Missed you. We were in Detroit for a wedding and hung around for Shabbos Sheva Brachos.
Had a great time as the community keeps growing, downtown looks great and the fans are filling the seats at Detroit Tigers baseball games to see the team with the most wins in the American League.
As much as I want to tell you about my favorite town, I’m going to tell you about a city we went to for the first time and highly recommend that you check it out. As you may know, my wife passed away over two years ago and I remarried a great Lakewood lady who’s part of a great family and am very happy with the situation.
However, Lakewood living is more expensive, and more taxing when it comes to driving. For most of the Orthodox community in Detroit, everything is only about a five-minute drive: schools, shuls, stores, kollels and six kosher eateries.
We drove to Detroit from Lakewood and did it in about 10 and a half hours with three stops. On the way back we passed Cleveland and Pittsburgh and I suggested that we stop in Harrisburg for the night as neither of us had ever been to the capitol of Pennsylvania. We Googled the one Orthodox shul (Kesher Israel) that has three minyanim a day and the website gave us the nearest motels. Our first stop was part of a motel chain with two names. The two initials are D. and I. The looks of the people staying there and broken screens on some windows and the broken door on a room near the main office door turned us off and we headed to Motel 6 about two blocks away.
Nice rooms and a great price of about $70 for the night. We had sandwiches and snacks with us and a Dunkin Donuts a short walk away for coffee. Kosher locals don’t have an eatery and opt for getting food from a supermarket or delivered from Baltimore, 79 miles away or one hour and 24 minutes. Philadelphia is 94 miles away (one hour, 44 minutes). The shul to our place in Lakewood was two hours and 40 minutes.
If you want to visit nearby Hershey, famous for chocolates, it’s only 14 miles. I’d like to go back to Harrisburg and take a train to Philadelphia next year. The train station is a few miles from the motel. I’d leave the car, uber to the train, take the choo-choo to downtown Philly, and take the tour bus to see the sights. The train ride is about one hour and 40 minutes. With everything, you can be back for Mincha in Harrisburg.
The Orthodox community in Harrisburg is under 100. Some wear their tallis over their head while davening and some don’t. It would be nice if someone would open a kosher pizza eatery. It would get stoppers on their way to Lakewood from Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Harrisburg is a great place to visit. It’s spic and span clean and full of historic architecture. You can go from all directions near downtown and pass many homes and stores well over a hundred years old. Unlike Philadelphia with blocks and blocks of sameness with ugly row houses, it seemed like every old house in Harrisburg is different including the old houses that hug the shul. There’s an eruv and it even was extended to include Governor Josh Shapiro’s mansion about a mile away at his request.
Housing is affordable near the shul, under $300,000 according to Rabbi Howard Finkelstein, who grew up in Harrisburg and came back as shul rabbi after serving most of his career as rabbinical leader in Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario. The famous Rabbi Eliezer Silver, ztâl, served as the shul rabbi for 18 years (1907-1925) before moving to Cincinnati,
I’m looking forward to going back to visit Harrisburg. We’d like to see the National Civil War Museum downtown and revisit City Island, the big beautiful island with connecting bridges from downtown that houses the picturesque minor league ballpark, a miniature train, and other sites. Taking the large paddlewheel boat along the Susquehanna River will give you great views and the feel of old America in this city of beautiful, old, well-kept buildings.
