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Why small town Jews buried their dead in big cities — and what those journeys reveal today
The train that carried John Friday’s body from Athens, Ohio, in October 1886, was headed three hours west to Cincinnati for burial at the Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery.
Yet even as the burial took place far from home, the town he left behind stopped to mourn him. Many businesses closed. The mayor convened an assembly in his honor. Local papers said that no citizen’s death “would have created a greater vacuum in our community.”
In a county with no synagogue and only a handful of Jewish families, the rituals of Jewish burial unfolded across distance — but the grief was local, immediate, and deeply felt. The train carried Friday away. But Athens kept vigil.
His funeral showed something that was once common in small towns across the United States but often forgotten today: for generations, American Jewish life has taken root far from major urban centers and rich stories from American Jewish history can be found even in areas and decades in which no organized Jewish communities were present.
For countless Jewish families in small towns, where there were often no local Jewish cemeteries, the journey to burial became its own ritual — a moment when the town gathered, honored, and then released one of its own for burial among the Jewish people.
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, arguably the most influential American rabbi of his era, presided over Friday’s burial in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, in Athens, Mayor Judiah Higgins signed a public resolution praising Friday’s “enterprise,” his kindness as “a man dear to all,” and “deep devotion to the interests of his adopted town.” Two places mourning the same man. Two communities claiming him in different ways.
This was not unusual. It was part of a larger pattern. Across the Midwest, the same story repeated itself.
In Chillicothe, Ohio, Moses Bottigheimer died in 1897 after 25 years in business. The local paper noted that Jewish residents were buried in Cincinnati or Columbus because Ross County had no Jewish cemetery; yet even before then, several families had already chosen to honor their loved ones at the town’s own Grandview Cemetery — a reminder that Jewish burial in rural America was never a single story but a series of adaptations, gestures of care and remembrance shaped by circumstances.
Almost 20 years later, in Anderson, Indiana, Louis Loeb passed away after living in the town for more than half a century. He was a fixture of the community, known for quiet acts of charity and for “his loyalty to friends, and always a close adherent to a principle he believed to be right.”
When he died in 1915, a Presbyterian pastor and Reverend George Winfrey of the First Christian Church in Alexandria, a nearby town, conducted the funeral in the family home — a common practice in communities without a local rabbi. After the service, his remains were taken to Cincinnati for burial in the United Jewish Cemetery. The local paper wrote that “Anderson will miss Louis Loeb,” calling him a man whose life had strengthened the town and declaring that his memory would “live for years with those who knew best the many strong and vigorous qualities of the man whose only ambition was to live a quiet and unostentatious life.”
Again and again, in places too small to sustain synagogues or cemeteries, distance did not lessen devotion. Towns gathered around the departed; Jewish families sent their loved ones to cities where a Jewish burial could be completed; and in the space between those two acts, a sacred form of mourning emerged — one marked by the belief that dignity can be shared across many miles.
For a great number of Jewish families in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the nearest Jewish cemetery was not local, but hours away — often in larger regional cities like Cincinnati. Burial was one of the few moments, alongside weddings and the High Holidays, when isolated Jewish families reconnected with the broader Jewish community.
From rural areas, bodies traveled by wagon, then by train, then by carriage again for the final mile. If you trace the burial registers of cemeteries like Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills, you will find names from dozens of small towns: Athens, Xenia, Chillicothe, Piqua, Portsmouth, Jackson. In many of these places, no synagogue ever stood, no cemetery wall marked a Jewish space— yet here too Jews lived, worked, raised children, and loved their neighbors.
This is something we forget when we search only in cities for Jewish history. The absence of headstones in a small town does not mean the absence of Jews. It means their final resting place lies elsewhere, but their stories still belong to the towns where they lived their lives.
And so the last journey became a ritual in itself. Families accompanied the body to the station; friends and neighbors filled the home sharing condolences; merchants closed their businesses as a sign of respect. More than once, a town gathered to watch the funeral train pull away — a moment as solemn as any burial service.
The cemetery was distant. But the mourning was local.
A civic shiva
In ways that are easy to overlook now, these departures tell us something profound about Jewish belonging in rural America: that community existed even where institutions did not; that reverence could be local even when ritual was not; and that the townspeople who lined the streets were participating in a kind of civic shiva — one made of presence, respect, and the understanding that a life can shape a place long after the body has left it.
