December 17, 2004
Friday

The west shore comprises many small boroughs and townships and has long been regarded as the tonier side of the river. Although not everyone who lives on the west shore is rich, there are many grand old houses in well-kept park-like neighborhoods. West of the older boroughs are the vast farmlands that are now being developed into communities of “McMansions” with names like The Ridings and The Woods at Bent Creek.

As greater Harrisburg developed, certain ethnic populations established themselves in and became identified with particular areas. The descendants of the white Anglican and German Reformed founders of the city are the largest percentage of the population. The eastern Europen Catholic immigrants whose names have lots of consonants and accent marks took root south of the city, primarily in Steelton, once the site of a huge Bethlehem Steel plant. The small Jewish population centered itself in the northern part of the city. The four congregations established in the nineteenth century are within a few blocks of each other, and the number of Jews in my township is so significant that our public school is closed on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Today’s newspaper carries an essay written by a resident of Hampden township, a west shore area that now has more isolated gated communities of brand new “estate homes” than traditional neighborhoods. The woman identifies herself as a non-religious Jew married to a non-religious non-Jewish man. And she finds herself angered by the “blatant bias” of shops (she names Wal-Mart and a Rite-Aid drug store) that stock only a meager selection of Hanukkah items. She claims that she cannot find even a simple Star of David to put on her door’s Christmas wreath “to show that we are a multicultural family.” She says that she is from the “great melting pot of New York” and is frustrated to the point of wanting to shout because all the displays she sees feature Christmas items only. She has had to send her “wonderful husband” all the way over to the Linglestown Road area (my neighborhood — we’re talking five miles here) because she’s heard that’s where the Jewish population in the capital city lives.

It’s that sentence that raised my disgruntlement level. She sounds like someone who moved here only to follow a spouse’s career and she’s feeling displaced among us unsophisticated central Pennsylvania bumpkins. (I’ve heard this attitude from mobile executives’ wives in my own neighborhood.)

I’ve written a letter to the editor of the newspaper suggesting that this woman accept the fact that she is not on Staten Island anymore and has chosen to live in Hampden township. While the west shore is not the traditional center of Jewish life and culture in the capital city, there is a Jewish congregation in Mechanicsburg, (a borough bordering Hampden) and one in Carlisle, about ten miles away. Perhaps she could make the acquaintance of one of her Jewish neighbors who might help her find the items she seeks. I also invite her to go over the river and through the woods to visit the east shore herself.

What I didn’t say (in so many words) is that she should stop whining in her comfort zone and get out and do some living.

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