A Congregation Started By a Waldorf Man With a Phone Book Is Among Jewish Groups Expanding in Southern Md.
By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
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.
"Jewish life in the small community is not easy," Falk said. "It's a conscious choice on the part of every individual Jew in these communities to remain Jewish."
But that's exactly how Shender prefers it.
"Being part of a huge community, you don't have to work very hard at being Jewish: It sort of just is," she said. "Those who have joined our community find that they are part of a family."
Many at a recent Sha'are Shalom service echoed Shender's sentiments. But they said they are eager to see more members in their congregation, and they hope their new building might entice others to join.
"To me, the building is more than just a building. It's a symbol that Judaism is here," said Lee Weinberger, the congregation's membership director. "It's a central place for all Jews to come together."
Still, some Jews find small-town existence too formidable, even in such diversifying areas as Southern Maryland. Christine Arnold-Lourie, a history professor at the College of Southern Maryland, lives in Silver Spring, where many of her neighbors are Jewish and she belongs to a congregation with thousands of members. She said she would never have thought to raise her children in Southern Maryland because of her concerns about a lack of tolerance for Judaism.
"Most of our students have never seen a Jew," she said. "There's a real lack of understanding and in some cases a lack of tolerance."
Klaus Zwilsky, the outgoing president of the Beit Chaverim congregation in Calvert, said practicing Judaism in a small town can be a struggle, but it is a happy struggle. He might be chief cook and bottle washer in addition to president of his congregation, but he is willing to work long hours as long as congregation members stay enthused.
"It's a struggle, but we seem to be able to make a go of it," he said.
And there are signs of progress for the small congregations. Debra Ryon, a founding member of Beit Chaverim, said she was delighted to find recently that she has another Jewish person living in her immediate neighborhood.
Randy Schoch, the rabbi of Sha'are Shalom in Waldorf, said the Jewish population obviously is growing as more people of all faiths move to Washington's outer suburbs in search of more affordable housing prices.
And even though Andy Sheldon, president of Shaare Tikvah, has seen a decrease in his congregation's membership over the past 30 years, he said he is hopeful that the new building in Upper Marlboro will attract new members.
If that fails, he could always use the phone book.
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