dothan, ala. | Members of the newest Jewish family in Dothan are settling in to their piece of the promised land: a new home, just down the street from the city’s water park and Dixie Youth baseball fields.
Matthew and Michelle Reed, along with their 2-year-old son and newborn baby boy, are the first to move to Dothan under a program that offers Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate and get involved with the city’s only synagogue, Temple Emanu-El.
A family that’s been part of the Reform congregation for decades funded the $1 million resettlement program and launched it last year, fearing the congregation would dwindle and die without an infusion of new blood.
With one new family already in the fold, and hundreds of others expressing interest, the goal is to bring as many as 19 more Jewish families to this mostly Christian town of 58,000 in rural southeast Alabama over the next five years.
Getting thousands of dollars in assistance was nice, the Reeds say, but leaving their home in Sanford, N.C., for Alabama was an easy decision: Matt was quickly able to get a job in the area, and his wife’s relatives were once members of Temple Emanu-El.
“It’s been freaky how easy this has been,” said Matt, 25, taking a break from moving boxes into his new home. The curly-haired Ayden, 2, played with a new trashcan while his mom watched after Sam, just 6 weeks old.
Michelle’s Jewish family has roots in Dothan, while her husband was raised Mormon and is in the process of converting to Judaism. Their mixed background wasn’t a drawback for program organizers — as many as half of Temple Emanu-El’s members have similar histories.
The friendliness of the people was the final clincher, they said.
The couple applied for the relocation program in September because Matt was finishing a stint with the Army at Fort Bragg, N.C. They moved to Dothan after he left the service Feb. 1.
“We always wanted to raise our kids Jewish, but we
didn’t want to do it in North Carolina,” said Michelle, 26. “We didn’t know anything about the temples up there. The one here my parents actually got married in.”
Leaders of the relocation program couldn’t be happier with their first catch.
“We are just so thrilled to have this family here. They are just a perfect fit,” said Rob Goldsmith, executive director of Blumberg Family Jewish Community Services, which oversees the recruiting project.
Temple Emanu-El, like many synagogues in Southern towns, has been shrinking for decades as young people leave for big cities like Atlanta. Dothan isn’t exactly a hot spot for Jews: The town is smack in the middle of the Bible Belt and calls itself the “Peanut Capital of the World.”
Worried about what the future might hold, congregation member Larry Blumberg put up money to begin a program to attract as many as 20 new Jewish families.
About 400 families have applied, and 60 of those were qualified after initial screening. Finalists go through a vetting process that includes written references, home visits and personal interviews.
Temple Emanu-El was founded in 1929, and early members were mainly immigrants who operated stores in downtown Dothan, the largest city in a rural farming region.
The congregation thrived for years, but it began shrinking in the 1970s as young families moved away.
The Reeds were the first to make it to Dothan under the new program, but 10 more families are in the pipeline.
“My hope would be that five years from now we have certainly been able to bring our 20 families here … and we’ve been able to augment that with additional growth as well,” said Blumberg, a boyhood friend of Michelle’s father, Michael Behrman of Montgomery, Ala.
In return for resettling and being active with the congregation for at least five years, families are reimbursed as much as $50,000 to cover items including moving expenses, housing, outstanding debt, education, temple dues and seed money for a small business.
Matt was an aviation mechanic in the Army, and he’s already gotten a job working on aircraft in nearby Ozark, near the Army’s main helicopter training base, Fort Rucker. Michelle works in the medical field but is taking time off because of their new son.
Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith, Robert Goldsmith’s wife, said members are eager to meet the first family to come to Dothan through the relocation program.
“People are welcoming them with open arms. We’ve had more phone calls with people saying, ‘What can we do for them? Can I take them out to dinner, can I bring them something?’ ” she said. “They’re really, really excited.”