"Once a community doesn't give recognition that Shabbos exists," he said, "it makes it much more difficult for Jews to become connected to the eternal Jewish values of spirituality, and purpose and rest from physical labor."
Wednesday's vote will not affect the Jewish Community Center in the Park Heights section of northwest Baltimore, which serves a largely Orthodox clientele. It will remain closed on Saturdays.
The JCC had tried for years to set a different policy for the center in Owings Mills, where Conservative, Reform and secular Jews predominate.
In 1997, a JCC bid for Saturday hours in Owings Mills was rejected by the board of the Associated, which has the final say because it funds the centers and owns the land and buildings.
But members of the Owings Mills center continued to "clamor" for Saturday hours, Sapolsky said, so they could take advantage of the center's services with their families.
At the Associated, board Chairman Jimmy Berg expressed hope that the discussion, debate and "education" that preceded yesterday's vote will lead to stronger bonds within the community.
"I think at the end of the day there was some relationship developed from the different segments of the community that may not have been there before," he said. "We all have the same goal, just different ways of achieving it. The goals are to strengthen the community and bring people together."
Feldman seemed less confident about the possibilities.
"We definitely don't want to make any division of the community," he said. "We don't want to have ... community strife or anger. But it will be very difficult now to unify the community because of this."
"We will have to increase our efforts toward educating the community in Owings Mills in Jewish values and bring them back to the heritage they've been cut off from."
