The Exodus of Etz Chayim

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This article was published 17/10/2022 (1459 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a move that’s been decades in the making and, in the eyes of many, is long overdue.

Congregation Etz Chayim, north Winnipeg’s largest synagogue, hit the open market on Tuesday.

The Jewish synagogue, which formed 20 years ago after a trio of congregations in the city’s North End merged, will relocate its services to the south end of the city to be closer to the majority of its membership.

The 70-year-old, 40,000-square-foot facility, located near the corner of Main Street and Matheson Avenue East, was listed in hopes of a deal being reached by next summer, when the group plans to move into its new home.

“No one was surprised,” said Avrom Charach, president of Congregation Etz Chayim.

“There had been talks, even in the 1990s, before the merger, that the synagogue that used to be in the building — it was called Rosh Pina at the time — had talked about selling and moving, because they thought the future would be closer to where the members were going to be in the future.”

Charach, who’s held office for two years and has been a board member for seven, estimates more than half of the group’s membership already lived in the south end when Rosh Pina, Bnay Abraham and Beth Israel merged to form Congregation Etz Chayim. Now he figures 80 per cent of members reside in the south end.

“Some of that 20 per cent that lives north aren’t unhappy with the move,” he said. “Some of them are, but we’ve been telling them openly, ‘We’re going to do this soon, we’re going to do this soon.’”

While the decision to sell and begin looking for a new home was made in June, Charach said a previous board originally tabled the idea in 1994, but for reasons unknown to him, the motion was not moved.

Every year since Charach has been on the board, he said, the idea has been discussed at some point. In fact, when Charach joined the board, there was a strategic plan put in place for the synagogue to move to the south end in a five- to 10-year time span.

“So we’re at the point where the building itself is 70 years old — it still needs some work to bring it up to the standard we’d like it to be at if we were going to stay — so we said this is the time. Sell the building instead of investing in it, buy a building or land close to where members currently are and use the money staying there.”

Mark Binder, a member of the congregation for 30 years who is also in his second tenure as a board member, said the current building has always been more than what the group needed.

“It was a very, very large and expensive facility that we really haven’t been utilizing for some time,” Binder said. “In fact, in the current incarnation of the congregation, we’ve never really utilized the capacity of the facility in a proper way.”

He explained that when the multi-level building was inherited, it was designed for a specific business model that hasn’t existed for decades. Those ideas included the synagogue incorporating a school and providing affordable housing options for Jewish tenants with hopes they would join the membership and attend services.

Binder said he has family members in the south end of the city who have discontinued their membership with the synagogue because of the lengthy commute to the North End. It’s become a recurring problem for an organization that already boasts an aging membership.

“I’ve understood the economics of this for quite some time,” said Binder, who is a chartered professional accountant. “The three most important rules of any retail business is your location, location and location. And we were in the wrong location.

“We’ve all known that this is something that needed to be done, so I’m glad that it is happening. It is less convenient for me, but I have to look at what is the best thing for the congregation, not just for me personally.”

Charach echoed Binder’s call for a smaller facility, explaining it’s a major factor behind the decision to move now.

He said Congregation Etz Chayim has already found a new home in the southeastern quadrant but was unable to disclose where, as the paperwork has yet to be finalized. The new building, he conceded, may require a bit of touch-up to get it to the membership’s liking, but he said it will be a relatively turn-key operation.

“We were looking for smaller,” Charach said. “It’s very expensive to operate a large building and it’s less expensive to operate a smaller building, right? So we were looking for the right size for what we believe we’re going to need for the coming decades.

“What we found is what we believe will be a good home for us for decades to come.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jfreysam

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