Source: The Detroit News
Wire Service: AP
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080911/LIFESTYLE04/809110310/1041/LIFESTYLE04
Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt.
Blumberg is chairman of the Blumberg Family Relocation Fund, an organization offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World. Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group's leaders say, and the money doesn't have to be repaid.
More Jews are living in the South than ever -- about 386,000 at last count in 2001, according to Stuart Rockoff, a historian at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss. But young Jews are leaving small places like Dothan in favor of cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala., Rockoff said, and dozens of small-town synagogues have closed.