A New Year, a old community passes away
Temple Beth El in Lexington, Mississippi holds its last service today after 104 years. As The Forward reports:
“This is it,†[said] Henry Paris, 79, who has led Beth El’s High Holy Day services for the past 39 years. “We can’t continue to have a temple for four people. This is it.†[Read the whole thing.]
It is a sad thing when one community fades, but the richness of Jewish life goes on, with new communities growing, as in Bentonville, Arkansas or Mbale, Uganda or Igboland in Nigeria. But this is an occasion to note that right now, over 80% of the Jewish people live in two countries–the US and Israel–and within the US, most of the Jews are concentrated around cosmopolitan centers-LA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and so on. This is not surprising. Young people go where there is excitement, potential, and economic opportunity.
It says more about Lexington, Mississippi that their community of Jews has not been able to go on than it does about Jews. As ever, the fate of Jewish communities is tied to the fate of the communities in which we live. Jewish Communities have never existed in a vacuum. Our liturgy talks often of the stranger and of other tribes and groups, of outsiders and insiders and the relations between them. This relationship, I believe, is essential to the Jewish people and the Jewish religion.
The shuttering of one Jewish community is not a loss for the Jews–its children will find Jewish life elsewhere if they seek it. It is a loss for the community of Lexington, Mississippi, and I hope that their town will endure. It’s a little bit of twisted analogy, but might Jews be like the canary in the coal mine for communities and nations-when they begin to disappear, there’s trouble for all coming.
“And seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper”-Jeremiah 29.7
