Buy Now, Daven in 2030

There was a time when making aliyah required a certain tolerance for the unknown.

Where would you live? Would you understand the guy at the bank? Would anyone at the post office understand you? Would you find a synagogue where somebody didn’t look at you strangely when you asked what time the rabbi’s sermon started?

Apparently, those days are over.

Welcome to the newest trend in Israeli real estate: the planned Anglo community, where you can buy your Jerusalem apartment years before it exists and be assured that, when the concrete finally dries, an American rabbi will be waiting for you.

One advertisement for The Duet, a large development going up on Berl Locker Street in Jerusalem, reduces the proposition to its essentials:

Shul. Gym. Lounge. Café. American Rabbi.

There you have it. The necessities of modern Jewish life.

I confess that I was particularly taken with the placement of “American Rabbi” immediately after “Café.” Apparently both are now amenities.

The project is in Patt, although the advertisements prefer “New Katamon (Pat).” This is itself one of the little miracles of Jerusalem real estate. No bulldozer is required to move a neighborhood. Patt can simply become New Katamon.

Presumably that adds something to the price per square meter.

To be clear, these are real projects. Construction is underway at The Duet. Other large projects directed partly at English-speaking Orthodox buyers are moving forward elsewhere in Jerusalem, and the idea isn’t new. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin helped build Efrat into a major Anglo center decades ago, and Rabbi Shalom Rosner’s Nofei HaShemesh community in Beit Shemesh actually got built and became exactly what it promised to become.

What has changed is the packaging.

Today’s prospective oleh can sit in Teaneck, Baltimore, Toronto or Boca Raton, click into a Zoom presentation and inspect an Israeli community that does not yet exist.

There will be a beautiful lobby.

There will be a gym.

There will be landscaped grounds.

There will be a café.

There will be a shul.

There will be a respected American rabbi.

There will, of course, also be the line somewhere telling you that the beautiful pictures you are looking at are for marketing and illustration purposes.

That last part always gets me.

Here is a magnificent computer-generated Jerusalem apartment filled with sunlight, designer furniture and a family that apparently has never owned a piece of clutter.

The balcony overlooks an immaculate park.

Nobody has hung laundry outside.

Nobody’s upstairs neighbor is drilling.

The light rail is gliding silently past.

And somewhere beneath this vision of paradise appears the real-estate equivalent of “your results may vary.”

Meanwhile, you may be asked to put hundreds of thousands of shekels down today for an apartment you hope to receive three, four or five years from now.

It is a remarkable act of faith.

Then again, Jews have been waiting 2,000 years to return to Jerusalem. What’s another four years if there’s underground parking?

But what really fascinates me is the determination to recreate the American Orthodox synagogue experience after moving 6,000 miles to Israel.

If we’re going to do this properly, I have some questions for the developers.

Will there be a speech every Shabbat?

Not a three-minute Israeli vort after davening, if at all. I mean a proper American sermon. Twelve to fifteen minutes. Current events. A story. Perhaps a joke that everyone has heard before.

Will the rabbi remind us that “I know everyone wants to get to kiddush, but I just want to share one thought”?

Will there be a kiddush club?

If we’re importing American Orthodoxy, we should not cut corners.

Will there be committees? A board meeting that lasts 2½ hours because twelve intelligent adults cannot agree on the price of additional folding chairs?

Will somebody announce before Musaf that the annual dinner is only six weeks away and that everyone should please make their reservations?

Will there be a journal?

Will somebody receive an award?

Will the rabbi remind everyone to please stop talking during davening, followed immediately by everyone resuming their conversations?

And most important: Will kiddush begin with six people standing around the cholent insisting that they aren’t really hungry?

These are the amenities I’d like to see in the brochure.

There is something genuinely appealing underneath all the humor. Aliyah is hard. Community matters. Moving to Israel is easier if you know there will be people who speak your language, understand where you came from and share your religious and cultural habits.

The developers have figured that out.

They are not merely selling square meters in Jerusalem. They’re selling certainty.

Or at least as much certainty as one can purchase from an architectural rendering of a building scheduled to be ready in 2030.

And perhaps that is the most American part of the entire enterprise.

For generations, Jews dreamed of Jerusalem.

Now we can finally return home.

Provided, of course, that we put down 15 percent, qualify for the mortgage and don’t mind waiting four years for the kiddush club to open.