{"id":56480,"date":"2017-03-27T08:21:57","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T13:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=56480"},"modified":"2017-03-28T13:54:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T18:54:52","slug":"community-snapshot-dallas-tx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/community-snapshot-dallas-tx\/","title":{"rendered":"OU Jewish Communities Fair Snapshot: Dallas, TX"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Rabbi Ariel and Dr. Jessica Rackovsky moved to North Dallas in the summer of 2015, they didn\u2019t need to cook for quite some time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDallas is an incredibly hospitable community, and people cooked and sent us meals to cover us through the Y<em>omim Tovim<\/em>,\u201d recalled Rabbi Rackovsky. \u201cMy wife then gave birth to our second child, and we had another steady stream of meals coming in. In fact, we had to politely tell people to please stop cooking for us because we were so well-covered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/fair\/\"><span data-sheets-value=\"{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Find out more about Norfolk at the OU Jewish Communities Fair on April 30&quot;}\" data-sheets-userformat=\"{&quot;2&quot;:14849,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:3355443},&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Georgia, \\&quot;Times New Roman\\&quot;, \\&quot;Bitstream Charter\\&quot;, Times, serif&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:12}\">Find out more about Dallas at the OU Jewish Communities Fair on April 30<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>North Dallas counts about 300 frum families, and Rabbi Rackovsky leads Congregation Shaare Tefillah, the neighborhood\u2019s Modern Orthodox shul with about 185 member families and counting. Congregation Ohr HaTorah, the Young Israel of North Dallas, and Achdut Yisrael offers more yeshivish and Sephardic minyanim, respectively. Far North Dallas, another frum neighborhood about 10 minutes away, counts around 200 frum families and is home to a Chabad center and a shul, Congregation Ohev Shalom.<\/p>\n<p>Most parents send their children to either Akiba Academy, the co-ed Modern Orthodox yeshiva, or Torah Day School. Yavneh High School, housed with Akiba on a $20 million state-of-the-art campus, offers a co-ed education, while Mesorah High School for Girls and the Texas Torah Institute for boys, a branch of Chofetz Chaim, offer single-gender high schools.<\/p>\n<p>There are six kosher restaurants, and pit master Chaim Goldfeder runs the Texas Kosher Barbecue traveling trailer, which is stationed in North Dallas but brings authentic barbecue cuisine on the road to various Jewish communities. Area grocery stores offer full-service kosher deli stations and bakeries with very reasonable prices.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Rohan, 57, is a lifelong Dallas resident and has seen the city\u2019s Jewish infrastructure change exponentially over the years. \u201cGrowing up, there was one Reform, one Conservative, and one Traditional shul and now, there are a couple dozen\u00a0and at least six Orthodox shuls,&#8221; he said. \u201cThere are several eruvim and kosher restaurants where there were none a few decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Richard highlights the enduring friendliness of the South as one of its biggest assets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see many families who came here expecting only to ride out a fellowship or some such, only to conclude that they want to remain in Dallas because they enjoy life here and the friendliness of the people here so much,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>Texas itself offers a year-round warmth and plenty of job opportunities; doctors especially like practicing medicine in Texas, which has strict caps on medical malpractice lawsuits and is also home to many prestigious hospitals and medical schools. Dr. Rackovsky is an attending physician on the faculty of UT Southwestern.<\/p>\n<p>One other attractive feature of Dallas? \u201cIt\u2019s actually something Texas does <em>not<\/em> have,\u201d said Rabbi Rackovsky, \u201cand that\u2019s a state income tax.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/fair\/fair\/fair\/communities\/\"><span data-sheets-value=\"{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Check out more Torah communities outside the metropolitan area at our annual Communities Fair this April 30!&quot;}\" data-sheets-userformat=\"{&quot;2&quot;:47619,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16777215},&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:3355443},&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Georgia, \\&quot;Times New Roman\\&quot;, \\&quot;Bitstream Charter\\&quot;, Times, serif&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:12,&quot;18&quot;:1}\"><em>Check out more Torah communities outside the NYC metropolitan area at our biannual Communities Fair on A<\/em>pril 30!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Rabbi Ariel and Dr. Jessica Rackovsky moved to North Dallas in the summer of 2015, they didn\u2019t need to cook for quite some time. \u201cDallas is an incredibly hospitable community, and people cooked and sent us meals to cover us through the Yomim Tovim,\u201d recalled Rabbi Rackovsky. \u201cMy wife then gave birth to our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":56481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","series-communities-snapshot"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - 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