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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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Iran appoints AMIA bombing suspect to National Security Council
(JTA) —
For the second time this year, Iran has named a wanted suspect in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires to a top security role.
A spokesman for the Islamic Republic’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Monday that Mohsen Rezaei had resigned as an adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, and would assume the role of secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council. Rezaei is a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Rezaei is wanted by Argentina and is subject to an Interpol Red Notice issued at Argentina’s request over his alleged role in the 1994 attack, which killed 85 people and remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Vahidi, another suspect in the AMIA case and also the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, was appointed IRGC commander.
In a landmark ruling in 2024, an Argentine court held Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, responsible for the bombing, setting the stage for international legal action.
In June 2025, Argentina’s federal judiciary ordered that 10 Iranian and Lebanese suspects accused in connection with the deadly 1994 AMIA bombing be tried in absentia. Rezaei and Vahidi are among them.
The eight other suspects accused by the late AMIA special prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, are: former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahijan, former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iranian ambassador Hadi Soleimanpour, former Iranian cultural attache in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani and former Iranian diplomat Ahmad Reza Asghari, as well as suspected Hezbollah operatives Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar.
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Israel and AIPAC on the ballot in the Minnesota Senate and U.S. House races
(JTA) — A pair of Democratic primaries in Minnesota on Tuesday are among a string of high-profile battles between progressive and moderate candidates, where Israel and the pro-Israel lobby serve as key wedge issues.
The state’s highest-profile race is the U.S. Senate primary between Rep. Angie Craig, who has been endorsed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, and Lieutenant Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who says she would reject AIPAC’s money and accuses Israel of committing a genocide.
The most recent data gathered in late July through early August has Craig with a 2-percentage point lead, within the 5.3% margin of error. Another poll, conducted in late July by a group supporting Flanagan, shows her with a 14-point lead. The Democratic nominee, whether it be Flanagan or Craig, is expected to win the general election in November.
The race, and the candidates’ sparring over AIPAC, comes as the lobby and Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have become increasingly unpopular among Democratic voters. Israel is also an issue in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in neighboring Wisconsin taking place on Tuesday.
Flanagan has referred to Craig as “AIPAC’s candidate” in the Senate race, which prompted Craig to distance herself from the group’s spending during a TV debate in June.
“AIPAC has not contributed at all, the PAC, to my Senate campaign,” said Craig, whose wife, Cheryl Greene, is Jewish. “Not one penny.”
Flanagan countered that, while AIPAC itself has not donated to Craig’s campaign, it has held fundraisers for the four-term congresswoman. AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Just last week in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed defeated the moderate Rep. Haley Stevens, whose AIPAC endorsement was the frequent target of opposition attacks.
Flanagan has drawn the support of American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian super PAC that aims to counter AIPAC. The group spent about $54,000 on ads boosting her candidacy, according to FEC filings.
Flanagan’s platform includes blocking offensive weapons sales to Israel — a position that all but seven Senate Democrats voted for in April — and advancing a two-state solution that “allows for a secure Israel and Palestinian self-determination.”
Craig, who also backs a two-state outcome, voted against the recent amendment proposed by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie that would have halted $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel.
In a statement explaining her vote, Craig panned Netanyahu and the war in Iran, but wrote that the amendment would endanger Israelis and American troops and allies in the region. After the vote, Flanagan wrote, “A vote to send $3.3 billion of taxpayer money to fund additional weapons of war to Benjamin Netanyahu is unconscionable. Enough.”
Craig has the endorsement of a number of Democrats in Congress and the Senate, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. She is also endorsed by lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel, former Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, and Minneapolis’ Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey, who rose to national prominence for his response to the deadly results of the deployment of immigrant enforcement officials in his city.
Flanagan has drawn endorsements from a swath of major progressive figures including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and outspoken pro-Palestinian Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Flanagan is also endorsed by the state’s Democratic Party affiliate, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party.
On Sunday Sanders posted on X,”There is a reason why the super PACs and billionaires are flooding Minnesota with $20 million to defeat Peggy Flanagan. Same thing as Michigan. They do not want somebody in the Senate who will stand up for the working class.”
Spending by political action committees affiliated with AIPAC has also come to the fore in the Democratic primary race for the House seat that Craig is vacating.
The most moderate of the three leading candidates is State Sen. Matt Klein, who has expressed support for the U.S.-Israel relationship and is endorsed by DMFI. Last-minute spending by outside groups has sparked accusations that AIPAC is indirectly involved.
“AIPAC is coming after me,” said former Lakeville mayor Matt Little, one of Klein’s opponents, in a video.
Klein’s two opponents — Little and state Rep. Kaela Berg — both accuse Israel of committing a genocide, and have both speculated that AIPAC is behind some of the Klein spending.
Berg supports placing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel and halting weapons sales, and Little says the U.S. must end all military aid and weapons sales to the country. On the policy page of his campaign website, Little refers to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as “an act of wanton slaughter against innocent civilians” and says that people should condemn “the anti-Semitism that followed.”
Berg is listed as “primary approved” by the liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group J Street, while Little has been boosted by American Priorities, which has spent about $64,000 in his favor. He is also endorsed by the DFL and Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
The latest polling in the district — conducted at the end of May by a group that favors Klein — found Little leading Klein with a 7-percentage point lead, and Berg trailing by another 3 points. 39 percent of voters were undecided, and Little and Klein were about even after voters received more information about the three candidates.
Craig has declined to endorse any of the candidates to replace her.
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Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham wins runoff slot
(JTA) — South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham and a second Republican candidate will advance to a special primary runoff in two weeks, when voters will decide which GOP candidate might take the vacant seat of her late brother Lindsey Graham.
Just over an hour after polls closed, at about 8:15 pm, the Associated Press declared that Darline Graham would advance to a runoff election, noting that “one additional candidate will also advance.” At that point Graham had secured 32.6% of the vote, with 39% of ballots counted.
Graham was up against nine fellow Republicans, with her biggest competition including U.S. House Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry, who were closely vying for the second spot in the runoff at the time of the AP’s call. In South Carolina, the top contender would have needed to win a majority of votes in order to avoid the two-candidate runoff, scheduled for August 25.
In the November general election, the winner will face Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who is unlikely to prevail in this solidly Republican state.
Tuesday’s race marked the second time in two months that GOP voters came to the polls to select a Senate candidate, and now they will need to do so a third time. Longstanding Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top ally of Israel in the U.S. Senate and supporter of military action against Iran. won the original primary in June but died suddenly from an aortic dissection on July 11.
Graham, who was 71 years old, served 23 years in the Senate and eight in the U.S. House. He was a member of the Senate’s Armed Services and Budget committees and had traveled to Israel about a dozen times since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Heading into Tuesday’s primary, analysts expressed no doubt that the winner would be pro-Israel. They stressed, however, that matching Graham’s level of foreign policy experience and focus on Israel, a place he often visited, would be a formidable task.
“Whoever wins this is going to be an ally of Israel,” Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the lead-up to the race. “The question is whether they will be the champion for Israel that Lindsey Graham was.”
A few days after Graham’s death, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, appointed Darline Graham to complete the late senator’s term. Despite having minimal policy experience, such as a past role on the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, she earned President Trump’s support and soon declared her candidacy in the full race.
While 10 candidates were running in the Tuesday primary, only about two others were considered serious competition for Graham, Norman and Fry: businessman Mark Lynch and Mark Sanford, whose governorship was plagued with scandals and who briefly ran against Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries.
The post Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham wins runoff slot appeared first on The Forward.
