By Donald H. Harrison

PHOENIX, Ariz.— Lawrence Bell, executive director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, observes, "We can educate non-Jews about Jewish history and Jewish heritage or you can let Mel Gibson do it.  But, somebody is going to educate non-Jews about us, and they are going to form ideas about us, so why not be an active part of that process?"

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society recently acquired the downtown building which served as Phoenix's first synagogue.  The society now is engaged in a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign to turn it into a museum, events center and archive.  The nearly one-acre site now known as the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center is adjacent to the main branch of the Phoenix Public Library and is within the area that the city government wants to promote as an arts and cultural district.

Bell anticipates that most visitors to the center will be Gentiles, particularly school children who may tour the facility as part of their multi-cultural learning programs. Within a short distance of the center is the famed Heard Museum, which specializes in Native American heritage. An Irish cultural center, a Chinese cultural center and a Japanese friendship garden are within short drives away.

The Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center's mission will be "to educate Jews and non-Jews about the substance of our history, our religion, our culture, our heritage, and the ways that Jews have contributed to the state and to the country," Bell said.  

"I don't think there are too many Jewish institutions in our community at least, and probably in any other, that do that work specifically.  I think that Jews do a lot of work to educate Jews about Jewish heritage, but I don't think as much attention is paid to the general population."

Built in 1922 as Temple Beth Israel, at a time when there were only 120 known Jews in Phoenix, the building served the community until 1949, when it was sold to the Southern Baptist Convention.  For the next 34 years, it served as the First Chinese Baptist Church, and then in 1983 it became the Central Mexican Baptist Church. "It housed two religions and three ethnic groups" before its recent reacquisition by the Jewish community,  Bell commented. 


Lawrence Bell, Ph.D, executive director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, stands in front of the main
building of a nearly one-acre complex that will become a center to explain Jewish history and culture to non-Jews, 
particularly to school children.  At right is Flo Eckstein, publisher of the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix,
whose parents came to Phoenix during the 1920s.  

Temple Beth Israel long since has moved farther north—following the Jewish demographic trend in Phoenix—but during  the 27 years that it occupied the site near today's 7th Street exit on Interstate-10, the building served both as a synagogue and activities center for the community.

The sanctuary probably will be used for exhibits about  Jewish holidays and Jewish life cycle events, as well as for some explanatory information about the Jewish religion. Remodeling will remove the baptismal font and restore the recessed aron kodesh, the outlines of which can still be discerned through the wall plaster. 

On the other hand, wooden pews that were added during the Baptist periods of the building will remain in the sanctuary, in order to provide event seating, Bell said. While the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center will cover the basics of Jewish observance, it is not intended to be a museum of Jewish religious artifacts. That function, says Bell, already is being fulfilled handsomely by the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum, located at Temple Beth Israel's current site at 56th and Shea  in northern Phoenix.

The Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum, which counts among its exhibits a reconstruction of a small Tunisian synagogue,  was named after the late wife of longtime Reform Rabbi Albert Plotkin, who assumed his pulpit in the 1950s and remains a major force in the Jewish community's development. The Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center was named by donor Larry Cutler both in the revered rabbi's honor and in memory of Cutler's parents, Betty and James, who were killed in an automobile accident.

Arizona Jewish history will be the focus in a 1936 classroom and office annex building. Visitors will be able  to flow through a series of rooms featuring exhibits on the history of the Jewish communities of Arizona, generally, and Phoenix specifically.

Bell said because the area for these permanent exhibits is small, he hopes to be able to utilize television monitors and listening areas to increase the number of stories that can be told.  The Arizona Jewish Historical Society to date has completed approximately 200 oral histories, some of which in digitalized form potentially could be incorporated into the exhibits. 

Pearl Newmark, who arrived in Phoenix in 1926—only 14 years after Arizona became a state—is among the early settlers whose memories the museum has been tapping.  Newmark and her late husband, Cecil, published the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix from 1961 to 1981, before selling the publication to their daughter, Flo Eckstein, the current publisher. The same year that Eckstein took over,  the Arizona Jewish Historical Society began. The new publisher, her attorney husband Paul, and parents all became charter members.

As interviewee, rather than in her more accustomed role as interviewer, Eckstein told jewishsightseeing.com that when she was born in 1940, there were fewer than 2,000 Jews in Phoenix, with the overall population of the area being 60,000.  Today, the community counts approximately 100,000 people living in Jewish households (including some non-Jewish spouses) and the overall population of Maricopa County, including Phoenix and its suburbs, is 3 million.

Eckstein said many people including her Pennsylvanian parents came to Phoenix for health reasons. The military brought numerous armed forces personnel  to Phoenix area bases during World War II, resulting in many of them deciding to come back following the war.  Among the installations was a camp for German Prisoners of War at Papago Park.

"If I recall, when I was a little kid, there was one Reform congregation, Temple Beth Israel, and the Conservative congregation was Beth El.  Then at some point, two Orthodox congregations opened up, neither of which exists anymore,"  she said. Orthodoxy has resurged more  recently, particularly with the proliferation of Chabad centers.

Movie producer and director Steven Spielberg was among the youngsters who studied for a bar mitzvah ceremony at one of those original Orthodox congregations,  Beth Hebrew.

A Jewish Community Center was founded in Phoenix in the late 1940s,  and "there was the Jewish Community Council, which became the Federation. My mother was the first president of the local Hadassah, in 1940, but then she was pregnant with me, so she resigned." Eckstein said.  The daughter later made up for depriving the organization of her mother's services by herself becoming a life member of the organization. 

Prior to taking over as publisher of the newspaper, Eckstein worked for Jewish Family and Children's Service, where she focused on the resettlement of  Russian Jews.  Today, a significant number of Bukharin Jews from the Central Asian portion of the former Soviet Union are part of the Phoenix community, the publisher noted.

The stories of the Newmarks, Ecksteins, Beth Hebrew congregants, Bukharian Jews and many more have and will be collected  in the Archive of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.   The organization already  boasts a collection of more than 20,000 books and manuscripts.  

The Archive will share space with temporary exhibits, such as those currently  traveling  from city to city like the replica of the Anne Frank House, behind the sanctuary in a large building that the Chinese Baptist Church had constructed for offices and a social hall. 

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society currently works in cramped office building quarters at 4710 N. 16th Street.  Once the society  relocates to the remodeled Jewish Heritage Center, it will have considerably  more room to display some of its treasures, including more than 1,000 historic photos recently acquired from the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.  The photos document communal activities from 1948 to 1987.

Bell said he anticipates that there will be numerous opportunities for cooperative arrangements with other Phoenix cultural institutions, starting with the Public Library.   He said hopes the library will be willing  to handle check out of books from the Archive, in exchange for the American Jewish Historical Society making the large collection available to the general public.

Besides in the sanctuary and the old social hall,  the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritgage Center will stage  receptions and other events in a large open-area corner of the property.  Arizona's desert weather almost always cooperates with outdoor events, Bell said.

It cost more than $500,000 to acquire the old synagogue and surrounding structures, and now Bell reports the Arizona Historical Society is about a third of the way toward raising the $4 million needed for restoration, financing and endowment for the 13,000 square foot facility.

By phasing the reconstruction, Bell said, it is possible that some work on the non-historic buildings can be completed in 2007.  

Meanwhile, says Bell, some small Depression era residences that are on the opposite side of the parcel  from the open air reception area are being offered for free to anyone interested in moving them. Historical museums, like every other building attracting visitors, require on-site parking, so the old houses must be moved.