The Community Today
That Peterborough’s Jewish community remains alive and well today is a testament to its resilience. In order to survive, the community has had to adapt to a series of serious challenges. Although the necessary adaptations have been made, they did not come easily or without pain, at least not for some longstanding community members.
Like most other small Jewish communities in Ontario, Peterborough had to face the question of whether it was willing to move away from the orthodoxy of its founding fathers. At this time, if the community wanted to have the minyan it needed for public prayer, it had to decide whether it wanted to count women. For many members the choice was agonizing. In Peterborough, these issues were hotly debated over a number of years before a decision in favour of adopting egalitarian practices was made in 2004.
That same year the Jewish community decided it could no longer afford to maintain its beautiful synagogue alone. A series of circumstances brought the Jewish community together with Peterborough’s Unitarian Fellowship. The Fellowship’s need to expand beyond its premises on Chamberlain Street and the synagogue’s need to share maintenance costs complemented one another. An agreement was signed on 14 June 2004. Conditions of the agreement included the Church’s commitment to maintaining a kosher kitchen.
A month after the agreement was signed, the floods came. The rain that fell in mid-July – over 200 millimetres within a period of only a few hours – devastated Peterborough and caused the city to declare a state of emergency. Houses and apartments were left awash, threatened by bacteria like E. coli and salmonella.
The shul’s lower level, which housed the kitchen, meeting hall and document storage space, was flooded. Water damage affected flooring, woodwork and drywall. Water-resistant carpeting that had been installed subsequent to the previous flood in 2002 became contaminated by raw sewage and had to be destroyed. However, this misfortune did have a silver lining. A total of $15,000 worth of donations came to the community. Twenty percent came from the Jews of Peterborough. The rest came in from Toronto, Montreal, Mississauga, Owen Sound and Troy, New York.
The community today remains in evolution. Financially, there is a new stream of income coming in thanks to the parking spaces the shul is able to offer its neighbour, the new Peterborough Clinic. Technologically, Beth Israel was delighted to launch its first website in 2006 It is also still extremely committed to inclusiveness, where Erica Cherney states, “all Jews can gather to celebrate their Jewishness.” Organizationally, the synagogue is continuing bravely and resolutely into whatever the future may hold, with the help of its brand-new Vision Statement, entitled "The Future We Want".
