Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15fair.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
At one table there were kosher jelly beans and lists of jobs. At another there were Tabasco sauce and real estate deals touted as even hotter than the sauce.
The idea, at the jobs and relocation fair on the West Side of Manhattan, was to lure Orthodox Jews from New York City to towns and other cities where emerging Orthodox communities are eager to reinforce their numbers.
“They’re all over the country,” said Frank Buchweitz, the national director of community services and special projects for the Orthodox Union, a Jewish outreach and social service organization that sponsored the fair. “We want to help them grow.”
At another table, Alan Katz, a lawyer from New Orleans, said that his synagogue was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina and that the city lost some of its Orthodox community afterward. “We’d like to get some people to help us raise the new synagogue,” he said. “We’re focusing on jobs and affordable housing.”
Scott Friedman, 38, a Realtor from Denver, handed a real estate brochure to a couple. “These are pretty centrally located,” he said, pointing to several four- and five-bedroom homes. “There are shuls close by.”
“For us, it’s about expanding the critical mass of the Orthodox community in Denver,” he said. “We’re trying to get to the next level.”