The Town

Jewish Austin was here first.

The Kollel doesn’t ride into empty country. Austin in 2006 already has a sizable Jewish community, most of it new to town and growing with the city: chip engineers, UT faculty, lawyers and realtors working the boom, a few old Texas families, and a lot of people whose Jewish life is a seder and a kid at the community center summer camp. The college students are the Kollel’s stated mission. The town is where it actually reaches.

How the Kollel Gets In

Everybody thinks they know who everybody else is.

• The shul. Wasser takes the pulpit and the Kollel’s men fill the minyan. The little shul gets a rabbi, a schedule and a taller mechitza. Its old members can’t decide if they were rescued or replaced.
• The room calendar. For years the Orthodox shul and the new Reform congregation raced each other to the facilities manager’s door at seven on Monday mornings for the good rooms and the holiday dates. The Kollel’s men, who study full time, start showing up at 6:45 with a check for the whole year.
• The families. The Kollel wives teach challah, kashering and candle-lighting in Northwest Hills living rooms. Some families take on far more than they meant to, without ever going to shul.
• The strangers. Converts and would-be converts get the warmest welcome of their Jewish lives from men whose tradition is wary of them. Converts from other synagogues find out their conversions are being discussed.
• The money. Some donors adore the young rabbis and fund everything. Some are offended in public and pull their pledges. The boards would rather not pick a side.
• Everyone else. Most of Jewish Austin never notices the Kollel at all.

The Setting

The rabbis live in northwest Austin. Their students live near UT.

• 2004

  The city rezones West Campus for density. By 2006 the fourplexes are coming down and the cranes are going up. Students walk to class past holes where their friends used to live.

• Jan 4, 2006

  Texas beats USC in the Rose Bowl for the national championship. The Tower glows orange after every win that fall.

• Feb 2006

  Texas Hillel dedicates its new building on San Antonio Street, a block from campus.

• Sept 5, 2006

  Facebook launches News Feed. Hundreds of thousands of students join protest groups. Three days later Mark Zuckerberg apologizes.

• Sept 12, 2006

  The BlackBerry Pearl goes on sale. Students still flip open RAZRs. Adults with jobs now carry their email in their pockets.

• Jan 9, 2007

  Apple announces the iPhone. It goes on sale June 29, after this story's school year is over. Nobody in it has one.

• Every night

  AIM away messages, MySpace Top 8s, point-and-shoot cameras uploading whole parties to Facebook albums, flyers stapled over flyers.

The places and dates in this list are real and checked against public sources.

Around Town

Meanwhile, on Hart Lane.

• Aug

  In the H-E-B meat aisle, a man with a high-and-tight loads twenty pounds of kosher brisket into his cart. Rabbi Kotzk, reaching for the same shelf, invites his whole family for Shabbat. Everyone assumes. Nobody asks.

• Oct

  The shul gets a taller mechitza. Then the problem nobody noticed in twenty years: the dance studio’s mirrors. Black curtains go up over every one, and come down by ten for step aerobics.

• Oct

  On lower Hart Lane, two rabbis who share a duplex wall string an eruv of fishing line over their doors and walkway so they can carry the cholent across on Shabbat. The neighbor asks if it’s for the Longhorns.

• All year

  The Kopusts tell the Levines they kindly reached out to the Wassers, but the Wassers never called back. The Wassers tell the Lindqvists they kindly reached out to the Kopusts, but the Kopusts never called back. Nobody checks. Everybody repeats it.

• Dec

  At the community gala, a rabbi won’t shake Bunny Kessler’s hand. Mort pulls his pledge. Sheila Rosen doubles hers.

• Feb

  For several mornings after the snowstorm, the rabbis are in the lobby of Ron and Maya’s dorm, all of them, in their coats, by the mailboxes. They say good morning. Nobody says why.

• Mar

  Wade calls from Baghdad on a satellite phone in the middle of the Purim megillah, and the whole room boos Haman for him.

• Spring

  Salant’s rental car pulls up outside Ron’s parents’ house and idles. Two rabbis get out with a clipboard and a tape measure and start writing down the trees and the power lines. Surveying for an eruv, apparently. Nobody ever says. Nobody sleeps.

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Found Media

Every medium of 2006 shows a different piece of the same year.

In Far West, who knows what depends on how it traveled: a chat someone saved, an email that is three things at once, a phone in the hand of the man who decides who hears it, a dinner with no record at all. Everything below is invented for the show.