Downsizing the Jewish Community of Youngstown, Ohio
On a warm day in July, the Knox Street Cemetery in Youngstown, Ohio, showed no signs of life except for the few birds building nests in the old trees surrounding the graveyard. A barbed wire fence lines the perimeter, and a rusty lock holds the iron gate tightly closed against would-be visitors or vandals. Generations of the city’s Jewish community lie beneath the grass in this lot, with weather-worn dates reaching back to the mid-1800s. Today, though, there are no little rocks left on the headstones by visitors, and no flowers. One day soon, perhaps, there will be no Jews left in town to visit.
For the small Jewish community of Youngstown, this cemetery and others like it represent a problem of growing urgency. The city’s Jewish population has been shrinking drastically for decades, as its aging members die or move to sunnier climes. With few young people staying, and few moving in, Jewish Youngstown has been forced to answer how—if at all—it will survive.
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