First Look at Jewish Center-to-Be in Tribeca

By Carl Glassman
POSTED MARCH 2, 2007

The Duane Street space was dank, dimly lit and raw. But those who wandered through the storefront’s two expansive floors one evening last month, bundled against the cold, were picturing classrooms alive with preschoolers, family-filled holiday celebrations, a café buzzing with chatter and, most of all, a place to call their own.

This was an open house, of sorts, for the Jewish Community Project Downtown (JCP), a growing organization of Downtown families founded five years ago that, until now, held its programs in a variety of Tribeca spaces.

Some of the visitors gathered around Darren Levine, a Reform rabbi and the JCP’s executive director, who described how the center would take shape. “You’re standing in the community space,” Levine explained to a small group on the lower floor. “In the back you’ll have a thousand square feet-plus for community gatherings for lectures, spiritual stuff, Shabbat morning.” “This place rocks, Darren,” said Linda Ingerman, a mother of three whose family has been active in the organization.

“It’s going to be a good home,” Levine replied.

The 10,000 square foot center, at 146 Duane St., is due to open at the end of July, one of several Jewish organizations in Lower Manhattan. In Tribeca alone there is Tribeca Hebrew, aimed at providing Jewish culture and education to Downtown families, the Synagogue for the Arts, which also provides children and adult programming, and the 92nd Street Y’s new center that is due to move to Hudson and Canal Streets in the fall.

Still, JCP leaders say their center will fill a need for Downtown’s burgeoning population of young Jewish families, most of whom are not religious but want to give their children a culturally Jewish background and provide a sense of community for themselves. They say that JCP complements the other groups, which have co-sponsored holiday events.

“I would call it a partnership,” Levine said. Victoria Feder, JCP’s co-founder and its driving force, said interest in the group has “skyrocketed” in the last two years “because of the need for something Jewish in people’s lives that’s nonthreatening, that does not have an agenda associated with it, and that really gives you a chance to explore and see what’s good for you.” Last month, JCP raised nearly $140,000 from among more than 250 people who attended a benefit at Claremont Prep on Broad Street. Feder, a Tribeca mother of four and former president of the Synagogue for the Arts on White Street, said she has long believed that Jewish families in Lower Manhattan need a center to call their own.

In 2002, she began holding “parlor meetings” in friends’ homes to learn what parents wanted. Out of that grew JCP, with “tot shabbats” in family homes, holiday celebrations, a preschool, adult education, parenting classes, an upcoming day camp, and now a place to house it all under one roof.

“I’m so excited,” Linda Ingerman said as she looked around the bare space last month. “The idea of having a place where we can go and not have to scrounge around for a location that’s suitable for an event. It’s wonderful.”

[Home][Back][Search] [Advertise][Contact]
The Tribeca Trib · 401 Broadway, 5th Floor · New York, NY · 10013 · 212.219.9709