Friday, April 29, 2011

OU alternative communities fair


Jewish Star

There is affordable housing and day school tuition breaks, but can South Bend, Indiana, really coax a young Jewish family to leave the comforts of New York? “I thought I’d be living in New York for the rest of my life,” said Moshe Gubin, 34, a former resident of Kew Gardens Hills. “I was visiting my in-laws in South Bend and my wife wanted to live near her parents,” Gubin said. Although the move meant a pay cut and a long commute to Chicago for work, Gubin is not looking back. He attended the Orthodox Union’s Emerging Jewish Communities Fair on March 27 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. The event was facilitating New York Jews to move across the Hudson River and beyond.

“I have a big lawn, a four bedroom home with a two-car garage for only $89,000,” Gubin said. While South Bend does not come close to New York in terms of amenities, the basic Orthodox services such a day school, mikvah, and eruv are a requirement for participation in the fair. “There has to be an infrastructure for the community to grow, and the other requirement is incentives, such as job opportunities and discounts in tuition and housing,” said Frank Buchweitz, OU special projects director. The third annual fair drew 37 communities from Maine to California.

Alongside Arizona and Kansas, five Long Island communities attended the fair, with real estate as the focus of their pitch. “These communities said to us that they are also OU members and are trying to grow with the same efforts,” Buchweitz said. The five Nassau communities were Long Beach, Merrick, Oceanside, Plainview, and Roslyn.

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