It is heartbreaking to imagine how many such stories have faded from local memory simply because the grave is elsewhere. If John Friday’s descendants looked only in Cincinnati, they might have known him as a respected businessman who chose to be buried as a Jew — but they would have missed the part where an entire town closed its doors to grieve him.
The paper said his death left “a vacuum in our community.” A loss like that is not created by a stranger. It is created by a neighbor.
When we lose the local context of a life, we lose more than a footnote. We lose the texture of belonging — the conversations in a shop, the familiar nods on the street, the civic friendships, the quiet ways towns knit themselves together.
Jewish cemeteries in cities hold the remains of thousands who never lived there. Their names are inscribed in stone, but the stories that shaped them are scattered across counties and crossroads now often forgotten.
To remember them rightly, we have to look both ways: toward the city where they were buried, and toward the small town that mourned when the train pulled away. This is a more complete act of zachor, remembrance.
The distance between those places — the miles of track, the rituals divided across geography — is not emptiness. It is the space where American Jewish life once unfolded: improvised, interwoven, sustained by neighbors who understood that belonging does not require shared faith, only shared humanity.
And if the grave lies in Cincinnati, the grief still belonged to Athens. The memory does, too.
These journeys reveal something enduring: that holiness is not confined to where we are buried but to where we are loved.
The post Why small town Jews buried their dead in big cities — and what those journeys reveal today appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu Will Meet Trump on Dec. 29 to Discuss Second Phase of Gaza Plan, Spokesperson Says
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach to shake hands at a joint press conference in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US President Donald Trump on Dec. 29 to discuss the next steps of the Gaza ceasefire, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Monday.
“The prime minister will meet with President Trump on Monday, Dec. 29. They will discuss the future steps and phases and the international stabilization force of the ceasefire plan,” Shosh Bedrosian said in an online briefing to reporters.
The prime minister’s office said on Dec. 1 that Trump had invited Netanyahu to the White House. Israeli media have since reported that the two leaders may meet in Florida.
The spokesperson’s comments came one day after Netanyahu said on Sunday that the second phase of a US plan to end the war in Gaza was close, but cautioned several key issues still needed to be resolved, including whether a multinational security force would be deployed.
Netanyahu, speaking to reporters alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Jerusalem, said that he would hold important discussions with Trump at the end of the month on how to ensure the plan‘s second phase was achieved.
Netanyahu said that he would discuss with Trump how to bring an end to Hamas rule in Gaza. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is entering its second month, although both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce agreement.
Netanyahu said that it was important to ensure Hamas not only upholds the ceasefire but also follows through on “their commitment” to the plan to disarm and for Gaza to be demilitarized.
Israel retained control of 53% of Gaza under the first phase of Trump‘s plan, which involved the release of hostages held by terrorists in Gaza and of Palestinians, many convicted of terrorism, detained by Israel. The final hostage remains to be handed over are those of an Israeli police officer killed on Oct. 7, 2023, while fighting Hamas-led Gazan militants who had invaded Israel.
“We’ll get him out,” Netanyahu said.
Since the ceasefire started in October, the terrorist group has reestablished itself in the rest of Gaza.
GERMAN CHANCELLOR: PHASE TWO MUST COME NOW
According to the plan, Israel is to pull back further in the second phase as a transitional authority is established in Gaza and a multinational security force is deployed, Hamas is disarmed, and reconstruction begins.
A multinational coordination center has been established in Israel, but there are no deadlines in the plan and officials involved say that efforts to advance it have stalled.
“What will be the timeline? What are the forces that are coming in? Will we have international forces? If not, what are the alternatives? These are all topics that are being discussed,” Netanyahu said, describing them as central issues.
Merz said that Germany was willing to help rebuild Gaza but would wait for Netanyahu‘s meeting with Trump, and for clarity on what Washington was prepared to do, before Berlin decides what it would contribute but that phase two “must come now.”
Israel has repeatedly carried out air strikes since the ceasefire came into effect that it says are fending off attacks or destroying terrorist infrastructure.
NETANYAHU: WEST BANK ANNEXATION REMAINS A SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION
Netanyahu said that he would also discuss with Trump “opportunities for peace,” an apparent reference to US efforts for Israel to establish formal ties with Arab and Muslim states.
“We believe there’s a path to advance a broader peace with the Arab states, and a path also to establish a workable peace with our Palestinian neighbors,” Netanyahu said, asserting Israel would always insist on security control of the West Bank.
