‘Building forward’
$50 million renovation project begins at Jewish center Harvey damaged
More than three years after Hurricane Harvey flooded the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center with 10 feet of water, an ambitious renovation began Sunday.
Community members, donors and elected officials stood (masked and 6 feet apart) in the parking lot of the Meyerland facility, considered by many to be the heart of Houston’s Jewish community, to proclaim a brighter next chapter.
The $50 million project includes a new pool, fitness center, kitchen, multipurpose rooms and children’s play spaces. It will take about 20 months to complete.
“We wanted to enhance the JCC’s position as the neighborhood town square,” said Jeremy Samuels, president of the center. “We wanted to create spaces for people to gather and informally connect. That was central in all our designs.”
The site on South Braeswood, like much of Meyerland and Westbury, is deep within the 100year floodplain along Brays Bayou. The center’s leaders debated moving the facility somewhere else, since a third of members live outside those two neighborhoods.
Mayor Sylvester Turner praised the decision to stay put.
“You’re not just building back, you’re building forward, because we want to make a city that’s stronger, more resilient and more sustainable,” Turner said. “There are a lot of memories that are here.”
U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, whose district includes much of West Houston, echoed the mayor’s sentiment. She said community spaces are especially important during COVID-19, when residents spend so much time isolated from one another.
Rabbi Samantha Safran said the groundbreaking ceremony brought to mind the biblical story of Nahshon, the first Israelite to heed the command of Moses to enter the Red Sea during the exodus.
“Nahshon teaches us that no matter how much promise the future may hold, if we carry that future only in our minds, we as humans have a difficult time believing it,” Safran said. “Rather, like Nahshon taking that first step into the sea, sometimes it takes a physical act to symbolize that future and bring others into that reality.”
The JCC has been a center for Jewish life since it opened in 1936. Bobby Lapin recalled attending the current facility’s dedication in 1967 as a 6-yearold and shaking the hand of Mayor Louie Welch.
Houston Councilwoman Abbie Kamin, who represents District C, recalled being there and playing in the Maccabi Games, an Olympicsthemed competition for Jewish teens.
Leah Gross, a JCC board member, told the story of how in 1988 she signed up for the center’s matchmaker dating service.
“I completed my paperwork, submitted by profile and then met the man that very day who would be husband, partner and friend,” she said of her husband, Jon. “The J brought us together.”
The center plans to raise an additional $7.5 million to reach its $50 million goal.