Uncategorized
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.
Uncategorized
UN Official Speaks at Same Event in Qatar as Hamas Leader, Iranian Foreign Minister
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
A United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to denigrate Israel spoke at the same event in Qatar over the weekend as a senior Hamas official and Iran’s top diplomat.
The Al Jazeera Forum, which took place over the weekend in Qatar, featured speakers including Hamas former leader and current senior figure Khaled Meshaal, Iran’s foreign minister, and Francesca Albanese — the UN’s notoriously controversial special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories.
Writer and Open Source Intelligence researcher Eitan Fischberger noted that Albanese, whose job centers around human rights, would be speaking at the same event as the leader of Hamas — the terrorist organization that has ruled Gaza since 2006 and committed the October 7 attack on Israel — and Iran’s foreign minister — who is part of the regime that reportedly killed tens of thousands of civilians while they were protesting against the government.
And Albanese was not the only speaker whose professional focus is on human rights but ended up speaking at a conference with some of the world’s most notable human rights abusers. According to the Al Jazeera Forum website, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a professor of international law, and a humanitarian and climate activist also spoke at the event. Additionally, at least one American professor — who teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park — spoke at the forum.
While Albanese spoke at the event, she discussed Israel being a “common enemy of humanity.”
EMBED https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/2020454512356376911?s=20
The Anti-Defamation League responded to her appearance and comments at the forum, writing, “When will the world stop allowing Albanese to dress up hateful bias against Jews, Israel and endorsement of terrorism, as righteous indignation? ADL has long been calling for Albanese to be found in breach of the UNHRC code of conduct and to be separated from her mandate.”
The Israeli Director of the Digital Diplomacy Bureau wrote that “the mask is finally off” and that there is “No need for satire – reality writes it better.”
Albanese’s appearance at a conference with a Hamas leader is the latest chapter of her extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In 2024, the UN launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations. UN Watch explains that in “November 2023, Ms. Albanese conducted a lobbying trip to Australia and New Zealand in which she did not conduct any investigation pursuant to her mandate. Contrary to her denials and those by the UN, this report documents how the trip was partially funded by ‘external’ groups, most likely pro-Hamas lobby groups in those countries.”
Also in 2024, Albanese claimed Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. Last year, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron calling Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.”
When asked what people do not understand about Hamas, she added, “If someone violates your right to self-determination, you are entitled to embrace resistance.”
Uncategorized
Somalia Warns Israel Against Military Base in Somaliland, Signs Defense Pact With Saudi Arabia
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud delivers the opening keynote speech during the 17th Al Jazeera Forum, themed ”The Palestinian Cause and the Regional Balance of Power in the Context of an Emerging Multipolar World,” in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 7, 2026. Photo: Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has warned Israel against establishing a military base in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, as Mogadishu bolsters strategic ties with Middle Eastern states amid mounting regional tensions.
At the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Saturday, Mohamud sounded the alarm over a potential Israeli military foothold in the Horn of Africa, while once again condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as a “blatant breach of international law.”
Somaliland, which has claimed independence for decades in East Africa but remains largely unrecognized, is situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the south and east.
During Saturday’s event, Mohamud insisted that an Israeli military base in Somaliland would offer no real defensive benefit and would primarily serve as a springboard for foreign interventions.
“A base is not a tourist destination — it is a military facility, and military means either attack or defense,” he said during a speech. “There is no part of Somalia that Israel has any need to defend.”
“We will fight to the full extent of our capacity,” Mohamud continued. “We will confront any Israeli forces that enter, because we oppose this and will never allow it.”
For years now, Somalia has hosted military facilities for foreign powers, including Turkey and Egypt.
Mohamud’s remarks came after Israel last year became the first country to officially recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state — a move expected to reshape regional power dynamics as the two governments deepen political, security, and economic cooperation.
At the time, regional powers — including Egypt and Turkey — condemned Israel’s diplomatic move, saying it undermined Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
According to experts, the growing Israel-Somaliland partnership could be a “game changer” for Israel, boosting the Jewish state’s ability to counter the Yemen-based Houthi terrorist group while offering strategic and geographic advantages amid shifting regional power dynamics.
Unlike most other states in the region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability — qualities that make it a valuable partner for international allies and a key player in regional cooperation.
“Israel’s interference in Somalia’s sovereignty will not be tolerated,” Mohamud said during his speech. “The African continent rejects any attempts to change borders through military force or unilateral actions.”
