A Baptism By Fire

When 15 Jewish community centers across the country were evacuated this week due to phoned-in threats, Greater New Haven’s facility was spared — because it had already been evacuated a month earlier, during a four-alarm fire. The staff there was ready.

Some 350 people, from toddlers to septuagenarians, were in the 360 Amity Rd. center at the time. Everybody got out safely.

That’s because the Jewish Federation and JCC staff had spent the previous weeks updating and practicing evacuation drills. They were preparing more for the kind of bomb threats other JCCs had received, or even an active shooter, than the devastating accidental blaze that has left the center of the region’s Jewish community projected to remain homeless for as long as the rest of 2017. (Two firefighters were treated at the hospital for carbon-monoxide poisoning.)

Interrupted by fire alarms, Judy Alperin Diamondstein, who moved here from Pennsylvania in 2016 to take the helm of the federation, swung into her assigned role of ​“sweeper” when the fire broke out in the cedar wood-paneled men’s sauna at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 4. She checked upstairs rooms and bathrooms, then stationed herself as ​“traffic cop” by the main stairwell to make sure no stragglers were remaining in the building before she left the premises herself.

Other staffers slipped just as automatically into their roles, pushing daycare babies in wheeled cribs out of the building, helping seniors, ushering swimmers out the emergency exit by the pool. Outside temperatures had dropped to about 20 degrees; noticing one shoeless swimmer, Camp Director Debra Kirschner took off her own footwear to help him make it across the parking lot, where the Brookdale senior assisted-living facility was ready with juice and cookies for everyone to huddle inside as staffers called children’s families.

The Talmud states ​“that whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” By updating their safety procedures and then practicing them the weeks before the fire, Diamondstein and her staff saved 350 worlds that day.

“Sometimes we do these drills and people are put out by them,” Diamondstein observed this week during an appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Chai Haven” program. ​“I think this was a reminder that we do them for a reason.”

Firefighters from departments throughout the region converged on the JCC — which houses the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Foundation in addition to the community center — to battle the blaze, then mop up, well through the night past midnight.

By the time they finished, 500 of the facility’s 100,000 square feet had burned. The HVAC system was badly damaged; firefighters relied on the system (which has over two miles of ductwork) to clear smoke out of the building.

With the center projected to remain closed for up to 12 months, the community rallied behind Diamondstein and her staff as they scrambled to find temporary locations for their facility’s services. In a remarkable two and a half days, they obtained permits from the town of Woodbridge to move the center’s pre-school and after-school programs to space at Congregation B’nai Jacob.

“Members I didn’t know showed up when we were schlepping boxes. They felt they had to be there to be part of solving a problem,” Diamondstein said.

They found temporary office space for the Federation, JCC and Foundation staffs at 1764 Litchfield Turnpike. They converted space at a building at 4 Research Drive into a temporary gym for members to work out. Basketball and racquetball has been moved to Albertus Magnus College, aqua-aerobics to a hotel pool in Milford, swimming to public pools in Orange and Woodbridge. (The summer camp’s facilities at 360 Amity were undisturbed, so they’ll be in operation.)

“We will go anywhere,” Diamondstein said.

For now. Meanwhile, she and the Federation are busily planning a return to the main campus. They have ​“good insurance” to repair the damage from the fire, she said. But they’re also using the fire as an ​“opportunity” to rethink the campus, which opened 22 years ago following an earlier period of desert wandering after the downtown New Haven JCC campus closed.

“It was wonderful for 1995,” Diamond said of the 360 Amity Rd. building. ​“But I think we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t hit the pause button … take a look and say, ​‘Are we currently situated to the best needs of today? How do we make sure we provide for the best needs of tomorrow?” With the Northeast Jewish population graying, she envisions more space for senior activities, possibly including an adult day care center. She sees room for growth in youth and family-oriented activities.

That planning will take place in coming months. Expect to see a capital campaign as well. Having emerged stronger from her baptism by fire as communal New Haven’s institutional leader, Diamondstein is ready for Act Two. 

Click on or download the above audio file to listen tot he full episdoe of ​“Chai Haven” with Judy Alperin Diamondstein, which includes discussion of her first year running the Jewish Federation and her goals for the organization’s future.