At Rosh Hashanah, a Prayer for Keeping a Jewish Community Intact

On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we pray that we will be healthy and well. We pray for financial success, family happiness and personal contentment. We also pray for community. We pray for communal safety, continued growth and overall world peace.

When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it was again considering a mass transit system down the middle of Chandler Boulevard, I felt that my prayers were left unanswered. Let me describe the MTA’s plan in simple terms: buses traveling every one to two minutes at speeds as high as 55 mph dividing an otherwise close-knit, residential pedestrian community that is religiously integrated yet largely Jewish Orthodox. That is what the MTA proposes to do.

Sure, they’ll mitigate the impact by building fences, sound barriers and redirecting local traffic; however, in the end the community will still be split right down the middle with our own Berlin Wall.

As our concerns for the MTA’s proposal began to mount, we felt that we were all alone. Many political figures in our community have a huge stake in this project and have been biding their time until the issue could be studied. But what issue? What study? We have been through this same process two times before in the past 20 years! The politics may have changed but the facts haven’t.

In fact, in the 20 years that I have been a rabbi at Shaarey Zedek Congregation--the largest and oldest Orthodox synagogue in the San Fernando Valley--the community has grown even bigger. We can now boast along the Chandler corridor six synagogues, a religious high school, nursery, a number of retirement facilities and more than a thousand Orthodox Jewish families. We share a lifestyle of family values and morals. On any given Saturday, there are hundreds of young children and families crossing Chandler going to temple, visiting friends or simply enjoying the uniqueness of a small-town atmosphere in the middle of America’s second-largest metropolis.

Putting a high-speed bus lane down the middle of Chandler is going to devastate my community. There are other options for creating an east-west transit corridor. You do not have to do it by damaging one of the strongest and fastest growing Jewish communities in the country.

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Ironically enough, there is one politician who has had the courage and determination to come to our defense. That is state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), who happens to be Catholic. He has visited the schools and synagogues, met with families and community leaders and sent his aides to our meetings. He is 100% opposed to putting this high-speed bus lane down the Chandler corridor. Mr. Alarcon, on behalf of a grateful community, thank you. May you and your family have a New Year filled with health, happiness and success.

The New Year is a time for reflection, soul-searching, resolutions and change. My community fully supports the need for mass transit in the Valley; however, the fact that the MTA has spent millions on a right of way is not reason enough to devastate our community.

North Hollywood-Valley Village is one of the most attractive locations for young families looking to invest in their future, but the MTA’s proposed bus lane spells certain disaster: New families will look to settle elsewhere. Home values along and near Chandler will fall. Accidents will happen. It’s only a matter of who and when.

One of the most moving prayers on Rosh Hashanah describes God sitting on the throne of justice deciding for the coming year, “Who will live and who will die.” All of us hope to weigh in on the side of life and not death. We do not need the MTA messing with the balance of our chances, especially when it could be one of the children. It’s about time all elected officials got off the fence and joined Alarcon in opposing the MTA.