We Call This Place Home: Jewish Life in Maryland’s Small Towns

JMM Traveling Exhibit
On view at JMM October 13, 2002 – September 7, 2003

For generations, small towns throughout Maryland have nurtured Jewish homes and families. Jews with roots in these towns tell a complex and poignant story, having found themselves at once outsiders and insiders, known and unknown, strangers and friends. They reflect with knowing humor on their situation, defying the conventional wisdom that says Jewish life in America must be found in the cities.

In some ways their story of migration, adjustment, and choice belongs to all immigrants, but this tale of negotiating identity and creating community is also particular to the Jewish people in a particular place. Maryland’s small towns are diverse in economy, ecology, and history–from the railroad and mining towns of the western panhandle to the farming and fishing towns of the south and the shore—but many of the stories are common to the Jews in each of them.

These stories are related in the tellers’ own words. They describe how Jews have made their living, raised their families, and become part of their adopted communities, all the while maintaining their Jewishness in places far from the urban centers of Jewish culture. They explain how and why Maryland’s small towns have become places Jews call ‘home.’

Photos of Exhibit (by Ingvild Horn)

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Hood College is the exhibitions sixth stop on a tour that has taken it to Allegany County (Cumberland), Carroll County (Westminster), Montgomery County Historical Society (Gaithersburg), Harford Community College in Bel Air, and Salisbury University

The statewide tour of We Call This Place Home: Jewish Life in Maryland’s Small Towns has been made possible by a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council. The exhibit at the Hood College is being supported by Paul and Rita Gordon, Beth Sholom Congregation, the Historical Society of Frederick County, Ramar Moving, and an anonymous gift.

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