In a move to strengthen its defense capabilities amid increasing regional instability, Somalia signed a defense cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia on Monday, aimed at enhancing military ties and providing advanced technology and training for the Somali National Army.
According to officials from both countries, the deal is intended to safeguard the Red Sea, a strategic corridor between the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal that has increasingly drawn the attention of Gulf states.
Even though the newly signed memorandum is not a mutual defense treaty, Somali officials say it sets the stage for deeper military cooperation — a move analysts say has gained momentum following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland.
Uncategorized
‘Every Jew Will Die’: German Synagogue Receives Threatening Letter With Gun Cartridge
Illustrative: The exterior of the main synagogue in the German city of Munich. Photo: Reuters/Michaela Rehle
German authorities have opened an investigation into a death threat mailed to the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria (IKG) amid an ongoing rise in antisemitism across Germany.
The package, received by the IKG’s community center and the Ohel Jakob Synagogue on Thursday, contained a cartridge for a handgun and a note which included such intimidations as “all the Jews belonged shot” and “every Jew will die … I will cause all the deaths.”
The Bavarian police’s Criminal Department 4 launched a probe into the incident.
Munich’s leading synagogue has previously implemented security protocols for incoming packages.
“Every shipment is controlled. In this case, it immediately became apparent that the letter had a problematic content,” Vice President Yehoshua Chmiel told the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper. “The escalation goes on and on … We receive a lot of threats. But a letter with a real cartridge is new.”
“We feel let down,” he added. “There are no acts against antisemitism. There are speeches, but they don’t help us.”
Ludwig Spaenle, who serves as the Bavarian state government’s commissioner against antisemitism, called the hate crime “evil and inhumane” before encouraging law enforcement in their investigation.
This latest incident comes as Jews in Germany are already on edge amid a relentlessly hostile climate.
In the city of Potsdam just outside Berlin, for example, members of the Jewish community have begun expressing second thoughts about a multi-year plan to develop a kindergarten out of fear that it could become a prime target for terrorists.
Evgueni Kutikow, chairman of the Jewish Community of Potsdam, said to Märkische Allgemeine that worries about antisemitism had grown and that “one mother called me crazy when I asked her if she would enroll her child in a Jewish daycare center.”
Kutikow has resisted canceling the kindergarten’s construction, however.
“As things stand now, I’m skeptical. But I’m also not prepared to abandon the project,” he said. “We don’t live in a bubble — we see what’s happening around us and across the world.”
Last month saw two antisemitic hate crimes in Germany targeting Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany.
On Jan. 5, the Brandenburg state parliament received a death threat against him. The note warned, “we will kill you” and included an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas to designate targets.
This messaging mirrored an arson attack against a shed on Büttner’s property days earlier, when investigators also discovered inverted red triangles. Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor posted on X at the time explaining that “attacks on those who think differently and attempted murder: That is what the Hamas triangle stands for — in Gaza as in Brandenburg. And the hatred of Israel goes hand in hand with hatred of our democracy. The rule of law must smash these terrorist organizations — and indeed, before they strike again.”
Following the attack, Büttner stated that “the symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement.” He added that “anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest; it is a threat.”
On Jan. 13, another antisemitic act contributed to the growing climate of fear.
Police arrested an unnamed, 32-year-old man in Giessen in an attack on a synagogue. A judge would place him on a psychiatric hold, suspecting mental illness had contributed to his actions.
The suspect allegedly pushed over boxes which contained papers and then set them on fire outside the synagogue. A prosecutor’s statement read that “thanks to the swift intervention of a passerby, the fire was quickly brought under control, preventing the flames from spreading to the residential building and the synagogue.”
Police also believe the man performed a Nazi salute outside the synagogue that evening.
The commissioner to combat antisemitism in the German state of Hesse sounded the alarm after the arson attack, warning that it reflects a “growing pogrom-like atmosphere” threatening Jewish life across the country.
Germany, like most Western countries, has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents over the past two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
According to official German government figures, antisemitic crimes jumped from 2,641 in 2022 to 6,236 in 2024, an increase of 136 percent.
“We are witnessing a growing number of antisemitic incidents. Ninety years ago, that hatred marked the beginning of the end,” Daniel Günther, the minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, a state in northern Germany, said in a statement last month following the vandalism of a Holocaust memorial at a local synagogue in Kiel. “That is precisely why we cannot tolerate a single incident today. Every act must be investigated and punished under the rule of law.”