A quarter of a century ago, the southeast Denver suburban neighborhoods, nestled between the Denver Tech Center and Cherry Creek State Park, were home to many Jewish families. There were probably Jews living on nearly every block within a one-to-two-mile radius of the intersection of East Belleview Avenue and South Yosemite Street, where Denver meets Greenwood Village.
There were Jewish residents, but it was not a Jewish community.
That started to change in 1995 when Rabbi Yaakov Meyer, the director of outreach for Yeshiva Toras Chaim — at the urging of some loyal students who had been attending his outreach classes in a Yeshiva-sponsored trailer on a vacant lot in southeast Denver — ventured further south and further east to open the “Southeast Center for Judaism.”
Rabbi Meyer envisioned a center that would offer educational and social opportunities for Jews — those involved in Jewish life and those interested in connecting with Judaism, perhaps for the first time in many years. The center would be Orthodox but welcoming and “user-friendly” to Jews of all backgrounds.
Rabbi Meyer’s vision materialized as the small core of singles, couples and families steadily grew into a Jewish community, and the area around Belleview and Yosemite has grown into a strong Jewish neighborhood.
This is the story of that neighborhood and its continued growth.
It is partly surrounded by the M.B. Glassman Southeast Eruv, so on Shabbat the sidewalks are bustling with people walking to and from what is now called Aish of the Rockies, based in its educational center and synagogue on Belleview, half a block from Dayton St.
The people also walk to and from each other’s homes for Shabbat dinner or lunch, another sign of the neighborhood feel.
The neighborhood is also home to the Denver Community Kollel Southeast Center, which also holds Shabbos and daily services, and offers educational opportunities.
The current growth spurt of the neighborhood has seen 17 new families move in over the past two years.
According to Aish of the Rockies Chief Operating Officer Zev Jacobs, these new neighbors are “a mixture of a number of different demographics,” including new Aish of the Rockies staff members Rabbi Menachem and Nechama Siderson, Dov and Shoshana Ort, and Rabbi Yonatan and Sara Nuszen.
“We have families who have moved from the West Side of Denver who have found that the welcoming environment, the openness, the aesthetics, the conveniences and the neighbors attracted them to relocate from one side of town to another.”
Others have moved to the area from out of Colorado. Chaya and Eli Berger, for example, spent the first two years of their marriage in Manhattan, and. last summer, returned to Denver where Chaya grew up. They now have two children, Yossi, 18 months, and Bayla, 4 months.
“We wanted to live in a smaller, homier community that has a strong religious foundation and in which people are generally open-minded and welcoming, as well as a community to which we could contribute and make a difference,” Eli Berger says.
The Bergers are renting an apartment a few blocks away from Aish of the Rockies, and they hope to be able to stay in the community when it comes time to purchase a house.
Rabbi Yonatan and Sara Nuszen moved from Jerusalem on July 1, 2019, so most of their time here has been during the COVID pandemic and therefore atypical. Rabbi Nuszen had been working at the Aish international headquarters in Jerusalem, and considered positions in Toronto, Miami and Baltimore, but when he and Sara came to Denver, “there was just something about the community that was so moving that we knew this is where we belong.”
The couple has two young children, another sign of the neighborhood feel.
The Nuszens’ initial impressions of the community were reinforced as soon as they moved into their townhouse which shares a fence with Cherry Creek High School, where many of their teenagers he works with as a youth director attend. They were overwhelmed by the hospitality they experienced:
“We didn’t even have to cook for two weeks. There was literally a welcoming committee that had different families prepare meals, so that the transition would be much easier on our family. That meant the world to us.”
Some of the newcomer families were Shabbat observant. For others, the move to the neighborhood is a step in their journey toward an observant Jewish lifestyle. Living close to Aish of the Rockies enables them to walk to synagogue on Shabbat, but it also puts them in close proximity with other Jews who can guide them as their Jewish lifestyles evolve.
This current neighborhood growth has not been coincidental. Since 2018, Aish of the Rockies has made a concerted effort, formally called the Community Development Initiative, to attract people to the community and facilitate their moves. That initiative included creating a fund to help families move into the community if needed, and the hiring of Rabbi Yechiel Erlanger as director of community relations and development.
Part of Rabbi Erlanger’s job is to recruit new families and coach them as they consider everything involved with a move, such as employment, housing and schools.
He also administers the Community Development Initiative fund.
