When I first arrived in Waterville, Maine, the numbers did not add up. Why would someone with five years of post-graduate training serve a community that had five Hillel- affiliated Jewish students at the local college and 19 families at the local synagogue? When you lay out the dollars and cents, it made even less sense.  Almost my entire rabbinical school education was funded by foundations and fellowships with the goal of changing the American Jewish landscape. Fifteen years ago, the Jewish world invested close to $200,000 in my education — and I decided to work in a place with fewer than 100 identified Jews. These funders could have easily rued their return on investment, especially if they evaluated my impact during my first two to three years in the rabbinate. I wouldn’t blame them.

The truth is that, at first blush, working with small communities will never seem like a worthwhile investment. When quantitative data is the primary or exclusive metric of Jewish success, it rarely makes sense to devote significant resources into small, scattered pockets of largely economically vulnerable Jews. Both by measures of attendance and dollars raised, it will always make sense to invest in large cities with significant population density. If we only focus on those cities, however, we leave behind the 1 in 8 American Jews who live outside of major metropolitan areas. In aggregate, small-town Jewish communities add up. Serving them poses unique challenges, it’s true; but if we only focus on startup costs or immediate return on investment, we miss the cost of leaving small-town Jews behind and lose the massive payout of serving them.

Dancing during the havdalah service at the Center for Jewish Life's Fall Shabbaton at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, in November 2024. Courtesy

The costs are twofold: the spiritual and the practical. Our tradition teaches us every Jew is responsible for one another. On a fundamental level, we fail as a people when we do not work to ensure that every Jewish child receives a Jewish education; that every Jew be guided toward joy and meaning in their tradition; that every sick individual in our community receives comfort at their bedside; and that everyone who dies has a rabbi to bury them if that is what they desire. Chabad does an outstanding job serving any individual, regardless of financial cost, but the non-Orthodox world rarely meets the challenge. Many on the periphery of Jewish life want to be served and connected by pluralistic Jewish organizations, but because our movements and institutions determined it does not make sense financially, they are left unserved and unconnected. 

Our faith should bring us to marshal the resources to fulfill the most basic obligation in our tradition: to make sure everyone is cared for. I believe in a God that takes note of every mitzvah we do and every person we serve. We should be driven by that sense of Divine accounting, even if the financials don’t seem to add up.

Beyond the spiritual, there is a practical concern. When Jews living in small, rural and remote communities don’t feel connected to the larger community, they are often left with a tragic and worrying sense of alienation. That sense of alienation is often shared by other groups of the margins of Jewish life. According to research done by Eitan Hersh of Tufts University, the young Jews most likely to join encampments protesting the war in Gaza, which often employed antisemitic speech and targeted the presence of Jewish institutions on campuses, were Jews from marginalized demographics. By contrast, those most engaged with Hillel were from wealthy, straight, highly affiliated and Jewishly-educated white families from major metropolitan areas. We cannot ignore that there is a clear correlation between those who have organized against Jewish institutions and those who have been traditionally disconnected and alienated from them.

This alienation predates Oct. 7, but it became more clearly manifest in its aftermath.

When I first arrived in Waterville, a congregant in her late 70s who was raised in our small town told me about how out of place she had felt among the Jewish community at her Boston college. She didn’t have the “right” clothes, friends or cultural context to connect to them. She told me, “My first week at college, I called my mother and asked, ‘Are you sure we are really Jewish?’” That story is from the 1950s, but I’ve heard the same narrative from multiple congregants. Even the wealthier people in my congregation never went back to their Hillel after one visit because they could not connect to institutions who were not sensitive to the isolation in which they were raised and the lack of Jewish resources they had access to before arriving on campus.  

