It is not even worth arguing anymore, and once you know it is there it is almost impossible to ignore:
"In western Maryland, a small Jewish community preserves its heritage" by Michelle Boorstein
| Washington Post September 25, 2014
CUMBERLAND, Md. — When Doug Schwab was growing up in the 1960s here, on Maryland’s far western tip, there were 60 kids in his Hebrew school and the newspaper was full in the fall with ads from the many Jewish-owned downtown stores saying they would be closed for the High Holidays.
This week, as Jews in this small Appalachian Mountain city celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Jewish communal life is far more intimate. A few of the nine children who make up B’er Chayim’s Hebrew school helped prepare the synagogue for the year’s biggest crowd, and people who happened to be traveling the 2½ hours to Washington and Baltimore were asked to bring back challah and special white Sabbath candles, as Jewish items aren’t for sale around here anymore.
Most of B’er Chayim’s members are over 60 and have children who moved away from this economically depressed region and will not be in Cumberland for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur next week.
‘‘Now you’re at a point where you don’t have any family around, so you have to decide you want to keep the heritage alive and do your part to do that,’’ said Schwab, 59, who retired recently with his wife from running their children’s clothing business and now leads many of the 50-family synagogue’s efforts. ‘‘You’re making it what it becomes.’’
Statistically, Cumberland’s Jews would seem likely to become history. Small American Jewish communities up and down the eastern United States are dying as the economic forces that brought Jews to run stores in downtowns decades ago vanish and Americans in general cluster more and more in major metro areas.
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They are just finding that out? Kinda brings you down, huh?
Jews are overwhelmingly big-city people — and always have been. But for the smallest Jewish communities, the High Holidays are a time when Jewish life becomes a bit more visible, when visiting rabbis come to places like Vicksburg, Miss., Olean, N.Y., and Auburn, Ala., to hold services in synagogues, living rooms, or borrowed church space.
I see enough of it in my paper.
Cumberland’s Jews aren’t ready to give up. A major private donation allowed them to refurbish the one remaining synagogue.
Yeah, somehow private wealth always comes to the Jews re$cue.
In some ways, B’er Chayim’s challenges aren’t so different from much of organized religion in America. People are less affiliated with particular denominations, and the vast majority of churches have fewer than 500 members. But religious minorities have particular challenges, and Jews tend to bunch up. Less than 40 percent of Americans live in the 20 biggest US metro areas, while 80 percent of Jews do, said Ira Sheskin, geography department chairman at the University of Miami and an expert on Jewish demographics.
‘‘Jews are an ethnic group. If they don’t cluster together, they don’t maintain that identity. The Internet has changed that a bit in the past 10 to 15 years, with virtual congregations, but generally once you get below 100 Jews, places tend to disappear,’’ he said.
Cue the somber violin music.
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