It will probably look something like one of those marches for some worthy cause. Children will dart between the adults as they make their way down Western Avenue this morning, as five Torah scrolls are passed from one person to the next.
The Unity Celebration, in which Congregation Beth Sholom in Park Forest officially merges with Temple B’nai Yehuda in Homewood, will include singing, dancing and a picnic when this caravan travels the six miles from one temple to the other.
But there is more going on here than the beginning of a bigger congregation in Homewood. When the walk begins after the deconsecration and closing of Beth Sholom at the corner of Western and Dogwood Street, it will mark an ending for the people who have been worshiping there for more than 40 years. And it will also serve as yet another signal that the Park Forest born in the days after World War II no longer exists.
“This was a community made up of people on the way up,” said Henry X. Dietch, a retired circuit court judge and former mayor, who moved to Park Forest shortly before it was incorporated in 1949. “Our children went off to Yale, Harvard and Stanford . . . and they didn’t come back, I’m sorry to say.”
Dietch was talking about his own children and his own congregation. But he makes a larger point as well, both about Jewish people in Park Forest and the village as a whole. A brief look at what started as a “very young, vibrant community,” as Harold Brown, a past president of Beth Sholom, called it, helps explain why today’s Unity Celebration is occurring at all.
The end of the war gave Park Forest its start. As soldiers stepped off troop ships, they looked for places to begin their civilian lives, to buy their first homes and start families. Park Forest fit the bill.
“In the early days after the war, if you were Jewish or black or had kids, some places discriminated against you,” said Village Manager Janet Muchnik. “Park Forest was fairly unusual in that it established priorities that said if you were a returning GI and had children, you would be at the top of the waiting list.”
In fact, as the village appeared in its original planning papers, it was called GI Town. That name gave way to Park Forest, and from its incorporation in 1949 it thrived. In 1950, there were 8,138 residents. By 1960, that population was nearly 30,000.
Of those residents, nearly half were under 18 years old. “Kids,” Brown said, “were all over the place.”
The village was a haven for highly educated professionals.
“There were PhDs galore, professional people,” said Dietch, who also served as the village attorney for 17 years. So many scientists from Argonne National Laboratory (near Lemont) lived there, he said, that there were two buses a day running them to and from work.
Dietch estimates that Park Forest was home to as many as 3,000 Jewish residents, or about 10 percent of the population. Others say they wouldn’t be surprised if the number was even higher.
“I can remember in school spending Jewish holidays alone with a substitute teacher,” said Leslie Simms, 43, a longtime and non-Jewish resident of the village who now works there as a reference librarian.
Beth Sholom grew too. Dietch estimates that as many as 280 to 300 families were members by the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some 150 children enrolled in the congregation’s Hebrew and Sunday schools.
Park Forest’s growth meant it was ahead of the curve in amenities like shopping.
“We had a wonderful regional shopping center (first called the Park Forest Plaza shopping center, then the Centre of Park Forest),” Dietch said.
Park Forest grew even quicker because it did something that many other communities at the time just weren’t doing. “They went out and recruited black families,” Muchnik said.
Quickly, though, other communities were growing too. Other shopping centers sprouted, including River Oaks in Calumet City in 1966, siphoning people away.
“People who were here in the early years had an opportunity to move closer to where they worked,” Muchnik said. “Folks who worked at Argonne could live near Argonne.”
Further, they could live in bigger houses than the ones available in Park Forest.
“The community didn’t react real quickly (to build) bigger, more upscale single-family housing,” Muchnik said.
By 1980, the population that had topped 30,000 10 years earlier was down to 26,000. In 1990, the population was down another 1,500. The population that remained grew older. After accounting for nearly half of the residents in 1960, those under age 18 made up just over 27 percent of the population in 1990. During the same time, the population of people 65 and older climbed from 1.6 percent to 10.6 percent.
The Jewish population dwindled as well. Dietch estimates that today there are perhaps no more than 1,200 to 1,500 Jews living in the village.
Brown is typical of the kind of parent who watched his children go away to college and never return to Park Forest to live. His five children, all grown, live in “four different time zones,” he said. At the same time, Park Forest has not attracted others to fill the void.
“We don’t see Jewish families moving to Park Forest, by and large,” said Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus, explaining that many young Jews prefer to live in such places as Buffalo Grove. In fact, said Dietch, the south suburbs have had a difficult time attracting young Jews.
“The North Shore and the North Side have an attraction beyond belief,” said Dietch, whose own children now make their homes in California, Washington, D.C., and Skokie.
For Beth Sholom, it all added up to declining and aging membership. The once thriving Hebrew and Sunday schools steadily got smaller. As a result, even if young couples moved into the area they were more likely to join other congregations so their children could attend larger religious schools.
“A bigger school has a better social environment for kids,” Dreyfus said. “It will have a class for each grade.”
Two years ago, when the number of children enrolled in Sunday school dropped to 25, the congregation merged its school with B’nai Yehuda’s.
The move has worked, both for the children who now are surrounded by more kids their own age and for the entire congregation. Susan Bayer, the congregation’s president, said Beth Sholom actually gained some members who had wanted to join but didn’t because they wanted their children to attend a larger religious school. From a low of fewer than 100 families, the congregation now has 115 member families.
But that’s still small. And there has been a recognition that as the membership grows older, the congregation is never going to get much larger, and may shrink again. Members came to understand that the only way Beth Sholom could survive was to merge with another congregation.
The merger with B’nai Yehuda, which has about 230 families, made more sense when Dreyfus informed the congregation in September that she was leaving to replace B’nai Yehuda’s retiring rabbi. Dreyfus, who has been the congregation’s rabbi for 10 years, said her move had nothing to do with the merger. Regardless, it certainly eased at least some of the congregation’s concerns.
“There we will have a dynamic rabbi who is our rabbi,” Dietch said.
In January, both congregations voted in favor of the merger — B’nai Yehuda unanimously and Beth Sholom overwhelmingly.
“Those people who voted no say they are coming with us,” Bayer said. “Even though they didn’t like the idea (of merging), the idea of having a congregation was more important.”
As difficult as the move is, members of Beth Sholom say it has been made easier by B’nai Yehuda, which, Brown said, “has gone overboard in making us feel welcome.”
Understanding that members of a congregation form a strong and emotional attachment to the name of the place where they worship, for the next two years the synagogue will be called B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom. At that time, the members of the congregation will decide together on a name.
Both congregations have taken care that items moved from Beth Sholom, such as memorial boards listing deceased members, will occupy places of honor in their new home.
Three stained glass windows along one wall of Beth Sholom’s sanctuary will be moved to a spot at B’nai Yehuda where there is room for four stained glass windows. For the fourth spot a new window will be made.
“I think it will have a star (of David) and two hands joining to show the merger,” Dreyfus said.
There are some differences in the way the two congregations operate. Dreyfus said there was an expectation at B’nai Yehuda that men would wear yarmulkes and prayer shawls while in the pulpit, practices that were optional at Beth Sholom. Both congregations made concessions, and such practices will be encouraged but optional.
“Each came out and thought they had given something and gained something,” Dreyfus said.
Today, there is sadness among members of the Beth Sholom congregation. But there is a feeling that they did what they had to do to survive. And there is anticipation.
“For us it means a future,” Bayer said. “For B’nai Yehuda it is not quite as defined, but it gives them a freshness, a chance to start fresh.”
