Jewish Communities Discovered Outside New York

New York, January 24 (Duh) – Jewish leaders are reeling in the wake of the discovery that there are functioning Jewish communities beyond the New York area.

It has long been accepted that individual or small groups of Jews might travel or set up temporary outposts beyond the confines of the Tri-State area, for business or leisure purposes. Scientists have even posited the presence of permanent structures that might serve visiting Jews. Until this week, however, the existence of actual, permanent communities of Jews beyond New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut would never have occurred to anyone.

Satellite photos of frontier towns such as Chicago, St. Louis, and Miami indicate the unmistakable presence of synagogues and people in manifestly Jewish garb going to and from them, the attendees clearly the permanent residents of nearby homes. A search of internet businesses turned up several food establishments describing themselves as kosher, indicating that the local population might be Jewish enough to support them.

The news has both surprised and puzzled many Jews in the New York area. “I don’t understand,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the venerable organization Agudath Israel. “Why would anybody go there?”

His sentiments were echoed by other community leaders, among them Ismar Sorsch, former Dean of The Jewish Theological Seminary. “I can grasp why a Jew with a sense of mission and service might station himself far from the center of the Jewish universe in order to provide a bit of Yiddishkeit to other Jews forced to make their way out there,” he said, referring to, among others, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “But any motivation to stray more than a few miles from New York permanently, well, that simply eludes me.”

Ancient Jewish sources discuss at length the existence, even prosperity, of communities not in New York, but those were presumed to die out over the centuries as the essential nature of the New York community developed. Richard Joel, President of Yeshiva University in Manhattan, said he consulted the curators of the university’s extensive Judaica library for more information, and found that as recently as the late nineteenth century, there were Jews in, of all places, Eastern Europe, for crying out loud, and they were attempting to establish a permanent, sovereign presence not, as any rational person would think, in New York, but in some place called Palestine.

“As I need not tell you,” said Joel, “Palestine did not, and I would submit, still does not, have a single place to get a decent corned-beef-on-rye.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he addressed a reporter,” I have to go meet some dignitaries from a country with the presumptuous name ‘Israel.’ Whatever.”