Here you have a shul and a movie theater on the same block,
both within walking distance, one for Shabbat and one for Sunday."

Michael Landau, a real estate developer and the chairman of the
Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations of the West Side, an
umbrella group representing 27 organizations, said the plethora of
Jewish institutions — from educational ones such as Yeshiva Ketana on
89th Street and Riverside Drive or Manhattan Day School on West 75th
Street, to synagogues such as Congregation Ohab Zedek on 95th Street
or The Jewish Center on 86th Street — are a major draw.

Landau, born in France and raised in England, moved to New York 17
years ago and chose to settle on the Upper West Side "because it is a
great community offering everything I need as someone who is, by your
definition, a black hat," he said.

"When I moved into the neighborhood, Jewish Orthodox institutions
existed, but they were not as strong as they are now. Still, the
facilities were there in order for strictly Orthodox Jews to be able
to live and thrive. It's a much more exciting place to live in; it's
fast-paced, you're in the middle of New York City, but you still have
the advantage of living a fully Orthodox life," Landau said.

The Upper West Side, he said, "is reflecting a general movement in
the Orthodox world, of people coming back to their roots and looking
for better ways to express their Orthodox religious feelings in as
comfortable a way as possible."

"All the shtiebels on the Upper West Side have grown," Landau
said. "In the Boyaner shtiebel, on 82nd Street and West End Avenue,
15 years ago we barely had 15 people on a Shabbat. Today, every
Shabbat you see 70 or 80 tallises and a load of kids running around."

Landau said the Upper West Side "caters to Orthodox people in a way
that people could personalize their own practice. It's a very live-
and-let-live attitude."

Torah Study At Talia's

Orthodox institutions in the neighborhood, however, are not
necessarily limited to places of learning or worship. The
neighborhood also offers a slew of services, such as cafes,
restaurants and bakeries, catering to the booming Orthodox
population.

One such place is Talia's Steakhouse, a glatt kosher restaurant on
Amsterdam Avenue between 92nd and 93rd streets. With the growing
Orthodox population in mind, the restaurant opened approximately a
year ago.

Empty tables are hard to come by, according to Talia's waiter Rami
Rabuchin, 22, an Israeli native.

"We get all sorts of clients," he said, "but mainly Orthodox, what we
would call haredis. Every Wednesday there are Torah lessons given,
and occasionally we hold a fund-raiser for tzedaka."

Yet for all the pluralistic undertones, the Upper West Side's
Orthodox community remains strongly committed to its core values. And
while some of the neighborhood's residents avoid self-definition,
others gladly take to it.

An Orthodox man in his late 20s, who identified himself only as
Jonathan and who works in the computer field, moved from Flatbush
three years ago. Pointing to his traditional headgear, he said, "same
black hat, only around here, better options."

Even Scharf, with his porous identity, agreed that the Orthodox Jews
living on the Upper West Side, while more open to their surroundings,
are still very much part of the Orthodox community at large.

"You're just as true and righteous if you say that you believe that
your way of observance and worship and servitude requires you to be
more introspective and more observant, to remain insular, to focus
inwards and not outwards," he said.

"There's no right or wrong. …When you live in Borough Park, you're
within your group, you continue to focus on your group in a very
positive manner. When you are in a place like the Upper West Side,
you are more reflective. That's a benefit, or a byproduct, of where
we live."

While the Orthodox growth is clearly reshaping the West Side, a brief
glance at the history of the neighborhood suggests that while
surprising to some, the demographic shift is very much in line with
the neighborhood's tradition.

Often perceived as a mostly Jewish neighborhood, the Upper West Side,
according to the New York Historical Society's "Encyclopedia of New
York City," was in fact populated in the 1940s and '50s by Southern
blacks, Russians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians and Ukrainians,
and in the '50s and '60s by Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans.

The shifting populace undoubtedly has contributed to an atmosphere of
diversity, which the Orthodox Jews who moved to the neighborhood over
the previous decade warmly embrace.

And while the overall Jewish population on the Upper West Side is
dropping, the Orthodox population is thriving. Jonathan, the young
Orthodox man, is not concerned. Ambling into a shtiebel on West End
Avenue on a recent afternoon, he simply pointed at his fellow
congregants.

"Look," he said, "look at who comes here to daven." Through the door
walk a hodgepodge of Jews, from men who, like Jonathan, wear a black
hat, to men wearing sophisticated suits and small, unobtrusive kipot.

"It doesn't matter to me what you are, we still daven together,"
Jonathan said. "We're just Jews living on the Upper West Side, same
as we always have."