Kesher Talk

Synagogue for sale down South: Congregation Beth Israel in Clarksdale, Mississippi — once home to the largest Jewish congregation in the state — is up for sale:

The last Sabbath services at Beth Israel were held in May. More than 100 former congregants and their families came to pay their respects to the Reform synagogue. It was a throwback to the congregation's glory days, back when the pews were full, the Sunday school enrollment topped 100 and a rabbi was employed full time.

Now, however, active membership in the synagogue has dwindled to less than a handful, making a minyan all but unthinkable. There are no Jewish children left in town; the congregation's average age hovers around 60. A Memphis rabbi visits the community four times each year. And so, the synagogue — once filled with the clamor of children running the hallways, exuberant revelers shouting "mazel tov!" at weddings and gossip over "covered dish" dinners featuring fried chicken and kugel — stands empty, available to the highest bidder.

Or any bidder.

So far, after months on the market, there are no takers; the congregation isn't the only part of town that has fallen on hard times. Once a thriving farm town, Clarksdale's population has withered, like much of the rural South, as small-town superstars seek better opportunities in the nation's big cities. Once a hotbed of activity in the civil rights era — it is the hometown of the famed civil rights leader Aaron Henry, whom Senator Joseph Lieberman recently called "a heroic man" — Clarksdale today is best described as quiet, sleepy and downright depressed. Cotton is no longer king, downtown shops have shut down while buyers stream to the Wal-Mart on the highway and the middle class has all but abandoned the place.

Jews — who are, as they say, like everyone else, only more so — have been hit perhaps hardest of all. Their numbers have declined past the point of no return.

posted by William @ 9/22/2003 09:02:15 AM