In addition to the 17 families who have moved into the community in the past two years, Rabbi Erlanger says he has four or five families waiting in the wings “for COVID to be behind them so they can be more active” in their transition.
Brett Zuckerman, a professional real estate broker, has worked heavily in the southeast community. A former Aish staff member, he understands this particular segment of the real estate market.
Zuckerman is bound by law and industry ethics to fair housing guidelines, and therefore never steers buyers to this area because of its Jewish amenities, and conversely, he does not market listings with those kinds of descriptors.
“People mainly come to me because they already want to be in this area. Many people want to be within the eruv — they have already picked their geographic area.”
For some people, living within the eruv is a must, while others want to be within walking distance to Aish of the Rockies, but their level of observance does not compel them to live within the confines of the eruv.
“They want to be closer, but they’re not necessarily shomer Shabbat, and they still feel like they’re in the community. There are different levels of observance, but people still want the proximity.”
The southeast community straddles the borders of Greenwood Village, unincorporated Arapahoe County and Denver, where home prices are higher than the Denver metro average, and inventory is low.
“Affordability is the biggest challenge because prices have jumped so high in the past five years,” says Zuckerman. That is due to and exacerbated by the lack of inventory in this area as well as most parts of the Denver metro area.
The average list price of the 11 single-family homes currently on the market within a one-mile radius of Aish of the Rockies is $1,235,909.
Six of those homes are in Greenwood Village and range from $1,000,000 to $2,200,000. Four are in unincorporated Arapahoe County with an Englewood address and are priced from $740,000 to $980,000. The Greenwood Village and Arapahoe County homes are in the coveted Cherry Creek School District and therefore demand higher prices.
Only one of the current listings is in the Pine Valley subdivision of Denver and is listed at $550,000. It is served by Denver Public Schools.
For families choosing to send their children to Jewish day schools, the school district is not an issue, but does affect the prices of their homes and property taxes.
There are currently 13 condominiums on the market in the area, ranging in price from $339,900 for one bedroom to $495,000 for two bedrooms.
Zuckerman says, “One of the challenges that I find is that while Denver has a lot to offer in terms of a Jewish community, sometimes it’s not enough to trump the affordability issue in which someone may move to Cleveland or Detroit and where thy might have cheaper housing or school vouchers.”
There are also several rental apartment complexes nearby which Zuckerman says “could be a stepping stone for people who come here, but eventually they are going to want to be in Pine Valley on the Denver side or any of the Cherry Creek [school district] neighborhoods.”
The affordability issue is sometimes mitigated with financial assistance from Aish’s Community Development Initiative fund, which can sometimes help with a down payment or other expenses, but Rabbi Meyer told the IJN that the financial assistance Aish provides has never been a make-or-break criteria for people wishing to move into the community.
Rabbi Meyer is proud of the relationships between the diverse members of the Jewish neighborhood, from those who have become fully observant to those who were observant their entire lives to those who are not as observant but who embrace Judaism as offered by Aish of the Rockies.
“Of course, we’ve had our share of differences within the community, but overall, politics have been kept to a minimum, compared to other communities, and I think people appreciate that,” says Rabbi Meyer.
People in other communities have also told Rabbi Meyer that Aish of the Rockies’ ability to work with other organizations, notably the Denver Community Kollel, serves as a model.
Rabbi Meyer laments that because of COVID restrictions this past year, he has not been able to get to know many of the newcomers to the community as well as he’d like to. He notes that because there is no children’s programming at Aish on Shabbat mornings, many women with children have not been able to attend services, which have had limited capacity.
He says the hospitality for which the community is known is beginning to pick up a bit as people are getting vaccinated or have already had COVID.
“Hospitality, far, far from what it was — because, thank G-d, we have a very hospitable community, certainly has opened up somewhat.”
He also looks forward to the resumption of Aish’s Shabbat kiddush which has always served as a way for Jews to feel connected socially.
“At our kiddushes, there are many people, some of whom are invited out to others’ homes for Shabbos lunch, but some don’t have a place to go. Some don’t want a place to go, but they stick around for an hour or two on Shabbos morning because this is a place to socialize, and people miss that.”
Rabbi Meyer is optimistic about the continued growth of his community.
“A lot of people are discovering that Colorado is a nice place to live. Within Colorado is a Jewish community — our community — which I think is a very beautiful place.”
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News