We passed through Jackson, MS on our way to Natchez. Hitting several rough spots on the road, we wore out four tires during the forty-mile stretch. In general we've been keeping a tight schedule, but this trip was especially important and we were running late for our appointment with the city mayor.

When we finally arrived, we joined a round-table discussion with the mayor and local members of the press. The conversation focused on the purpose of our trip—Friendship Circle—and its goals of raising awareness of special-needs children.

During the discussion, the mayor mentioned the local Jewish community and made arrangements for us to meet the owner of Lehman’s Cash & Carry and two other members of the community who would give us a tour of the city’s historical synagogue.

Mr. Jay Lehman spoke to us for forty-five minutes. We asked him about the mayor's reference to the synagogue, an “old temple,” and learned that Jews had been in Natchez since before the Civil War.

Shortly before sunset, two additional members of the community joined us. We quickly helped them don tefillin –an unusual sight in Natchez!

The synagogue, we were told was built in the early 1900s after the original one had burned down.

As we posed for a group photo, someone called out in Hebrew,

“Mah Nishmah? How are you?”

Itzik, the father of an Israeli family touring Natchez on their own cross-country trip joined us. We wrapped tefillin with him and he and his family came along with us on a tour of the synagogue. Along the way, one of the men told us it was the first time he’d ever fulfilled the mitzvah of tefillin. We broke into joyous dance. The man’s two sons joined in the dancing, with Itzik accompanying us on the synagogue’s old piano! Who would have thought that after all these years, there’d be a Bar Mitzvah celebration in the old synagogue of this city on the Mississippi River once again?

We watched a video about the Natchez Jewish community. During the cotton trade boom, we learned, there was a large Jewish community that contributed significantly to the local economy. But as the cotton industry declined, most of the Jews left. There are now only thirteen members in the Jewish community, the youngest ones in their 60s!

Like many of our experiences on this coast-to-coast trip, our stopover in Natchez was an illuminating detour that gave us insight to Jewish life in the historic South, and the dramatic changes in American Jewish life over the last two centuries.