Press
The latest updates from the Center for Small Town Jewish Life
This April 2026 AP article delves into the Center’s work supporting, strengthening, and connecting small town Jewish communities across America. The article was syndicated to news outlets nationwide, most notably the Washington Post and ABC News.
The Montana Jewish Project (MJP) delivers Hanukkah curriculum boxes to public school teachers around the state—often in rural areas with few to no Jewish students. The Center for Small Town Jewish Life is proud to have worked with MJP Director Rebecca Stanfel through our national Makom program.
Rabbi Rachel Isaacs explores the importance of ensuring that all Jewish communities, regardless of size, have access to thriving Jewish life and learning.
The New York Times covered this story of small town Jewish life and ingenuity. A group of Colby College students, some Jewish and some not, helped harvest ice from a pond in western Maine for a mikvah (ritual bath) at Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, Maine.
Lauren Cohen Fisher, Rabbi Dr. David Freidenreich, and Rabbi Rachel Isaacs explore what it means to be a Jewish adult, including being actively engaged as both a consumer and a producer of meaningful Jewish life.
In this June 19, 2023, Identity/Crisis podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute, Rabbi Rachel Isaacs talks about small town American Jewish life with podcast host Yehuda Kurtzer.
Rabbi Rachel Isaacs was honored to deliver the sermon at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on March 24, 2023. She spoke about class and income inequality, sharing her experience in small town Maine and touching on geographical and socioeconomic inequities in the American Jewish community. From Central Synagogue:
“Why aren’t we talking about class? The topic is tender because class is inextricably linked with our dignity. In Hebrew, the word for dignity is ‘kavod’ and it shares the same root with ‘kaved,’ ‘heavy.’ Dignity is about how much leverage we have – in creating a world that gives us what we need and brings us into spaces with the promise of fullness, respect, and agency. And the inequitable distribution of this ‘kavod’ is impacting the ability of the American Jewish establishment to sustain functional, holy communities equitably nationwide.” – Rabbi Rachel Isaacs
This article by Melanie Weiss appeared in Lilith magazine on July 9, 2019:
“It is 6:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning in April, and I am sitting in a coffee shop in Brookline, MA, with two young women. We’re staking out this very spot, across the street from the closest kosher supermarket to the town we live in, 185 miles away. The supermarket doors are due to open at 7A.M., and we’re sipping much-appreciated coffee as we watch a line slowly accrue at the door. I feel the 13 days until Passover perching demon-like on my shoulder.
We are here for Pesach shopping, naturally, and my 19-year-old ally is doing this sort of mad run for the first time. She’s a fellow for the Center for Small Town Jewish Life, where I and my other young colleague work, and president of the local Hillel. The three of us had aggressively workshopped the Hillel Passover shopping list on our ride through interminable Boston traffic. I myself have four lists in my pocket, covering what feels like the needs of every Jew for several zip codes in any direction. The teenager eyes the growing queue with frank disbelief. “I kind of can’t believe I’m doing this,” she murmurs into her coffee. I grin. “Welcome to Maine Jewish womanhood!”
I want to be clear: it is not like I did not wait in crazy-long lines at kosher supermarkets back when I lived in Brooklyn, not like I didn’t schlep groceries for friends or spend crazy time and effort on holiday preparations. But until I moved to small-town Maine, a state that clocks in with a mere 1.3 million people,there was never any undercurrent of desperation to these acts; they were never freighted with the certain knowledge that, if we didn’t drag ourselves down to do a town’s worth of shopping, there might not be food for Passover…”