By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
If you’re looking for someone who encapsulates the rich narrative of Louisville’s Jewish Community Center, you would do well to have a chat with Carol Behr.
Beginning with the YMHA located downtown at Second and Jacob Streets, continuing with the old JCC on Dutchmans Lane and onto the present Trager Family JCC, Behr has been a stalwart presence – matriarch of a family boasting three generations of connections to a thriving Jewish Community Center.
It was connections like these that prompted Behr to participate in My JCC Story, a collection of short videos in which community members speak about what makes the Trager Family JCC and its predecessors such an important part of their lives. So far, almost 50 people have been interviewed for the project, with about half of them already uploaded to the Jewish Community of Louisville’s YouTube channel.
Behr didn’t hesitate when she was asked to contribute to the My JCC Story project. “Before I even had children, my whole life revolved around the Center,” she said. “I was part of a modern dance group, and every Tuesday night and Friday morning for like 25 or 30 years I was at the Center.”
And once she became a mother, “my children never went anyplace else,” Behr said. “They were in clubs and sports – there just was no other place we would think to go.”
“It’s important to get these past perspectives, because we were losing these stories,” emphasized Lindsey Palgy, Community Engagement & Program Coordinator at the Jewish Federation of Louisville. “I’ve had people who’ve been Jewish all their lives who are from families where everyone knows their last names, to trans and non-binary people who may not have grown up here but are like: ‘Yeah, this is a home for me.’”
Indeed, “everybody has their own vivid life and inner monologue,” Palgy said. “We’re each a universe unto ourselves.”
A sampling of My JCC Stories is below:
Rabbi Ben Freed
“The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the JCC is walking through the doors, saying hi to folks – the fact that I can never go more than 10 steps here without stopping and schmoozing with somebody. Sometimes that makes it a little harder to work out as a rabbi because there’s always folks who want to talk to me. But that’s a great thing, right? (And having) so many different aspects of who I am and the community all happening in one place feels really cool.”
Attorney Aaron Kemper
“I vividly remember doing Shabbat on Friday at summer music camp as a kid and a teen. And it was really neat when my daughter went to daycare here in summer camp when they do Shabbat, and they’re singing a lot of the same songs that we sung. My wife is African American and my kids are biracial; they feel very comfortable here, acting like they own the place. The JCC has always done a good job of including people within the community who may look different than they did 150 years ago when this place was founded. And while the faces look different, the community spirit is still the same.”
CenterStage Committee Co-Chair and NCJW Executive Director Sarah Harlan
We moved here in August 2001, and shortly afterward saw an advertisement about auditions for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat for CenterStage, talking about a children’s cast. Our oldest, Jennifer, was going into sixth grade and had done some acting where we used to live. So she tried out and was in that production, when we literally had just been here a few months… It’s nice to be able to share that as the oldest community theater in the state of Kentucky.”
Trager Family JCC personal trainer Sylvester Davis
“True gym culture is about encouraging people to be better than they were before they got here… There is scripture that talks about the children of Israel coming into a new land, so understand how this is going to tie in with gym culture here. Understand[ing] that you were once foreigners in a strange land yourself. So from that standpoint, these (new fitness) people are foreigners. They are new to this whole idea of fitness and health. You welcome and encourage them, because you understand that you were them at one point in time.”
Cari Hatch
“The one (memory) that stands out the most is spending every weekend of every summer in this one corner of the pool. We would get here as soon as it opened on Saturdays in a group that hung out with my grandparents, and we were here all day on Sundays. My grandfather would get up at 6 every morning and swim laps in the outdoor pool during the summer and in the indoor pool in the winter. Growing up, I would come with him and swim. So that was our little bonding time.”
Sam and Marlene Gordon
Marlene: All the girls used to sit in the bleachers and watch the guys play. Sammy was an awesome baseball player and I just thought, ‘God, he so good and is so cute and so funny, I have to get to meet him.’ And 62 years later, we’re still here at the J.”
Evan Rowe
“I was a JCC rat. I was always here. We didn’t stop swimming here from age six until age 18. There was a whole world of life and friendships we made here at the pool and at camp. Every summer, I knew where I was going to be. I still remember very vividly (being) a young camper in a circle in the auditorium at the old JCC, (where) we did Shabbat. My first memory as a young adult would be a year when I worked at the JCC under (youth director) Jay Levine. That year alone meant so much to me, growing and learning.
Sidney Abramson
“There are a lot of things going on nowadays where people don’t feel safe in certain places in their communities. But the JCC is somewhere where you can come and feel welcome, whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish. It’s a safe community. I think that’s what keeps people together.”
Chester Misbach
I learned there were group fitness classes I didn’t even know existed. My first one occurred because some guy in the locker room kept pestering me to go to cycling class with him, and finally, just to quiet him, I went…I hadn’t ridden a bike forever, but as a kid riding bikes was that a big deal. So I thought, “I’m not sure this is going to be a great workout. So just to make sure I get some exercise here, I’m going to sit against the wall and just get a good old burn going in my quadriceps…When everyone gets there it’s full, 21 people, and the fellow who invited me is there next to me in the back. Five minutes into the class, the instructor has us standing and sprinting. It’s an hour-long class and I am dying…But the guy who invited me and myself are so competitive that I said to myself, “Chester, if you have to die in this class on this bike tonight, that’s what’s going to happen, because if you get off this bike and walk out the door, you’ll never hear the end of it.’”
Cantor Sharon Hordes
“In every city that I’ve ever lived in, I’ve been part of a JCC… So when we moved here, the JCC in Louisville felt very familiar. I felt at home right away. One of the first people I met was Annette Sagerman, and I’m not alone in saying that she was a very special person – extremely welcoming, so warm and so friendly. That just made me feel like I belonged. My older daughter went to preschool here for one year and we were very pleased with how that went, and both my kids went to day camp…It’s a wonderful, multifaceted organization. If you want to come and workout, that’s great. If you want to bring your kids to the playground, that’s wonderful. If you want to come hear a lecture, that’s fantastic.”
“One of the most important things is to give back to the community that gives you so much,” Carol Behr said. “And I think that’s one of the richest things we can say that the Jewish Community Center does.”
You can find complete versions of these and many other My JCC Story videos on the JCL YouTube channel: tinyurl.com/3bwby48e