Small-town Jewish life is alive and leading the way as it always has - opinion

Just this month in a small, rural town in central Maine, over 250 members of small-town Jewish communities gathered for a soulful, vibrant, multigenerational Shabbat service that included prayers for peace in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Friday night services at our annual Fall Shabbaton were led not only by our guests, the superb clergy of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, but also by a Muslim immigrant scholar from Iraq who serves local refugee families, an Israeli-American artist who raised her four children in Maine, and a Colby College student from the DC suburbs.

Participants came from places like Presque Isle, a remote town in northern Maine whose synagogue was closed decades ago, and from small towns like Bath, Auburn, Waterville, and Augusta, which maintain strong, small synagogues with devoted lay boards and mostly part-time clergy.

Along with significant showings from Maine’s small cities, Bangor and Portland, close to 100 college students from seven campuses joined in the learning and festivities, deepening their Jewish knowledge and commitment, while joining 150 multigenerational participants from the broader Maine community.

From our vantage point, small-town Jewish life is alive and leading the way as it always has, even if it looks different than it has in past generations.

Why is this important?

Why is this important? Historian and writer Austin Reid has documented the history of small-town Jewish communities, noting that many small-town synagogues, especially in post-industrial towns, no longer exist in their original forms. They are now remembered through archived synagogue board notes, former buildings, and old books that now live in the libraries of larger congregations.

However, not all small-town Jewish life is disappearing, and there is more to its value than just memorializing the past. At the Center for Small Town Jewish Life at Colby College, we have worked for a decade to enable small, rural, and under-resourced communities to thrive. These contemporary communities have distinctive strengths that should be instructive to Jewish communities of all sizes.

Among the many lessons that small-town Jewish life can teach the broader community is how to come together across lines of political, cultural, and religious difference in order to keep a community together and strong. Successful small-town Jewish communities have always needed big tents in order to survive and thrive.

In communities like ours, members have to learn how to interact with people who are different from themselves if they want their synagogues to survive; they cannot succumb to the pyrrhic privilege of self-sorting by class, denomination, or political affiliation.

It is for that reason that we actively recruit everyone who thirsts for Jewish life and learning, paying special attention to serving those who lack the resources to contribute financially to our institutions, or the social connections to immediately feel at home in them. We also teach and lead in a way that draws participants from across the ideological spectrum to engage with core texts and creative endeavors together.

The results have spoken for themselves: Not only is attendance at our programs at a record high, the individual communities that partner with us are reporting robust strength and increased commitment at their individual synagogues and institutions.

At this moment in American history, we must affirm the importance of recognizing the perseverance of small-town communities, their unique challenges, and instructive blessings. Many of our communities are alive and well. Like all Jewish communities, we need to lean into our strengths and meet the evolving challenges of a changing world in order to continue serving our people and our country.

Looking at our history will provide us with context, wisdom, and inspiration, but it cannot end there. We must also affirm the unique value of our vibrant present while actualizing the promise of a transformative future.

The writer, a rabbi, is founder and executive director of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life at Colby College.