at home
M inyan on the Mira , a 1995 documen- tary about the Jewish community of Glace Bay, N.S., tells the story of a group of Jews who “made wine from water.” In the opening minutes, we hear about how they arrived, mainly from Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, not knowing the lan- guage and with little to their names, and built a thriving Jewish community. This was a story that repeated across Canada—and, in many cases, decades later led to the same predicament: a group of residents, content with their lives and the town they grew old in, facing the reality of their community in decline, their children and grandchildren having moved to the big city, the minyan unable to sustain it- self. Many of these communities are gone or barely hanging on. And yet, not all Jews feel the gravitational force of city life. There are some Jews who still stay in their small communities simply because they prefer it. Others start out in big cities but find them- selves eventually living far from them—mov- ing for work or a partner or out of a taste for a quieter life. In the course of making decisions about where to move to and where to stay, many of these people contend with what Judaism has to say about living in community. Should a Jew move to a small town if an opportun- ity arises, even if there aren’t other Jews there? How small is too small? If you start out in a small town, should you move to a larger one to find Jewish connections? What values come into play when thinking about these issues? The great Jewish sage Hillel, in The Say-
ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE ZOLA
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