November 9, 2021

Dallas is the fastest-growing Jewish community in North America. According to the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, approximately 1,800 Jews have moved into the community every year for the past 20 years. First of all, that’s a nice Jewish number, and second, that averages out to five new community members every day. But, why? 

Why Dallas?  

In particular, why are so many Southern Californians pulling up stakes and moving there? 

Not that there’s anything wrong with moving to Dallas. My family did the very same thing 17 years ago when we were looking to upgrade from renting at the Broadcast Center Apartments to home ownership within the Fairfax/LaBrea eruv. We ended up buying within the North Dallas eruv instead. 

At the time, we were a dual-income couple in our early 30s with two kids under the age of two. We had great credit and a healthy budget with which to go house shopping. Or so we thought. On Gardner Street, midway down the block from Beverly Boulevard, we fell in like with a three-bedroom/two-bathroom cottage that offered an antique (read: badly, badly outdated) kitchen and a postage stamp-sized yard. The asking price, in 2004, was $1.3 million. Our realtor advised us to overbid. Hashem Yerachaym. We liked it, we didn’t love it!

My now former husband was born and bred in New York. I had grown up in the only Orthodox Jewish family in Lubbock, Texas. We both ended up in   LA for work and, at 34, we were both working as independent contractors. We loved Los Angeles, but we didn’t have to stay there. We could work from anywhere. So we made a list of everything we wanted in a community. Then we made a list of cities that might offer what we were looking for: a  large enough Jewish community to have infrastructure such as an Orthodox shul, a day school, a mikvah, kosher meat and cheese in the grocery store, and a kosher pizza shop—but a community small enough that we could be of service and make a difference.

I had always subscribed to the Mac Davis philosophy that “Happiness is Lubbock, Texas in my review mirror,” and I never planned to move back. But, to my surprise, upon completing our values clarification exercise, Dallas and Houston scored higher on our list than Seattle, Denver and Atlanta.

Remember that tiny $1.3 million house we liked in LA? In Dallas, we bought a four-bedroom/three-bathroom house on half an acre for the point three. Our house in the North Dallas eruv cost $390,000.

I could tell you what we found in Dallas 17 years ago that had us moving there within two months, but the city, surrounding suburbs and the Jewish community have grown so much since then that I’m going to give you current information. If you come to Dallas today, you’ll find:

• Five neighborhoods within their own eruvim and many more Jewish neighborhoods without an eruv.
• Kosher food is widely available in mainstream stores, including Costco. Two grocery stores even have kosher bakeries, sushi, and full delis on premises.
• A Jewish Community Center so nice it’s known among JCCs of the world as “The Dallas Palace.”
• More Jewish preschools than I found in LA and the valley combined.
• Two Jewish day schools.
• Two Jewish high schools.
• A boys yeshiva that is a satellite of Chafetz Chaim.
• Public high schools that rank in the top 10 nationally, according to USA Today.
• Truly world-class theatre, symphony, ballet, and museums. All the Broadway tours stop in North Texas and besides the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Crow Museum of Asian Art, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, there’s the Texas Cowboys Hall of Fame in the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District.
• The Texas State Fair. Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival. 
• NO STATE TAX.
• No. State. Tax. 
• Public parks with lazy rivers, splash parks, dog parks, ball fields, and beautiful playground equipment, plus day camps and outdoor Shakespeare performances in the summer.

Why do so many Southern Californians relocate to North Texas? The real question is why don’t more of y’all come here?

Why do so many Southern Californians relocate to North Texas? The real question is why don’t more of y’all come here? With everything Dallas has to offer and Governor Greg Abbott heavily recruiting on Twitter, what’s keeping you in the Southland? Follow @GregAbbott_Texas, you’ll be amazed by how ardently he is chasing Californians.

Mindy McLees, a native New Yorker and long-time resident of Sherman Oaks, heeded the call. She requested a transfer to her company’s Dallas office because she and her husband, music producer David McLees, wanted an adventure. They wanted, Mindy says, “to see what life looked like from somewhere else.”

Within weeks, the McLees were in love with their new community. Mindy, who is Property Tax Director at Fandl LLC, says:

“We bought our home for less than 1/3 of what we sold our LA house. Then we customized it to our needs, which did cost a bit. It is close to the same square footage, but it is better suited to what we need for our lives now. We had a pool in California and we have one here, but we have 1/3 of an acre in Dallas where we had 1/4 of an acre in LA”

David’s career hasn’t missed a beat in his move from Hollywood to Dallas. He is grooving.

“No homeless encampments under every highway overpass. No state income tax, a lower cost of living, and a District Attorney who actually prosecutes criminals. What’s not to love about North Texas?”—David McLees

“No homeless encampments under every highway overpass,” he says. “No state income tax, a lower cost of living, and a District Attorney who actually prosecutes criminals. What’s not to love about North Texas?”