Trump has said he promised Muslim leaders that Israel would not annex the West Bank, where Netanyahu‘s government is backing the development of Jewish settlements.
The “question of political annexation” of the West Bank remains a subject of discussion, Netanyahu said.
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US Congress Moves Toward Repeal of Tough ‘Caesar’ Sanctions on Syria
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a Ministerial formation of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, in Damascus, Syria, March 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A set of tough US sanctions imposed on Syria under its former leader Bashar al-Assad could be lifted within weeks, after their repeal was included in a sweeping defense policy bill unveiled during the weekend and due for votes in Congress within days.
The Senate and House of Representatives included repeal of the so-called Caesar sanctions, a move seen as key to Syria‘s economic recovery, in a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a sweeping annual defense policy bill that was unveiled late on Sunday.
The provision in the 3,000-page defense bill repeals the 2019 Caesar Act and requires regular reports from the White House certifying that Syria‘s government is fighting Islamic State terrorists, upholding religious and ethnic minority rights within the country and not taking unilateral, unprovoked military action against its neighbors, including Israel.
The NDAA is expected to pass by the end of this year and be signed into law by President Donald Trump, whose fellow Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate and lead the committees that wrote the bill.
Lifting the sanctions is considered a key to the success of Syria‘s new government. Several Saudi Arabian firms are planning billion-dollar investments in the country as part of Riyadh’s drive to support the country’s recovery. The US sanctions have been a significant obstacle to Syria‘s economic revival.
Trump announced plans to lift all sanctions on Syria during a meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in May, and his administration has suspended them temporarily. However, the Caesar sanctions, the most stringent restrictions, can only be removed permanently by an act of Congress.
The 2019 Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria targeting individuals, companies and institutions linked to Assad, who was the president of Syria from 2000 until his ouster in 2024 by rebel forces led by Sharaa.
Syrian central bank Governor AbdulKader Husrieh told Reuters last week that the country’s economy was growing faster than had been expected. He described the repeal of many US sanctions as “a miracle.”
The sanctions are named after a Syrian military photographer, code-named “Caesar,” who smuggled out thousands of gruesome photos documenting torture and war crimes by Assad’s government.
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EU Looking at Options for Boosting Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, Document Says
Lebanese army members stand on a military vehicle during a Lebanese army media tour, to review the army’s operations in the southern Litani sector, in Alma Al-Shaab, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
The European Union is studying options for strengthening Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces to help free up the Lebanese army to focus on disarming the terrorist group Hezbollah, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday.
A 2024 truce between Lebanon and Israel remains fragile, with Israel carrying out regular strikes on Lebanese territory that it says are targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm.
The document, produced by the EU’s diplomatic arm and circulated to the 27 member states, said it would pursue consultations with Lebanese authorities and that a scoping mission would take place in early 2026 on possible new assistance for the country’s Internal Security Forces.
EU efforts could “focus on advice, training and capacity-building,” the paper said, adding that the bloc would not take over the tasks of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), whose mandate is set to expire at the end of 2026, when it is expected to begin a year-long drawdown and withdrawal.
Instead, the EU “could contribute to the gradual transfer of internal security tasks” from the Lebanese Armed Forces to the Internal Security Forces, allowing the army to focus on its core defense tasks, the document said.
The UN secretary general is expected to produce a transition plan in June 2026 that will address risks stemming from UNIFIL’s departure.
EU, LEBANESE OFFICIALS TO MEET NEXT WEEK
The paper from the European External Action Service comes ahead of a planned meeting between senior EU and Lebanese officials in Brussels on Dec. 15.
“Through a combination of advice, training and possibly the provision of certain equipment, the overall objective would be to enable the Police and the Gendarmerie to fulfil their mandates in cities and rural areas across the country,” it said, adding the EU could also help Lebanon to better secure its land border with Syria.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy on Lebanon, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was in Beirut on Monday to propose a roadmap that aims to assess independently Hezbollah’s disarmament, diplomatic sources said.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said last week that Lebanon wanted to see a ceasefire monitoring mechanism play a more robust role in verifying Israel’s claims that Hezbollah is rearming as well as the work of the Lebanese army in dismantling the armed group’s infrastructure.
Asked whether that meant Lebanon would accept US and French troops on the ground as part of a verification mechanism, Salam said, “of course.”