Swine Flu: Now at a Camp Near You

What with the whole Iran election debacle, the world financial crisis, and the new season of Weeds, we've all but forgotten about the Swine Flu.

Turns out, unlike a bad political pundit, you can't make it go away just by ignoring it. In fact, not only has it hit Missouri, after this week's Camp Sabra closing, its headed right here to St. Louis

The Camp, run by the St. Louis Jewish Community Center, is closing down after two of its participants were found to have contracted Swine Flu.

The camp, out at Lake of the Ozarks is a popular place for Jewish kids from the area and will send all 350 kids home until June 30th.

The obvious irony in Jewish kids catching the Swine Flu wouldn't be worth mentioning, had the Minister of Health in Israel not referred to it as the Mexican Flu because of the unkosher origins of the virus.

We wish everyone a speedy recovery and hope it doesn't get in the way of your summer fun.
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A Beacon of Hope (for MidWestern Jews)

A lot of Mid-Western Jews (myself included) like to bitch and moan about the fact that all the young Jews graduate and move to the coasts, or Chicago. Communities like Detroit reported that there are more Detroit-born Jews living in LA than Detroit itself (who would wanna leave Detroit?).

It may seem bleak for those of us who remain more than a 5 hour drive from a beach, but all is not lost.

A recently released report from the Cincinnati Jewish Community Study had a few surprising results.

First, the community is relatively stable. That is to say that the Jewish population of Cincinnati is stable, sort of. More than 50% of those surveyed were born outside of Cincinnati and decided to move to the City of Cin. Another 16% were born in da Nati, left, and then returned.

This report is important in a few ways.
The first is that St. Louis and Cincinnati are similar. Very similar. I mean like post-industrial-rust-belt-river-cities-with-a-lot-of-large-corporations-who-are -trying-to-figure-out-how-to-attract-young-talent-to-a-place-with-an-image-problem-similar.

Cincinnati has some things going for it that STL doesn't, many more fortune 500 companies that attract a lot of talent, for sevaral.

St. Louis has some things that Cincinnati doesn't, like Washington University/BJC, a rudimentary light rail system (Vote YES on Proposition M if you want to see it become useful), and about 10 more years of investing in lofts and development downtown, made possible by a historic tax credit.

These differences aside, both live in the shadow of place like Chicago, New York, DC, LA, and Boston, to name a few. These are cities in which young adulthood is played out without regard to the future, responsibilities, or savings.

Young adulthood, particularly Jewish young adulthood is difficult in places like Cincinnati, St. Louis (Minneapolis, Detroit, etc.) particularly because you don't have the mass of young Jews that can feed fresh energy into the community.

You end up seeing the same people at every event, which can be great, but can also be stifling (see Rosh's post on dating in STL).

The real importance that I see in this study, however, is that we matter to the current generation. A lot. You can see it in the choice of Rabbi Davids and his speech on Gen Next in the community (which you can read about here). It is apparent when communities like Dotan, Alabama offer Jews $50,000 to move in.


The established federated community is foaming at the mouth to outreach to us, connect with us, and bring us into the fold.

This is the beacon of hope. That the these people are starting to come around and embrace our reality. But they can't do it without us.

Knowing that the interest, and money, is out there.... How do we take advantage of it?
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