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The Dayton Jewish Observer, Vol. 27, No. 6. The Dayton Jewish Observer is published monthly by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton, a nonprofit corporation, 525 Versailles Dr., Dayton, OH 45459.

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the Yellow Springs Havurah, which is active to this day.

Eastern European Jews took the lead

In all the small Jewish communities in Ohio that Reid has researched, he says, German Jewish families lived there early on, but it was the great wave of Jews of Eastern Europe — who began arriving in America in the early 1880s — who provided the numbers to start viable Jewish organizations.

"Xenia is an example of that. We do have early German Jewish families. Xenia just barely got to the size of having in the 1910s a local community that was formal," Reid says. "But at least in Xenia, it was never quite large enough to be sustainable."

The full list of Reid's histories of small Ohio Jewish communities comprises Ashtabula County, Athens County, Chillicothe, Coshocton, Fremont, Greene County, Lancaster, Newark, New Philadelphia, Portsmouth, Steubenville/ Weirton, the Upper Miami Valley, and Zanesville. He's also written a history of the Jews of West Virginia.

"You had these layleaders with maybe just a little more — compared with their peers, perhaps — knowledge of the religious laws and they really just carried these communities. They'd have occasional itinerant rabbis who would come through and maybe do more formal instruction, but it really was just the laypeople."

He's now finishing up his histories of Mansfield and Massillon, Ohio. Reid started writing about Mansfield because he heard its one Jewish congregation is moving from its 44-yearold building. "There, it was nice for some of the congregants to reflect on their memories."

The largest of the Ohio Jewish communities he's written about was Steubenville/ Weirton, which at one time had about 1,000 Jews.

The oldest he's written about is Chillicothe; its firstknown Jews date to the 1830s.

With most communities he's written about, he knows of at least one Jewish family still living there.

"But some of the places, indeed, have not had organized Jewish life there in several decades," he says. "One example is New Philadelphia, Ohio. The congregation there closed in the '60s, but there are still Jewish families there."

Outsized contributions

He was surprised to find that in a lot of these small towns, Jews served in public office well before 1900.

"You had examples of playing important roles in secular organizations like the Masons or veterans' groups, societies."

He highlights those contributions to economic, social, and civil life in his histories.

"While the Jewish population of these communities has never been more than 1 percent or 1.5 percent, it's an outsized influence on hospitals in the areas, the charitable societies in the areas, helping to organize fire departments, to raise money for orphanages."

Reid says he took on this project for two reasons.

"One, I think the mitzvah of honoring the deceased is an important one. I volunteer with a burial society, a chevra kadisha, so this is probably a related value that informs why I volunteer with the chevra kadisha and why I do these stories."

He also believes small-town Jewish communities played an important role in Judaism becoming a more mainstream religion in the United States.

Austin Reid's A History of Jewish Life in the Upper Miami Valley is posted at columbusjewishhistory.org/histories/history-jewishlife-upper-miami-valley.

Greene County's Jewish Heritage, also by Reid, is posted at columbusjewishhistory.org/histories/greene-countys-jewish-heritage.

Nine of his other local Ohio Jewish histories are also posted at columbusjewishhistory.org/research/central-ohio-histories.

"I think after World War II, we really saw that," he says. "Judaism didn't always have that insider status and perhaps now we're seeing an increase in antisemitism. The existence of these small-town Jewish communities and the fact that Jewish life had a visible presence in so many places was important for people's understanding of Jewish life.

"And with that absence, there aren't these ways for people who aren't Jewish to connect with this community, and in that absence, it's a loss for these communities to not have that."

Reid now lives in Pittsburgh. He says once he completes the two Ohio Jewish community histories he's writing, he'll work on filling in gaps on small Jewish communities in western Pennsylvania.

When asked if he has plans to compile his Ohio histories into a book, he says, "Perhaps someday I'll try to tie together all the pieces. It will be a project for down the road."