In Malden, synagogue seeks to reclaim its place

MALDEN -- In a region with some of the nation's highest real estate prices, it would seem that a synagogue's offer to help finance a house in this city just five miles north of Boston would draw a line of interested buyers.

But despite national advertising of Congregation Beth Israel's offer and pitches by its rabbi, there have been no takers, no families who have accepted the money in return for joining the dwindling congregation.

The less-than-enthusiastic response reflects deeply rooted assumptions about the value of local real estate, with once heavily industrial cities like Malden still considered the lesser cousins of more residential suburbs. It also highlights the challenge of rebuilding a community and reversing decades of migration.

Synagogue leaders say they are dedicated to reviving the once-thriving Jewish community of Malden and say they still believe that real estate is simply too expensive elsewhere for their offer to be passed up much longer.

''There is a strong need for an alternative to Brookline or Brighton," said Rabbi Yitzchak Zev Rabinowitz. ''A place that is affordable, where people can come and feel they are part of something."

Moreover, the rabbi points out, his congregation enjoys a unique position. The synagogue, one of four left in Malden, enjoys an endowment estimated at several million dollars that comes mostly from a congregant's donation of high-tech stock decades ago. With the money, synagogue leaders say they can offer assurance to newcomers that the community will continue to exist and that it will have ample financial resources to fund summer camp and trips to Israel for congregants.

Yet the problem is a horse-and-cart one: With so few Jewish families, Malden lacks neighborhood amenities that many Jews like to live near, such as kosher stores and religious day schools. Synagogue leaders say that as more Jews relocate, the stores and schools will open.

But some families say they don't want to be the pioneers, waiting for change and trekking in the meantime to The Butcherie and the Maimonides School about 10 miles away in Brookline, home to one of the region's largest Jewish communities.

''The rabbi's great, very warm, but the community is very small, and there is just not enough of an infrastructure," said Aliza Cohen, 32, who moved to Brookline with her husband after living in Malden for a year in a rental apartment subsidized by the synagogue. ''It was a hard choice, because we felt badly leaving the community. But there wasn't a lot to hold us there."

Scholars point out that there are old Jewish communities around the country that have engineered revivals. In Newark, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia, Jewish communities have rebounded, in tandem with citywide revival efforts by government officials.

Malden, too, is attempting a larger redevelopment. City officials are working with developers to add high-end housing to its central area near the MBTA rail station. There are plans to reopen a main street leading to Malden's downtown, and five new schools have been built. Other changes in the city of 56,000 are still on the drawing board.

There was a time when Malden had one of the largest concentrations of Jews north of Boston. Some 15,000 Jews lived in Malden by the 1940s, making up a quarter of the city's population, according to Richard Klayman's history of Malden Jews, ''The First Jew." Streets in Suffolk Square, the center of Jewish life, were lined with kosher bakeries and butcher shops. Restaurants offered delicacies such as kugel. Six synagogues operated in the area.

In the 1950s, Malden's Jewish community underwent a shift. Jews began to leave the east side for the more upscale west side. But even more left the city altogether, mirroring the Jewish migrations away from other nearby cities and neighborhoods, such as Revere, Chelsea, Roxbury, and Dorchester. Many of Malden's departing Jews headed for Marblehead and Swampscott.

Congregation Beth Israel built a new synagogue on the west side, a mammoth structure that featured an indoor swimming pool, sauna, and sanctuary that could hold hundreds. But as the numbers of Jews in Malden dwindled, the congregation shrank. Once claiming about 900 families, today just 125 attend.

Beth Israel's existence owes much to the largess of Morton Ruderman, a cofounder of Medical Information Technology Inc., whose donation of stock is the primary basis for the synagogue's endowment.

Ruderman followed the path of other Jews leaving Malden, moving first to Lynnfield and later to Gloucester. His children live in Brookline. But he still attends Beth Israel and hopes to see a new generation of congregants.

''I am not sure that I will see in my lifetime a kosher butcher back in Malden," Ruderman said in a telephone interview. ''But the rabbi is doing it step by step."

Beth Israel, an Orthodox synagogue that adheres strictly to Jewish law, is endeavoring to create a number of amenities favored by observant Jews. Last year, it erected an eruv, the ceremonial demarcation that permits Jews within its boundaries to carry items on the Sabbath. It also plans to build a mikvah, or ritual pool of water. It has a van that ferries children to Jewish day schools in Brookline.

But equally alluring, the synagogue hopes, are the financial incentives for new congregants. In addition to loans for a down payment on a house, the synagogue will fund trips to Israel, scholarship for Jewish day schools and visiting scholars, all touted in ads placed in several national Jewish publications starting earlier this year.

The median sale price for houses so far this year in Malden has been $346,000, compared with $559,000 in Boston, according to the Warren Group.

''We are going to put Malden back on the map," Rabbi Rabinowitz said.

The synagogue says that three Jewish families have moved to Malden since 1999, though none has used the synagogue's financial assistance to buy a house. One family has applied for the assistance, but has not found a home.

Greg Ireland, 34, and his wife, Shira, 30, relocated to Malden last year from Coolidge Corner in Brookline. They were wooed by the synagogue and eventually came to believe that they would be the first of many young Jewish families to make the move. The Irelands financed their house without help from the synagogue.

''The fact that it is a growing Jewish community with financial resources committed to growing a young congregation made us feel comfortable, like there was a kind of guarantee," said Greg Ireland, who works as a technology consultant.

On the other side of the equation is the Lamport family. The family patriarch, Clarence Zitaner, 94, has been a congregant for nearly 60 years. His daughter, Cheryl Lamport, has remained in Malden in large part so she could tend to her father and allow him to continue with the synagogue.

For her four children, it's meant a bifurcated existence, living in Malden and attending services at the synagogue there, but going to school and friends' homes in Brookline. Her two oldest children have sought lives beyond Malden.

''It's frustrating," Lamport said. ''We have a beautiful community, easy access to Boston, a lovely shul. But there are so few of us. And because of that, people don't come, and they don't see that we are a jewel and something to be developed."

Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.