Why are Small Southern Colleges Suddenly Attracting Jews in Record Numbers?
Sam Ginsberg doesn’t feel like the only Jew in town any longer. Back when he was a Freshman at Hendrix College, the five or six students he saw at Hillel meetings composed the majority of the school’s Jewish student population. A Methodist college of 1,200 in Conway, Ark., Hendrix had never attracted many Jews. Ginsberg grew up in a large Jewish community in Memphis and arrived at Hendrix eager to engage in whatever meager Jewish life he could find there. During his four years at the school, something funny happened: freshman classes began to have Jews in them. Now a senior, Ginsberg says Hillel meetings draw an average of 25 Jews. Meanwhile, Hendrix is constructing a Jewish Cultural Center, the first of its kind in the state. Hendrix College is not the only small Southern school experiencing an influx of Jews. At a time when Jewish communities in small towns across the South are disappearing as younger Jews move into large cities, Jewish student life on small Southern campuses is expe
