A lot of people really enjoyed a recent front-page story in the Washington Post on a New York couple who accepted $50,000 to move to small-town Alabama and help build up the small Jewish community there.
The great religion writer Emma Green of The Atlantic said on Twitter that she “loved” it.
Others have been more critical of the couple’s assertion — given prominent national attention by the Post — that they’ve experienced frequent anti-Semitism in Dothan, Ala., population 65,000, and plan to leave.
Me? It’s taken me a while to write about the piece because I’ve been contemplating it.
On the one hand, I appreciate in-depth narrative journalism by outstanding Godbeat pros such as the Post’s Julie Zauzmer, whose work I have praised a number of times. On the other hand, as a resident of Bible Belt flyover country (Oklahoma City, in my case), I am sensitive to out-of-town journalists painting places such as my home state with broad, overly negative brushes.
To be fair, the Post does reference other Jews besides this couple who offer a different perspective:
Lately, though, they’ve started to feel worn down by the demands of the tiny Reform synagogue with 56 families and to yearn for the vibrant congregation ten times larger that they left behind. While most of the Priddles’ Jewish friends in Dothan say they have never experienced anti-Semitism in the town, Lisa and Kenny can quickly recount times when they’ve felt the sting of discrimination. Since 2016, they’ve also watched warily as anti-Semitism has worsened around the country.
Eleven families have moved to Dothan since Blumberg started paying them, and Blumberg says he’ll pay for at least six more who commit to stay at least three years. But almost a decade into the experiment, seven of the 11 families have left.
Now, Lisa and Kenny wonder whether they might make eight.
It’s just that the positive voices never really get a hearing in this story. Part of that is how storytelling works: The best reporters tell a larger tale by focusing on a specific case study or, as in this instance, a specific couple. The idea is that this couple epitomizes the bigger truth in this Alabama town. For me, the question is: Is this couple truly representative? Or is it possible that they are the problem — and that they should have stayed in New York and not moved to a culture so different from their longtime home?