“I did not realize how much of my time was spent thinking about my ‘good parking karma,’” Mindy says. “Now, I never have to circle the Trader Joe’s parking lot like a vulture, following people to their cars.”

Influencer and activist Lizzy Savetsky,   host of the IGTV series “Bashert” and an accessories designer whohas appeared in the pages of W, Cosmopolitan, and People StyleWatch magazines, grew up in Fort Worth and sang in the Stockyards Opry. After attending NYU and then living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan while her husband Ira completed his plastic surgery residency, the glamorous couple could easily have been expected to settle near Ira’s brother in Los Angeles. Instead, they chose to establish themselves in Dallas.

“Nothing beats the big hearts of our neighbors. People love you without expectations down here. They just want to visit and bake for you and compliment your kids. It’s so refreshing!” —Lizzy Savetsky

“I love big hair and big earrings,” Lizzy says. “But nothing beats the big hearts of our neighbors. People love you without expectations down here. They just want to visit and bake for you and compliment your kids. It’s so refreshing!”

But Beverly Hills is the plastic surgery capital of the world. Was Dallas a good move for a young doctor? Lizzy says it proved to be more than a savvy career choice. Establishing his practice in Dallas, Dr. Savetsky has the warm Jewish community and the fun, active lifestyle he wants for his family, without compromising professional opportunities.

“Ira’s patients are so genuinely appreciative of his time and talents. They are so kind,” Lizzy says. “They are always sending cards and gifts. Nothing compares to Texas kindness.”

But rest assured, Angelenos! Not everyone finds Dallas to be their Xanadu. Sharon Ginchansky, who relocated from Woodland Hills four years ago, says, “I miss the Jewish Journal!!!” 

She also misses Pico-Robertson. “I miss our synagogue, Temple Aliyah. I also find it hard to not be able to assume most people are Jewish or understand Judaism. In LA, I took it for granted that people knew I was Jewish and got what that meant.”

Suzanne Goldstone Rosenhouse grew up in Huntington Beach. She has a good life in Dallas; she’s active in her shul’s Sisterhood and is happy with her children’s Jewish day school, but says: “I will never recover from leaving California. It’s been 20+ years and I’m still processing.”

Fair enough.

Lorrie Berman Galanter came from West LA 30 years ago and appreciates connecting with other fellow Californians in Dallas. Like me and many others, she misses some of what Los Angeles has to offer, but has discovered new pleasures that make up for her loss: “LA has great restaurants, but nothing competes with Dallas’ Asian food scene. I miss the bike path on the beach, but you can’t beat all the great, uncrowded walking and biking trails here.”

She has a point about food. Dallas has four times more restaurants per person than NYC. LA can’t boast that. And while I miss Jeff’s Gourmet Sausage Factory on Pico, there are several really good kosher restaurants in Big D.

Judy Winegard, a Jewish women’s performer and teacher, lived in Pico/Robertson and North Hollywood. She never thought she would leave LA But when she felt the California political climate was so bad it overshadowed the beautiful coastal climate, she began a five-year campaign of begging her husband to get out of California.

Politics have destroyed normal life in a beautiful state. I know that it will not get back to anything close to what it was in our lifetime. I thought I would miss the ocean, the mountains, but it is so clean and nice here. People are so open and friendly. The trees are magnificent and I feel like I can breathe again. All I can say is, if you feel unsafe and want a beautiful change of life, GET OUT of LA Unless you voted for all this insanity. Then you stay right where you are and sit in what you created.”

My son Jonah seems like he’d be a poster child for Los Angeles. He was born at Cedars-Sinai the same day as William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman’s daughter, Georgia. (That poor kid whose SAT drama became famous in the College Admissions scandal.) Felicity and I were both doing laps around the labor and deliver floor all day to hasten the hour of our children’s birth, and then we recognized each other in line a few days later when we went to register our kids’ names for their birth certificates. As if birthday twinning with a celebrity baby did not confer enough California credibility on Jonah, The Grove opened the day after he was born. Jonah spent the first two-and-a-half years of his life in Los Angeles, but he has been heard to say he got to Texas as soon as he could.

It’s rare that people who become enchanted by Dallas move away, but my children and I made aliyah and live in Yerushalayim now. Despite the Mac Davis philosophy by which I formerly lived, the kids and I have come to understand that the longer we are away from Texas, the more Texan we become. Jonah is a well-acclimated Israeli, but he is recognizable around Jerusalem for his Texas flag face mask and his Texas pride T-shirts. One of his favorites elicits chuckles from Israelis who point to the graphic of Texas kicking California and ask “Mah zeh?” To which he responds: “It says, ‘Don’t California my Texas.’” 

