DOTHAN, Ala.-Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt. Blumberg is chairman of an organization offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that
DOTHAN, Ala.-Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt. Blumberg is chairman of an organization offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World.
Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group’s leaders say, and the money doesn’t have to be repaid. More Jews are living in the South than ever–about 386,000 at last count in 2001, according to Stuart Rockoff, a historian at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss.
But young Jews are leaving small places like Dothan in favor of cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, Rockoff said, and dozens of small-town synagogues have closed.
“A lot of the older people have died, and not many of the younger ones have stayed,” said Thelma Nomberg, a member of the Dothan temple who grew up in nearby Ozark, where she was the only Jewish student in public school in the 1940s. “We are dying.”
Being outside the Christian majority was never a problem, Nomberg said, even six decades ago. She won the Miss Ozark beauty pageant at 14 and sometimes attended church with friends after sleepovers. Launched in June, the Blumberg program has put advertisements in Jewish newspapers, and it plans to expand the campaign. AP
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