When Rabbi Ariel Shoshan and his wife Ayala moved from Baltimore to Phoenix in July 2002, he can only remember a handful of kosher restaurants, four daily minyanim, and a K-8 school, the explosive growth of Torah Judaism in the Phoenix area ( since then), ”he said. In 2002, approximately 44,000 Jews lived in the area, 3% or about 1,320 of whom identified as Orthodox, according to the 2002 Greater Phoenix Jewish. from Arizona State University joint study. In 2019 there were approximately 98,750 Jews, of whom 3% or approximately 2,962 identified as Orthodox, according to ASU’s 2019 Jewish Community Survey. The growth reflects that of the greater Phoenix area as a whole. According to the US Census Bureau, Arizona has seen the third highest population growth nationwide since 2010, and Phoenix is currently the fastest growing city in the country. The growth of the Orthodox community has resulted in at least 15 minyanim in the morning, plenty of kosher dining options, and several Jewish schools today. “The most amazing element of growth is the hundreds of families and individuals who have bravely taken on the joys and responsibilities of attentive living.” According to the Pew Research Center, 17% of Jews aged 18-29 nationally self-identify as Orthodox, while 11% identify as Haredi-Orthodox, compared with 3% and 1% of Jews aged 65 and over, respectively. Robin Meyerson, Jeremy Rovinsky, and Yisroel Loeb are among thousands of others who have contributed to the growth of the local Orthodox community in the past decade or so by becoming aware, moved, or both. Meyerson grew up knowing she was Jewish, but nothing more. “My mother and father wanted to show me and my brother the world,” she said. “We traveled to Australia, Malaysia and England and got to know other cultures like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.” But no Judaism. She didn’t know what it was, but she was always looking for something. In retrospect, she believes it was the Pintele yid: a spark of Judaism in every Jew, alert or not. When she was 11 and lived in the United States for a year, she asked her parents to find a synagogue. She attended Sunday school for a year in a small temple in Paducah, Kentucky. In high school she played Auguste van Pels in the school play “The Diary of Anne Frank”. That was the extent of my Jewish knowledge, ”she said. Meyerson, who lives in Scottsdale, met her husband when she was 19 while studying business administration at Arizona State University. Coincidentally, he didn’t know much about Judaism either. After the couple married and had their first child, they began exploring Judaism together. They started in Temple Chai, a Reformed synagogue, then went to the Har Zion Congregation, a conservative synagogue, and ended up with Ahava’s Torah, which they helped found. This path reflected her own practice – she started by adding a mezuzah to her home, then staying kosher, and then observing Shabbat. “It was a journey, it didn’t go overnight,” she said. She learned from a woman in New York for eight years through a free telephone service called Partners in Torah. “We became really good friends and I got to know them personally a few times. She taught me almost everything I know, ”she said. Meyerson is now Co-Director of Project Inspire Arizona, Chair of Shabbos Project Arizona, and provides life coaching for Jewish women. Meyerson said becoming Orthodox was the biggest decision of her life. “I felt blessed that I found this secret society,” she said. Rovinsky grew up Reform on Long Island, New York. It was not until he was a teenager that he was introduced to Orthodoxy. And while he was studying philosophy and political science at American University in Washington DC in college to prepare for law school, he learned as much as possible about Judaism. “I always had questions,” he said. “Some things didn’t make sense to me.” He became active in Hillel and took part in a program of the Avi Chai Foundation that brought him “the full spectrum of Jewish ideas” closer to him. The program took him to Israel, where he realized he wanted to study abroad. He did so during his second semester of his junior year in 2006. During his stay in Israel he spent some time in various synagogues. “I looked until something clicked,” he said. That click came when he met Rabbi Beryl Gershenfeld. “He really spoke to me. He’s the most self-realized person I’ve ever met. When I met him I was in awe. I thought, ‘Wow. Whatever this guy has is what I want. ‘”After Rovinsky graduated from American University, he decided to learn from Gershenfeld and applied to Machon Shlomo Yeshiva, where Gershenfeld teaches and is dean. He had already been accepted to law school at George Washington University but was postponed a year to attend yeshiva. Rovinsky knew which path he was taking when he committed to going to the yeshiva, and he is grateful that he made his choices. “The more you learn, the more questions you have. But the basic questions I always had were answered, ”said Rovinsky. “Living with the answers I’ve always been looking for and getting has made me feel deep and fulfilling.” Rovinsky, his wife, and their young sons came to Arizona in 2013 when he had the opportunity to do a legal clerkship. Yisroel Loeb grew up in Far Rockaway, a borough of Queens, New York. He has always been aware that being Orthodox is a choice. His parents became independently religious before marrying, although no one else in their families did. “Nobody in my family married a Jew.” That is what he values about his upbringing because it allows him to be in “many different worlds” and helps him as a clinical psychologist. Now as the parent of an 11 year old daughter and a 14 year old son, he also wants his children to know that being Orthodox is a choice. “I want them to choose the lifestyle I chose so that I can eat in their kitchen,” he joked with his family moving from New York to Phoenix in 2015 to complete his residency in clinical psychology. People generally move to the southwest to start fresh and reinvent themselves, he said. “And it is no different for the Orthodox community,” he said. You are Orthodox, you will not only be involved in the Orthodox community, or if you are conservative you will not only be involved in the conservative community, etc., “said he. “There is communication and respect between the various branches of the Jewish community that may not exist in other communities.” He noted that the local community enables people to explore their own Jewish identity on their own terms -and- live more than on the east coast. ”During their years in the Phoenix area, Meyerson, Rovinsky, and Loeb saw the community grow first-hand. Meyerson recalls when there was only one mikveh. “Now three and a few more are being built,” she said. “We used to be one of the few families who went to the synagogue in Scottsdale on Saturdays, but now the streets are growing so fast that we have our own set of traffic lights to help the Scottsdale Orthodox community.” Rovinsky compares the rapid change to dog years. “In one year it’s like a seven-year change,” said Rovinsky. He helped represent Phoenix at the Orthodox Union’s annual community fair, which is aimed at people in the New York area to learn about various Orthodox communities across the country. But Phoenix has not been represented for a few years. “It’s more for communities that are desperate for people to move there. We’re kind of the opposite, ”he said. “Phoenix is a really great place; We don’t have to provide incentives like other communities do to get people to move here. ”He keeps getting calls from people interested in moving to Phoenix. He attributes the interest to the cost of living in Phoenix and Jewish schools. “The schools here are top notch schools if you are looking for an Orthodox school,” he said. “And Arizona is the best for student grants, so it’s also very affordable.” Rovinsky and Loeb agree that one of the things that make the city’s Orthodox community special is that there are still many options, something to move infrastructure, but it is not structured in the same way as larger Orthodox communities, ”said Rovinsky. In 2019, for example, he helped start the Semichas Chaver program of the Orthodox Union in Phoenix. The program teaches practical lessons in Jewish law and ethics every six months. Shoshan moved to Arizona to become the director of the Phoenix Community Kollel and a community leader before him. “Today there is a sense of togetherness and mission in an environment of religious sincerity and passion,” he said. “We have great schools and government programs that make school more affordable, and we have excellent schools and places for Torah study at every level and for every age. ”JN
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