By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
The Eastside has a new source for Jewish ritual items and books with the opening of Tree of Life Judaica and Books’ second location in Bellevue on August 25.
The eight-year-old company’s expansion brings to three – and soon to likely be four – what just a year ago was only a single option for the general public to purchase Judaica.
Magneev, which sells unique Judaica and art from mostly local and Israeli artists, first opened for business inside the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island last November. The store’s owners are currently negotiating to open a second location, either as a kiosk or small shop at the JCC’s Northend Seattle facility.
Though their main target consumer is roughly the same – the Seattle area’s approximately 37,000 known Jews – there is concern that the market cannot support so many players.
“A number of places have come and gone over the years,” said Julie Ellenhorn, manager at the Bellevue Tree of Life store. “Everybody wants a Judaica store and everybody wants a bookstore, but they have to support it.”
“Hopefully our community will be to support everything,” said Magneev co-owner Judy Willson.
Ellenhorn said owner Emily Freedman had been searching for a place to locate an Eastside store since the beginning of 2003. A possible storefront in Mercer Island didn’t pan out, and the recently opened location in a strip mall, four blocks from Bellevue Square is the result of researching the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s population survey and comparing location data to area Jewish institutions.
“They’re going to Crossroads for school, for synagogue, but obviously not shopping,” Ellenhorn said, when explaining why she and Freedman rejected a location in that area.
She said Tree of Life also compared trends of Eastside shopping patterns to the Seattle store, and decided that the high percentage of working families in proximity to the new location meant they could include offering evening hours – something that didn’t work in Ravenna.
“You do go out after dinner to go to the mall,” Ellenhorn said.
She also noted that being near the I-90 corridor will hopefully do what I-5 traffic has not: attract the large Jewish population in Seward Park.
Having already introduced themselves to the Eastside, Willson said Magneev’s other co-owner Deborah Simonds had spent time at the Seattle JCC and found an eager market.
“We’ve gotten the feedback from our customers that they’d like to have us over there,” Willson said, “so we’re trying to respond to their requests.”
What effect the expansion of the for-profit Judaica stores has on synagogue gift shops – which can benefit a congregation’s bottom line or a cause important to the institution’s membership – is not yet known. Bellevue’s Temple De Hirsch Sinai, which operates one of the larger shops in the area, said it was still too early to tell.
Fanny Goldman, manager of Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation’s gift shop on Mercer Island – and across the street from Magneev – said she doesn’t expect the new Tree of Life store to take any business away.
“I don’t think that will be a problem because we have a different kind of customer,” Goldman said. She has taken plans for a store remodel to the synagogue’s board, and said she will be aggressive in marketing new merchandise to the members and community.
The Herzl gift shop belongs to the Women’s League of Conservative Judaism at Herzl-Ner Tamid, and gives its proceeds to the two Conservative rabbinical schools and the H.L. Miller Cantorial School.
Ellenhorn, a member of Herzl-Ner Tamid who hired the gift shop’s previous manager for her new store, said that competing with synagogues was a concern of hers but that the stores often refer business to one another.
“Those shops are there to serve their members and we don’t want to infringe on that,” she said.
Willson agreed. “I don’t see that as being an issue for us. We carry such a different selection, and we have a different take on Judaica on what we offer people,” she said. “We think we complement them.”
With its new store, Tree of Life’s offerings might actually move closer to Magneev’s. Local artist Phil Flash, whose works have been on display in the Seattle art scene for decades, will create some one-of-a-kind pieces for the store, and Ellenhorn said an Israeli artist she met at the Shop Israel event at Ezra Bessaroth earlier this year will also sell his creations.
Expanding the market also necessitates changing with the times. Books, which started out as Tree of Life’s core business, will take up less space in this new store to give more room for the Judaica and ritual items. Though Ellenhorn said her staff is willing to track down any publisher for a Jewish-themed book, outside forces demanded that part of the business be scaled back.
“The book business is very tough with Amazon and Barnes & Noble,” she said. “I can’t compete with that and I’m never going to be able to.”
But, she said, “A lot of what goes into the independent store is what you don’t get when you click the button.”
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