c. 1996 Religion News Service

LOWELL, Mass.-“WANTED,”said the ad, published in a regional Jewish newspaper.”$2,500 reward. Pioneering families to revitalize the Jewish community in Lowell.” With car-dealer flair and Wild West drama, a rabbi here is beckoning Jews to a new frontier, urging them to settle in a city that he said is a worthy, and far less pricey, alternative to the suburbs of choice for many Jews. “It’s been my perception that Lowell always gets a bad rap,”said Orthodox Rabbi David Abramchik, a Jewish day school principal, citing headlines about the city’s crime and economic troubles.”The $2,500 is not the issue. The issue was, I wanted to bring positive attention to Lowell. And if it took a gimmick to do it with, then by all means do it.” The advertising effort was inspired by a similar offer from Congregation Shaarey Tefiloh in Perth Amboy, N.J. The synagogue, which has a largely elderly congregation, is one of only two remaining synagogues-and the only Orthodox one-in Perth Amboy, a struggling industrial city of 41,000 located across a channel from New York’s Staten Island.”I guess my generation was the lost generation,”said Alan Goldsmith, who at age 48 is one of the youngest synagogue members.”They all left and so there was no one really to carry on the torch.” Both the Lowell and Perth Amboy campaigns represent a drive to revitalize once-vibrant urban Jewish communities, particularly in the Northeast, that withered as their members moved to the suburbs. While some inner-city synagogues have followed their members into the suburbs and built new structures, others have stayed put and tried to rebuild their communities.

Abramchik, principal of the Merrimack Valley Hebrew Academy, a non-denominational elementary school, is offering $2,500 to the first 15 families responding to his ad. Individuals will help fund the reward, to be paid out over time as the family becomes involved with the Jewish community, he said.

The city’s three synagogues-one Orthodox, one Conservative, one Reform-will also waive first-year membership fees, ranging from $300 to $1,000, for anyone moving to town in response to the ad.

While synagogue membership would be a requirement, Abramchik said he has no plans to screen candidates according to whether they are religiously observant Jews or not.”We are not going to do a litmus test in finding out what their religiosity is,”he said.”If they’re Jewish and want to become part of the Jewish community, there are three different options here.” Abramchik said he has received inquiries from within the United States, Canada and Israel, but no firm commitments to date.

The offer is”very bold and very aggressive,”said Rabbi Leslie Ann Gordon of Temple Beth El, the Conservative synagogue in Lowell.”It’s not something I would have thought of, but I admire his willingness to take a chance.” The median price of homes in Lowell is less than half the price of those in Brookline or Newton, Boston suburbs with large Jewish populations. Many Jews”may be aware that the housing costs are lower, but they don’t believe that they can live a quality Jewish life in Lowell,”Abramchik said.

The ethnically diverse city of 100,000, located about 30 miles north of Boston, has had a relatively small but active Jewish community for more than a century, although in recent years its numbers have declined as many Jews have moved to the suburbs.

All three synagogues-comprised of about 400 families in total-are located in the middle-class Highlands neighborhood and also draw members from surrounding suburbs. Residents have to go out of town to find a supermarket with kosher food, but the city does have a kosher nursing home and bed-and- breakfast. A small kosher bakery is located across from the day school and Orthodox synagogue.

In Perth Amboy, two families and an individual thus far have decided to move in, partly because of Congregation Shaarey Tefiloh’s advertising campaign and partly because they had ties to the synagogue’s recently hired rabbi, Benzion Klatzko of Brooklyn, a 28-year-old father of four.

Ads ran twice last fall in a regional Jewish paper as well as in a New York City Russian-language newspaper and on a Russian-language TV program, both targeted to Jews immigrating from the former Soviet Union.

Officials of Shaarey Tefiloh are hopeful the campaign will draw more families.

They boast of their new waterfront synagogue, owned free and clear, and tout the city’s low housing prices.

Of particular interest to Orthodox Jews, area supermarkets have agreed to expand kosher sections. The synagogue also has a mikveh, for ritual bathing, Shaarey Tefiloh officials note.

And Perth Amboy now has a yeshiva to provide religious instruction for young men, something the city lost when Jews left in the past.”When you have a yeshiva, you have the backbone of the community,”said Goldsmith, the synagogue member.

In the 1950s, Perth Amboy had about 20,000 Jews and numerous synagogues.”On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the whole town was closed practically,”recalls Ted Marks, a synagogue officer in his 80s.

In the following decades, many Jews left for the suburbs in New York and New Jersey, departing because of an erosion in the quality of life and a decline in industrial jobs in Perth Amboy.

Now, members like Goldsmith hope incoming families will keep the synagogue alive.”Usually they (the older generation) pass it on to the younger generation, which there is none, so they have to adopt a younger generation,”he said.

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Experts who study Jewish communities say they are impressed with the marketing efforts in Lowell and Perth Amboy.”I think potentially it could work, if you get enough of a momentum,”said Vassar College religion professor Deborah Dash Moore.”The motivation is very clear-you have all this money invested in communal infrastructure and you have people leaving and no new people are coming in and you’re trying desperately not to lose your investment.” Young people who can’t afford homes where they grew up may find such offers appealing, said Dr. David Schnall, professor of management at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work in New York. “An interesting thing that has happened in the Jewish community in suburbia is that as much as they have grown, they have difficulty maintaining their status into the next generation,”Schnall said.

Efforts to build Jewish communities have long historical roots. In the great wave of Eastern European Jewish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrant aid groups helped Jews settle not only in the eastern port cities but also in farming communities and further west in cities such as Galveston, Texas.

In modern times, Jewish organizations in the United States often offer such incentives as free first-year memberships or help in finding jobs, homes and schools.

MJP END SMITH