Eight years after initial planning for a Center for Jewish Life at the University began, the project is still $1.8 million short of its fund-raising goal and no one is sure when construction will begin.
The project was begun in 1986, when Gilbert Scharf, Trinity '70, donated $500,000 to establish the center. In 1987, the Board of Trustees established the Jewish Center Support Fund, an independent corporation responsible for the planning, funding and management of the project.
Since then, the corporation has raised $3.4 million to cover project costs, $1.5 million of which Scharf added to his original contribution. The total cost of the design and construction of the center is $5.2 million, leaving the project $1.8 million short of breaking ground.
Although the University has favored the project since its inception, financial support has come solely from outside contributions. Despite some generous donations, the board of directors for the center has struggled to find new donors as the University has given fund-raising priority to in-house projects such as the Levine Science Research Center and the new recreational facility.
"The financial climate out there in the community has not been what we'd hoped for when we started this project," said Judith Ruderman, president of the center's support corporation and director of continuing education.
The center has also had to contend with the fact that "not everybody who might have given [money] approved of every twist and turn the project has taken," Ruderman said.
Throughout the past several years the center has experienced several challenges, such as a conflict that occurred between fund-raising efforts for the center and those for the Hillel organization. Ruderman said that there should be no real conflict there, though Scharf disagrees.
Ruderman said she hopes that supporters of Jewish programming at the University "will be able to give some money to float the current student programming which is under the auspices of Hillel, and will reach a little deeper. . .and come out with something larger for the Center for Jewish Life."
Scharf, however, said he thinks that fund raising for the Center for Jewish Life should have priority. "I think that if you are going to prioritize thingsÉ it's much more important that the Center for Jewish Life building get built, and that the Hillel fund-raising alternative should be delayed until the center completes its fund raising to break ground.
"Once the building begins, the fund raising for all Jewish organizations on the campus, including Hillel, is going to be made a lot easier," he said.
But Trinity sophomore Tammy Duker, publicity chair for Hillel and a board member of the support corporation, said continuous support for Hillel was essential. "[I]f you stop programming for Hillel now, and the Jewish community and Jewish awareness fully dissipates, by the time the center is built, there's going to be no one on this campus who is going to benefit from it," Duker said.
Michael Landy, chaplain of religious activities and the director of Hillel, said that tension between the two organizations had eased.
"We are being as supportive as we can be," he said. "We have made ourselves available to go out and speak on behalf of the current Jewish program and to talk about the need for the new building."
Another challenge that may have played a role in slowing the project's progress was a dispute over whether or not the center should include a mikvah, a ritual bath.
"There were a lot of people, many of them were Jewish, some even on the board, who, quite frankly, didn't understand what the mikvah was and thought it to be very foreign," Scharf said. "However, to observant Jews it's a very important part of their spirituality. Therefore, it should be included in the center."
Eric Meyers, professor of religion and a member of the board of the support corporation, said the mikvah would serve mainly converts and extremely orthodox Jews and would put more of a religious spin on the center rather than a cultural one.
"It would have a very limited, if any, usage at all," Meyers said.
Eventually the board voted to include the mikvah in the building's design. Had the mikvah not been included, however, the project may have lost the support of its primary contributor.
"From day one . . . I said that this had to be an all-inclusive center and, by definition, we would have to have a mikvah at the center and that was the basis for my donation and the University agreed to that," Scharf said.
The proposed site for the center is an area bordered by Campus Drive, Oregon Street, Alexander Avenue and Duke University Road. The land would be leased to the center by the University. Designed by the architectural firm of Gwathney, Siegal and Associates, the center will include a sanctuary, a kosher kitchen, a library and the mikvah.
In addition to the $3.4 million raised for construction of the center, the support corporation has received $1.5 million in pledges toward a $2 million endowment to support center programming. But most of that money will not be available until 2006.
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