HUFFINGTON
08.05.12
SHALOM Y’ALL
a welcome kit of shabbat candles,
kosher wine, memberships to the
Jewish community center and a
pitch to stay.
Once a place where Eastern European Jews flocked in the late
19th and early 20th centuries,
Birmingham was home to powerful, enterprising Jews who ran
major merchants and department
stores, such as the now-defunct
Parisians chain. Poised for much
of its history to become the new
Southern Jewish metropolis (the
titles instead went to Atlanta and
South Florida) the community is
now at a crossroads.
The old are getting older. The
young are in short supply and
headed to big cities. Neither the
smaller towns that once fed into
the city’s Jewish landscape nor
the region’s former industrial or
retail strength can be counted on
to propel the population into the
21st century.
Birmingham isn’t the only place
recruiting Jews. In Tulsa, Okla., a
similar effort is underway, while in
Dothan, Ala., and Meridian, Miss.,
graying small-town synagogues
have offered to pay Jewish families
as much as $50,000 to relocate. In
New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina wiped out an Orthodox syna-
“We’re not worried about the Jewish
community in the next 10 or 20 years.
We’re worried about the next 100.”
gogue, the Jewish Federation gives
small stipends and memberships to
a Jewish dating website to encourage newcomers to settle.
Fueled by immigration and
transplants from other parts of
the country, the religious makeup
of the South has diversified, with
Islamic, Mormon and Spanishspeaking congregations making
headway in places once reliably
spiritually homogeneous. Birmingham, too, has become more
diverse. But unlike more prosperous Southern cities with large
Jewish populations, Birmingham’s
Jewish community is being confronted with a harsh reality: It
needs to grow to survive.
“We’re not worried about the
Jewish community in the next 10
or 20 years,” says Seligman. “We’re
worried about the next 100.”
“YOU BELONG IN BIRMINGHAM”
A third-generation Sephardic Jew,
Seligman exudes Southern hospitality with a sense of cosmopolitanism that sets Birmingham apart