 A shift happened once my wife and I arrived in Waterville, and it wasn’t because we were magicians or saints. It is just because we were there, teaching and living Torah. When we arrived, we were committed to giving the kids in our congregation a rigorous Jewish education and connecting them with the larger Jewish world. Our educational goal was simple: No kid in Waterville should ever say “I don’t know this because I was raised in rural Maine.” We taught them Bible. Mishnah. Torah and Haftarah trope. Basic Israel literacy and global Jewish history. We brought many of them to Israel on a very low-cost, highly subsidized multigenerational trip that fundamentally changed their sense of belonging to and connection with a larger Jewish people. We sent them to Jewish camps, connecting them with synagogue resources and scholarships, and even made our own low-cost summer program for those who still couldn’t afford to go. We also connected them with students at Colby Hillel in Waterville, almost all of whom were raised in major Jewish communities. Through the Center for Small Town Jewish Life’s Jewish Youth Connection program, we introduced them to urban Jewish communities and national institutions throughout the U.S.

Our work changed the narrative of kids raised in our congregation. Almost every kid who we educated ended up strongly affiliated with a major Jewish organization, with almost all serving on their Hillel boards in college. They hold nuanced points of view on Israel, its conflicts and global Jewish history because we gave them the skills to understand the complexities that define our homeland and our people’s history. Our kids received a rigorous Jewish education from trained, caring and connected Jewish professionals, and as such were less susceptible to reductive propaganda from any point on the political spectrum.

According to a study commissioned by Atra, most young Jews want what we have provided in central Maine: connection to a rabbi. Yet there are increasingly few to no rabbis in small, rural and remote communities. Qualified rabbis are expensive and increasingly rare. We need to find a way to connect these young people to knowledgeable and trained professionals because when small-town Jews are connected and educated, they not only feel more connected to the broader Jewish community — they also often end up serving as transformative leaders in the Jewish world.

Even though our numbers are small, the bench of Jewish leadership from small towns is quite deep. Two of my most important mentors were small-town Jews: Rabbi David Ellenson z’’l from Newport News, Va., and Harlene Winnick Appleman, z’’l from Elmira, N.Y. When I spoke about how hard my community had to work to keep Jewish community alive in Waterville, they instantly understood my message. It was that DIY spirit that drove them toward Jewish leadership and that determination that fueled their success. When I look at the leadership that so many of the kids raised in our congregation are exercising on their campuses today, I see a common thread that connects them to my mentors: They are both equipped and motivated to guide and serve their larger community.

The appetite for Jewish connection is there among small-town Jews of all ages. The Center for Small Town Jewish Life, which is based at Colby College, draws hundreds to Waterville every year for Torah study and engagement with the jewels of Jewish civilization. If you ever have the privilege of attending one of our gatherings, you will encounter nothing short of delight. 

And as I have definitely learned in my 14 years in the rabbinate, my congregants are deeply grateful that they had a rabbi to hold their hand as they died, to lead them in their final confession and to comfort their families and lead shiva minyanim after their passing. They appreciated that the circumstances that led them to live in small-town America have not deprived them of the joy or care that every Jew deserves.

Investing in small-town Jewish life may not seem like the most savvy investment, but the cost of leaving these Jewish communities behind is just too high. We cannot abdicate our responsibility to every Jewish soul, nor can we leave potential blessings on the table. 

Additionally, engaging with rural America has always been and continues to be crucial work in building and maintaining a healthy, pluralistic body politic. The past decade alone has shown that every American Jew is impacted by the opinions and behaviors of small-town America. If small-town Jewish communities disappear, who are the Jewish people’s ambassadors outside of major cities?

At this moment, the Jewish people and our nation find themselves at a crossroads, and the Center for Small Town Jewish Life wants to make sure that our community survives and thrives in the face of the multiple challenges we face. We launched our organization almost 10 years ago with a $10,000 check and four very part-time Jewish professionals; now we have a staff of 11 and an annual budget that has just surpassed $1 million, an increase by a factor of 100. Ten years in, our work is still really just beginning. We have so many more communities to reach, serve and connect. Our fates are deeply intertwined, and our responsibility to one another should drive every decision we make as an American Jewish community. The cost of doing this work right is high, but the cost of leaving small-town Jewish communities behind is even higher. It is time to put our time, attention, and resources where our souls are. When we do, I have faith that our investment will pay off at least a hundred-fold.  

Rabbi Rachel Isaacs is the founder and executive director of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life at Colby College, where she also serves as the Dorothy “Bibby” Levine Alfond Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies. She is also the rabbi of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, Maine.