Why small town Jews buried their dead in big cities — and what those journeys reveal today
Funeral trains linked isolated Jews to larger communities, revealing how belonging could stretch across counties, rail lines, and faiths
Small Town
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Holy Ground As synagogues close, a grandson of Holocaust survivors is building a new one — in an Illinois cornfield
Amid the harvest, the descendants of Holocaust survivors paused their farmwork to pray in a tent beside the fields — marking the first step toward a new synagogue in the American heartland.
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Holy Ground This small, stubborn Appalachian synagogue is defying the odds — and so is its new rabbi
In Charleston, West Virginia, a century-old congregation is betting that a 30-something rabbi with two little kids can keep its doors open for decades
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Holy Ground He grew up Christian. Now he’s sleeping in the synagogue that sparked his conversion.
In a small Ohio town, a shuttered sanctuary sparked one man’s conversion — and a mission to preserve America’s overlooked Jewish past
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Holy Ground This town lost most of its Jews. But not its Judaism.
A century-old Orthodox synagogue in a Rust Belt town lost most of its congregation, its rabbis, and almost everything else — but not its daily minyan
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News An Alabama millionaire offered Jews $50,000 to move to his town. 16 years later, what’s left?
Dothan’s Temple Emanu-El synagogue made national headlines with a bold plan to revive Jewish life
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
All four of Nik Jakobs’ grandparents survived the Nazis. Now this Jewish cattleman is honoring them — and a shuttered Rust Belt synagogue — by building a new sanctuary and museum in rural Illinois
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Culture What do you do with a Jewish cemetery in a town without Jews?
Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, once had a thriving Jewish community. What happened when their dead were left in one woman’s care?
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