Calling the Faithful To Become a Flock

A Congregation Started By a Waldorf Man With a Phone Book Is Among Jewish Groups Expanding in Southern Md.

Robert Locke of Indian Head prays with members of the Sha'are Shalom congregation in Charles County. The group, started 15 years ago, plans to break ground for a synagogue in Waldorf in August. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

Joel Cohen wanted his kids to receive instruction in their Jewish faith. But the closest synagogue was half an hour from his house in Waldorf. So Cohen did what any good dad would do: He opened the phone book and called everyone he could find in the area with a Jewish-sounding name, hoping that others might help him form a social group to teach the Torah.

More than 15 years later, members of that original Charles County group plan to break ground for a synagogue in Waldorf in August. The building will mark the culmination of steady growth within small Jewish congregations, an increase in numbers that has been a piece of the Southern Maryland region's swelling population.

From Waldorf to Lexington Park to Upper Marlboro, small, close-knit Jewish congregations are becoming more visible as a decade of rapid development brings suburbanization and a more diverse population to the area.

Quantifying the growth of Southern Maryland's Jewish population is difficult. The U.S. Census Bureau does not collect religious affiliation data, and the National Jewish Population Survey does not break down data to geographic regions as small as Southern Maryland. The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington published a study in 2003 about Jews living in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, but it did not examine Charles, St. Mary's or Calvert counties.

But experts and Jewish congregation members agree that the Jewish population in those three jurisdictions is growing. Two congregations' plans to build synagogues in or near Southern Maryland appear to support that view. Cohen's congregation, Sha'are Shalom, started with about a dozen memberships 15 years ago and now counts 36, many of them families. A Calvert congregation, Beit Chaverim, started with about 20 memberships about 2000 and now has 36.

Nearby in Prince George's County, the Shaare Tikvah congregation sold the Temple Hills synagogue it had occupied since 1967 and plans to erect a building in Upper Marlboro to more effectively target the budding Jewish presence in Southern Maryland. It has 34 memberships, including many families.

And the Beth Israel congregation in Lexington Park has about 55 memberships, 40 of them families. After a boost when the Patuxent River Naval Air Station expanded in the late 1990s, the St. Mary's group has maintained steady numbers and, like all the congregations, can count many more Jews in Southern Maryland who are not official members.

Southern Maryland's small congregations have little resemblance to their big-city counterparts that often can count more than 1,000 dues-paying members and run six simultaneous adult education classes. Instead, these are groups of no more than 60 families that meet in such places as an Episcopal church's classrooms or at members' homes. Some use part-time rabbis or rabbinical students.

All of them struggle with the fact that it requires serious commitment to be a Jew in Southern Maryland. Some of the amenities that come with big-city life, such as Kosher delis, good rye bread and Jewish neighbors, are few and far between.

"Even the supermarkets that do try to provide certain things, especially before Passover, they don't get it," said Lisa Shender, who moved to St. Mary's from near Philadelphia and is membership coordinator for Beth Israel. "Coming down here, we found ourselves in a distinct minority. It was quite a change."

Cohen now works as an economist near Columbus, Ohio, where he belongs to a congregation of about 550 members. He plays down his phone book exploits, but he remembers the challenges that his small congregation in Waldorf faced in its infancy -- hashing out whether to teach children about the Holocaust, deciding how important it was to provide adult and youth classes and struggling to survive in an area with very few Jews. For Cohen, those were the most daunting obstacles. By comparison, he said, calling 60 strangers and asking if they wanted to form a Jewish group in Southern Maryland was easy.

Cohen's experience is typical of small congregations, said Karen Falk, curator of the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore. She conducted a study of small Jewish communities in Southern Maryland and found that the groups were driven by the dedication of their key members, who often join or form congregations so their children can receive Jewish instruction.