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 Visiting her bubbe in The Bronx as a girl, Susan Wilson would fall asleep to the “lullabye” of Jewish voices from the front stoops and open windows of apartment buildings where neighbors seemed always to be schmoozing.
“It was a wonderful neighborhood,” says Wilson. “Grandma knew everybody and everybody knew everybody.” She and her husband Ken are part of the investment group behind Aleph Springs, a new Ashland neighborhood with eight single-family homes and six condominium units “wrapped around” the Havurah Shir Hadash synagogue.
It was, in large part, Wilson’s fond memories that moved her to become part of Aleph Springs. The intention behind the new neighborhood, she says, is that residents will experience that same warm and “haimish” feeling she experienced near the intersection of Mapes and Tremont avenues. “It was probably my favorite place. I felt very loved and very much a part of it all.”
After splitting her childhood—until age 10—between The Bronx and the Catskill Mountains, a.k.a. the Borscht Belt, Wilson moved with her family to California, where life just simply wasn’t the same. She attended a synagogue, went to Hebrew school and Zionist youth camps, but Wilson was never as happy as when she visited her grandmother back in “the old country.”
Recalling the generational mix—from newborns to great-grandparents—Wilson says she can easily imagine what it will sound like at Aleph Springs, the voices of the community elders harmonizing with those of the “kinderlach” attending the synagogue’s pre-school.
Wilson hopes that the aromas soon to be wafting from the new homes in Aleph Springs will remind her of her most mouth-watering memories of her bubbe’s neighborhood.
“I remember all that Jewish food cooking, the various aromas from every open window: Briskets and chicken soup, all kinds of kugels. And on shabbos, all the challahs.” Wilson inhales the memory, smiles and sighs.
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