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WYFP - Jews, Jews everywhere! (NOT Israel/Gaza related) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-01  

Evening folks, it’s been another week, I hope yours didn’t suck. If it did, you’re in the right place to vent and express yourself to a group of fellow humans who do the same. Writers welcome!

I live in a medium-ish city in Louisiana, that’s not Baton Rouge or New Orleans. It has a small Jewish community, where there are most of the basics — services Friday night at least once a month, mentions of the holidays as they approach and services for the big ones — and a cemetery. I don’t hang out with them, and they don’t have a permanent rabbi, just student rabbis come through once a month and it’s lay led the rest of the time, but it’s Reform, which is not my bag. Totally kosher, just not my thing. The shul I don’t go to is in New Orleans. But — I work as the on staff anthropologist (lifter of heavy objects/archive shlepper) at a museum in a very small city about 45 minutes away — and all three of us on staff are Jewish.

I fell into this job in my “useless liberal arts degree” field because of Jewish geography in an online class my boss and I were unknowingly taking together. We were talking about the weather where we lived and she and I realized we were both in the same city. I brought her coffee at the museum a few days later and hung out, and now I have a part time job. Sure they have screwed up all but my first check, my boss is a bit scattered and gossipy, and the director is weird, but it’s a job and it’s mine.

A few weeks ago our outgoing intern Callie (Cajun, not Jewish) was giving a presentation about locals and the civil war — who served, which side, who didn’t, feelings of the community about the war, it was a good talk. One of the people she mentioned was Jewish, and I thought that was cool. Then I got to talking with her about it and there were more Jews. She had a whole list of Jews who helped found the town, and built up a Jewish community, served the community and lived and died proudly Jewish in small town Louisiana over 100 years ago. I got a copy of the list from her later on. So then I looked online — more Jews. Jews who had ties to this small town, to other towns, names that appeared over and over, Plonsky, Loeb, Wiseberg, Jacobs — marrying their kids to each other strengthening community ties and attracting more Jews to the area. I do more research and find a sociologist did a study of this small town Jewish community in the 1950s, so I’m getting a copy of that. Somehow I find myself researching my own presentation on Jewish heritage and culture in Small Town, This Parish this afternoon. I do not believe in an interventionist God, however I do believe that God has staff. And I landed a job in the Jewiest Small Town in Louisiana that has a museum run by Jews. Somehow, someone in God’s staff must have used the “approved” stamp for me. And I appreciate it.

Of course, my newly Catholic Mum claims SHE prayed for me to get a job, so Jesus actually did it. So another Jew in Jewish bingo I guess? I’m not sure if I should count him or not.

So tell me, how was your week?

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