For two years, Jackson, Mississippi, was my home. It was the first place I lived after college, when I worked as an education fellow at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute for Southern Jewish Life. The city’s sole synagogue, Beth Israel, was the first synagogue I ever joined.

The first time I walked in the building for Friday night services, I had an invitation within 15 minutes to go with a crew of a dozen people to Jason’s Deli for dinner afterwards. It sent a message that was reaffirmed and reaffirmed, over and over — “community” is not a nonsense term at Beth Israel Congregation, thrown around carelessly. It is lived and embodied.

This community, when I lived there, had a small but very vibrant Talmud study every week. We took great joy in the fact that people probably would be surprised that, on a weekday during lunch, a bunch of nerds were arguing over Bava Kamma (a tractate of the Talmud) in a library in central Mississippi.

In fact, the library space........

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