Even in Israel, the line gets an appreciative laugh because everyone knows just what that means.

Y’all know I love Dallas. And, obviously, I love Jerusalem. But, to be perfectly honest, I’m with Sharon Ginchansky: I miss the Jewish Journal. And Jeff’s dogs.

Judy Tashbook Safern is a literary and film publicist. Bred in the panhandle of the South Plains of West Texas, Judy lived in New York, Washington D.C., and Israel before moving to Los Angeles. She raised her children in Dallas and now their family lives in Jerusalem. You can reach Judy by email: jsafern@gmail.com.

Hanging out at kiddush after shul a friend stopped me and said that he really enjoyed my latest opinion essay published in Newsweek. Well, what he actually said was more like: “I’m glad you stuck it to those woke idiots trying to ruin America.”

While I had hoped that the tone of my recent opinion piece wouldn’t be taken as aggressive, it was certainly critical of people who claim to be “Woke.” His statement started a conversation between us about the dangers of Woke ideology to Jewish American life, and I mentioned that I had connected with an organization, “The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values,” that is fighting that exact battle. 

My friend, a conservative who voted for Trump, twice, responded swiftly.  

“The Liberals?! They are the ones trying to ruin America and cancel everyone who disagrees with them.”

We often take for granted that everyone understands the meaning of the word “liberal” and the values that it represents. However, we use a confusing lexicon that misleads people regarding the meaning of the word “liberal.”

The word “liberal” (lowercase l) is not the same as “Liberal” (uppercase L). As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a Liberal (capitalized) is “a member or supporter of a liberal political party.”

With a two-party political system in the United States, the word “Liberal” has become synonymous with the word “Democrat” since the Democratic party claims to be the liberal party. It is crucial to capitalize “Democrat” in this context, not confused with “democrat.” By definition, a democrat is an adherent of democracy, making all Americans who believe in democracy “democrats” even if they consider themselves Republicans. 

When we encounter these terms, this nuance is confusing since we often do not pay close attention to which letter is capitalized and how it changes its meaning. Listening presents a more significant challenge as there is no difference between the pronunciation of capital and lowercase letters. 

Liberalism (lowercase l, but here capitalized because it begins a sentence) is a philosophy that belongs neither to the left nor the right. Just as you can be a democrat and be Left or Right, Conservative or Liberal, Republican or Democrat, you can also be a liberal and hold any of these views. 

The reciprocal to this statement is that you can also be illiberal and hold any of these views. 

So what makes one a liberal? A liberal is “an advocate or adherent of liberalism especially in individual rights.” And liberalism is “a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.”

The term “liberal” comes to us originally from the Latin “liber,” meaning free—as does the term “liberty,” which is similar to the word “freedom.” 

Liberal values are derived from the ideals of liberty. Unfortunately, many people today have confused liberty with freedom. According to John Stuart Mill, one of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, they are not the same. He sees freedom as the ability to do as one wants and what one has the power to do, while liberty is the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved.

Here we find an important note for our modern discourse. Freedom is about doing what you want based on your power. Liberty is about not being restrained so long as you don’t infringe on someone else’s rights. 

Wokeness is about freedom: the freedom of one set of ideals to dominate thought and action. When freedom is your core value, the next logical step is to amass the power to do what you want and cancel the competition.

Liberalism is about liberty. The liberty to hold your set of ideas, as long as you respect the rights of others. When liberty is your core value, you must allow others their opinion as well. 

Liberalism is about liberty. The liberty to hold your set of ideas, as long as you respect the rights of others. When liberty is your core value, you must allow others their opinion as well. 

Liberty is more difficult to incorporate internally as a value because it contains in itself a contradiction. However, this contradiction does not disprove it; instead, history has shown that this contradiction is the source of its strength. 

This contradiction shows itself when your beliefs directly contradict someone else’s beliefs. You have to allow space for what you know is incorrect. You are permitted to engage with the opposing views, intellectual and empirically, but you cannot forcibly remove them.

However, a funny thing often happens during this process. None of us has the complete truth. Through this engagement, you will often find that your beliefs evolve. Sometimes your opinions will be strengthened; other times, they will be weakened. Sometimes you will teach, other times you will learn. 

More importantly, everyone moves closer to the truth. Occasionally this means someone completely changes their beliefs. But more often, both parties modify their ideas, and the process begins again. Everyone grows through the process. 

While the primary value of liberalism is liberty, from Mill’s model of liberty, we can derive other core values. Two of those values are individualism and universalism. 

Individualism states that everyone is different. And that person should not be constrained by characteristics that they share with a group. For example, the color of your skin should not limit your opportunities in life.

