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ETHIOPIAN JEWRY poster sipping their mid-morning coffee. The women greeted Macy softly, inquiring about his mother and aunts. After a few minutes of small talk, he cleared his throat and the group came to attention. “I want to thank y’all for taking the time to hear me this morning,” he said, talking Southern, a language as natural to him and the others as Yiddish was to their grandparents.
    Macy began by explaining how other communities around the South were going under. They listened raptly as he ran off the list of temples that were closing down, congregations that were reduced to three or four members. Once or twice they interrupted to ask about some specific family, but mostly they sat in shocked silence.
    Macy spoke gently, aware that he was telling these people something they knew but had never been able to admit. They had all grown up in this temple, and they had bittersweet memories of the intimate, vibrant congregation that was now gone. For years they had seen the signs, watched the numbers decline, but somehow they had continued to hope. Now Macy was here to tell them that there was no hope, that they were the last generation, the end of the line, and that they had an obligation to make an orderly exit.
    They listened to Macy and they believed him. He was no sociologist here to predict the demise of their way of life, no rabbi armed with dire warnings about the future. The future was already here, and Macy, Ellis Hart’s boy from Winona, had come to tell them that it was too late for remorse or remission.
    “We want to keep our religious articles out of Christian homes where they’ll get used as objects d’art—is that how you pronouncethat word, Jerry?” he said, and the ladies smiled. “We want to keep the Jewish South
in
the South. What we intend to do is to provide for these things in Vicksburg, Meridian, Greenwood, and all the other places that are coming to an end. Now, we don’t want y’all to give us anything right now—I’m talking about the future. I want these things to stay right here in Natchez, as long as there is a single Jew to use them.” He lowered his voice and looked slowly at each one. “But when the time comes, we want to gather them at the camp where your grandchildren can come and worship in a temple where the ‘
ner tamid
’ (the ritual eternal light) comes from Natchez and the ark comes from the temple in Greenwood and maybe the Torah is from Meridian.”
    When he finished talking, there was a long silence. “Macy’s absolutely right,” Jerry said finally, and the others nodded in agreement. “Now, some of the people here in town are going to be opposed to this, but we need to explain it to them the way Macy’s explained it to us. As far as I’m concerned, we ought to give up these things as soon as y’all open up your museum.” One of the older women murmured her assent. “We’ve got to be practical about this,” she said in a genteel tone. “We simply cannot allow ourselves to be ostriches.”
    The meeting broke up and Jerry took us on a tour of the temple. We entered a classroom where Hebrew letters were written in chalk on a blackboard. The letters had been there for years. Natchez no longer has a religious school and Jerry drives his children to Alexandria, Louisiana—160 miles round trip—for Sunday school each week. They’ve been attending school there for six years, and in that time enrollment has dropped from fifty-five to thirty-eight. “It won’t be long before Alexandria goes the way of Natchez,” Jerry sighed.
    In a storeroom off the social hall I spotted some Purim games stacked on a shelf—Queen Esther Roulette, Pin the Tail on Hamen, Loop the Groger—that are used every year when the temple puts on a Purim carnival for Keely Krause and the other three children. “Purim used to be a fun holiday,” recalled Jerry. “Now, to tell you the truth, it’s downright discouraging.”
    Jerry Krouse is far from religious, but he tries to go