Part of the picturesque campus of the Westchester-Fairfield Hebrew Academy in Greenwich, Conn. Members of the WFHA girls’ soccer team.
by Hilary Larson Special To The Jewish Week
Evangelism isn’t the term that first comes to mind when one thinks of Stamford, Conn. But this bustling, prosperous city on the Fairfield County coast inspires some residents to preach its virtues far and wide. Longtime resident Michael Feldstein recently launched an organization, the Committee for the Advancement of Modern Orthodoxy in Stamford (CAMOS), whose goal is to recruit Jewish families to the city. “I feel people don’t realize how much Stamford has to offer,” said Feldstein, a marketing professional. “When families are thinking about settling down in a New York-area community, there are a lot of familiar places that come to mind — the Five Towns, Teaneck — but Stamford is hardly on the radar, and it absolutely should be.”
As Feldstein points
out, the city offers an array of synagogues, kosher shops, and Jewish schools, plus a thriving downtown and an easy commute to Manhattan. “But whereas other suburban communities feel like extensions of the city, Stamford is really New England. It’s a different kind of feel in Connecticut,” enthuses Feldstein.
A more recent transplant, Rebecca Sigman, agrees — and has been so happy with her move to Stamford that she started a Web site, StopWandering.com, to help match Jewish families with homes in compatible communities. Like Feldstein, she prizes the laid-back New England tolerance that defines Stamford’s Jewish life. “They are so non-judgmental here,” raves Sigman, who moved a year and a half ago from Riverdale, Bronx. “The parking lot at [Congregation] Agudath Sholom is open on Saturday, and if you drive, nobody cares. They say Good Shabbos and move over to make room for you when you walk in.” Sigman, who grew up in Manhattan and attended the Ramaz School, said she is happy with the variety of Jewish amenities in her new home. “There’s a kosher chocolate shop, a kosher bakery that’s supervised by the Vaad of Fairfield County, and a fantastic kosher dairy café and bakery at the JCC,” said Sigman, a mother of four. “There’s no kosher butcher, but you can get kosher meat and a huge selection of kosher foods at the local Stop & Shop. There’s a huge mall downtown, great shopping, and the mikveh is being renovated.”
The Sigmans are among roughly 117,000 residents of Stamford, which is located about 30 miles north of New York. The city’s pedestrian-friendly downtown, whose skyline is clustered with glass-tower high rises, has undergone an urbane renaissance in recent decades, attracting young professionals to its condos and offices. But Stamford also has tidy suburban neighborhoods, Long Island Sound beaches and rural farmland.
Stamford is without a doubt the economic hub of Fairfield County. Major companies with headquarters here include Pitney-Bowes, General Electric, Xerox and UBS Warburg, along with numerous banks and hedge funds. Stamford is also a popular option for Manhattan commuters, as it is situated just off Interstate 95; frequent Metro-North trains whisk travelers to Grand Central Terminal in as little as 42 minutes. Patty Goldstick, director of community outreach for the United Jewish Federation of Greater Stamford, New Canaan and Darien, estimates that there are 12,000 Jews in Greater Stamford. Of those, about half are affiliated with a synagogue, more than twice the national average. Despite those numbers, “this has been to some extent a transient community,” said Feldstein. “People would come and stay for a few years, but we’re still waiting for that explosion” of Jewish family life.
Rabbi Steven Katz, of Temple Sholom in nearby Greenwich, said a slow-but-steady growth belies Connecticut’s reputation as a not-so-Jewish place. His Conservative shul now has about 650 members, up from fewer than 300 when he arrived a generation ago. “The shul has definitely become younger,” said Rabbi Katz, who estimates there are five to seven thousand Jews in Greenwich, about ten percent of the town’s population. “In the 1990s, this area went from being a sleepy Jewish community to a vibrant community.”
At the Conservative Temple Beth El, Rabbi Joshua Hammerman has seen an influx of newcomers from New York. “We’re the only synagogue on what I like to call the Upper West Side of Stamford, and we have a lot of expatriates from the Upper West Side of New York,” he said. “What’s telling is that I see children who’ve grown up here move back, not just to be close to family, but because Stamford is a cool place to live. Stamford has a real small-town feel with big city opportunities.”
Stamford, Greenwich and several surrounding towns have lower taxes than comparable communities in Westchester, a major selling point for many. Families seeking a single-family home can expect to pay between $500,000 and $1 million, with plenty of options in the lower part of that range, according to Sigman, whose house listings on StopWandering.com report exactly how close they are to the nearest shul. She and her husband, Eric, a high-school math teacher in Bedford, are within walking distance of both Young Israel of Stamford and Congregation Agudath Sholom, a Modern Orthodox synagogue. Another Orthodox synagogue, Chabad of Greater Stamford, is on High Ridge Road, while Temple Sinai is Stamford’s Reform congregation.
Stamford residents also have plenty of schools to choose from. Local public schools get high marks from parents, many of whom send their children to the local high school after younger grades in day school. Local Jewish institutions include the Bi-Cultural Day School in Stamford, which offers preschool through eighth grade and is known for its three-week Israel study program, and the Westchester-Fairfield Hebrew Academy in nearby Greenwich, also pre-K through eighth grade. The Conservative-affiliated Solomon Schechter School of Westchester offers lower grades in White Plains and high school in Hartsdale, both a short drive away.
About half of Westchester-Fairfield’s 223 students come from Greater Stamford, according to Head of School Nora Anderson. “We’re a pluralistic day school,” said Anderson. “Judaic studies are very rigorous at our school, but without the dogma of any particular movement.” Anderson pointed to successful sports teams and numerous academic achievements as evidence of the 11-year-old school’s broad focus: this year, 60 percent of the school’s third-through-eighth-graders qualified for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth National Talent Search, which recognizes students who score in the top 5 percent nationally on standardized achievement tests.
Other local institutions include the Stamford JCC, which has a popular fitness center with a pool as well as an array of programming for children, adults and seniors. Culture vultures are happy with the sophisticated offerings at the Stamford Center for the Arts and the Connecticut Grand Opera, also based here. Shoppers enjoy the upscale fare at the Stamford Town Center mall.
“The quality of life here has improved over the years in many ways,” said Rabbi Hammerman, who settled in the city two decades ago. “When you’re walking around downtown Stamford, you have a sense of diversity and energy and excitement. Just the fact that there’s a real downtown you can walk around — 20 years ago, you didn’t have that.”
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