Universalism states that we all have the same rights and responsibilities. According to the Declaration of Independence, these include “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We can see these ideals in Mill’s model of liberty. The absence of arbitrary restraints allows everyone to be their own person, unconstrained by the stereotypes of the groups to which they belong or characteristics they possess. And taking into account the rights of everyone who makes up a society means that we must all share fundamental rights and responsibilities. 

Finally, to allow a society to flourish in this manner, we need one more value: pluralism. Pluralism is the notion that people can have different ideas and still live together and consider each other brothers and sisters despite their core disagreements. 

These are the liberal values. Liberty encompasses them all. Liberty gives us both individualism and universalism, and finally, pluralism halts the conflicts that can tear apart a liberal society from the inside out. 

And like democracy, liberalism is a core American value. Best summed up in the well-known phrase “majority rules (democracy) minority rights (liberalism).”

David Ben Moshe is a writer, speaker and fitness coach. He writes about social justice, fitness and Israel

As we all lament the state of our synagogues, battered by COVID and vying to recapture our communal mojo, shul boards and their clergy are desperately trying to figure out how to win back IN PERSON the congregants that have left or stationed themselves on the Zoom sidelines. 

It’s no small challenge. Many congregants have lost their shul-going muscle memory. Their inclination and their muscles have atrophied. When that happens in an athletic context, it takes a lot of conviction and discipline, and maybe even the intervention of a physical therapist, to regain your former gait. You have to want it!

Megillahs have been written over the course of the pandemic that our well-being is fundamentally ill-served by a sustained Zoom existence to the exclusion of human interaction. Hugs and smiles and storytelling and spontaneous encounters are the fuel that revs our human engines. So let’s concede that point: being together is in our nature, and in our collective communal and individual interest. 

That said, is there one BIG IDEA that can encourage lots of Jews to flock back to shul and rediscover the elixir of community togetherness? If that idea exists, we know it has to be something with deep, affecting resonance and magnetic attraction that surrogates like Zoom are simply incapable of imparting.

In other words, it has to be food.

And not just food, but amazing food. Food so amazing that people will believe you when you invite them every Saturday morning to the Ultimate Kiddush.

As Jews, we know there is no greater stimulus than food. 

In these times of distress, synagogues have an opportunity to invest in a potentially game-changing, no-holds-barred Kiddush Culinary New Deal. As Jews, we know there is no greater stimulus than food. Is there anything more Jewish than scooping your friends and family on the latest greatest meal or dish you just savored? Imagine the viral power of congregants talking about their shul as excitedly as they talk about that great new restaurant. Why stay at home Saturday morning when you and your kids could be in shul enjoying the best fare in town — as well as the hugs of your friends and the kibbitzing and the singing you know in your heart you fondly recall and dearly miss. 

The return on investment on this Ultimate Kiddush is inestimable. What price, restored synagogues?  There is none. It’s priceless. The fate of our synagogues, and arguably our faithfulness and togetherness as a people, are in play. 

To succeed, this initiative must get funder support. It is strategic impact philanthropy.  Let’s start a nationwide Ultimate Kiddush Food Network, which would center around a fund that synagogues can tap to underwrite their own Kiddushes. Much as One Table, with wild success, underwrites young adults hosting Shabbat dinners so their peers can experience the most galvanizing community building practice we have in our tradition, so too Ultimate Kiddushes will be available to all synagogue comers, and hew to a serve-them-the-very-best standard. 

There is a galaxy of online food innovators, epitomized by Goldbelly, whose reason for being is furnishing Comfort through Food. It is a culinary aggregator, able to get you whatever food you crave from whomever makes it. All it requires is a credit card and a FedEx truck. 

Boldness is the order of this initiative. We can’t cheap out as a community. There’s way too much at stake. This investment stands to be as low-risk as a T-Bill. Ask yourself the last time you munched on warm homemade challah or tender brisket or amazing Tunisian cholent  or swooned over perfect kugel. Every sense rallied: your memory was transported to your childhood, your taste buds celebrated and your mood transformed.

What’s more, if synagogues up their game with inspirational davening, people will get the full nourishment — great food and camaraderie as the ultimate treat after the holiness of the synagogue experience. 

Is this idea a panacea? Of course not. But it’s a trusty arrow in our quiver that we can marshal — a simple yet enticing way to help bring joy and congregants back to our synagogues. The fact that it’s such an obvious idea takes nothing away from its appeal. Just the opposite. The timeless attraction of great food offers us an opportunity to address an urgent communal crisis.

If we do it right, it’ll get people off their couches and back in shul, or at least back in shul for the Ultimate Kiddush.

Howard Zack affiliates at Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, CA.