and the laid-back feel of the South. The Jews have been well accepted there by gentile neighbors. Bob Sherman belongs to the local country club, whose membership is 7-8 percent Jew- ish. When the new club was built 37 years ago, it changed its "token Jews" policy and opened membership, Sherman says. "Now, Jews are very active. There have been four Jewish presidents [of the club] in that time." The fences dividing the three Jewish ceme- teries in Bay City were removed to form one. At the north end are the Reform graves, "some very old gravestones," Ralph Isackson says. At the south end were buried the Or- thodox Jews, and in the middle are the Con- servatives, he says. Just as the divisions between graves have been erased, "that's the way the communi- ty went here," Isackson says. The Latvian Jews comprised "a very ob- servant community," says Sherman, where- as the German Jews who came in the 1880s preferred Reform. But eventually, members of Bay City's Shaary Zedek "felt it was too Orthodox for them, broke away" and became Conservative. Today, the members of Bay City's Temple Isackson, who was born in the Upper Penin- Israel, which was built in 1961, are mostly "families with kids who have grown and gone sula town of Manistique in 1920. After his fa- ther died in a 1921 auto accident, Isackson's away," says Bennett Ruby. But the younger generation of Bay City's mother moved back to Bay City. "There aren't many families whose chil- Jews still feel that special Jewish something. dren come back here," he laments. "They go Ruby's 15-year-old son Brian "has a real sense ofJewish identity. His closest friend here is where the action is, and it's not here." Some new people do move to Bay City — Jewish," and he is happiest when talking doctors, business people who "land here by about camp (Young Judaea). "My son and two others are trying to or- accident," he says. But mostly, people return only for family ganize a youth group with the computer," businesses, like Bob Sherman's daughter, connecting Jewish youngsters in the Tri- Patti Ruby. She brought her husband, Ben- Cities, Flint and Mt. Pleasant. Still, Bennett nett Ruby, back home, and both now work Ruby says it's "not enough." Sherman, says, "I can't be optimistic, I wish with Bob Sherman at Sherman and Sons, Inc., a shoe retailer founded by Bob's father, I could, but I can't be optimistic that the Jew- Julius, in 1936. Sherman and Sons now op- ish community will grow or even maintain." Beth Cook came to Bay City 24 years erates shoe departments in stores like Crow- ago with her husband David, a Bay City na- ley's and Ganto's and specialty shoe stores. Bob Sherman was born in Bay City in tive. By the time their children were old 1923; his parents originally came from Riga. enough, the Jewish youth group had been disbanded. But their daughters — Rebecca, In the 1880s, logging was big in Bay City and attracted immigrants who brought no par- 25, and Amy, 22 — did receive a Jewish ed- ucation. ticular trade or vocation. 'We tried to give them as much Judaism The people Sherman remembers from his as possible in the home, sent them to camps. childhood were peddlers. "I had a great-un- cle [who had a] wagon and horse, would go They each had one Jewish friend," Cook says. "I think in any community today, there is the up north with pots and pans, farm to farm, sell, barter, trade a pot for animal hide and same threat of assimilation and intermar- back here sell the skins," he recalls. Many riage because children don't stay home any- hawked fruit, rising at 4 a.m. to go to the mar- more, even more so here because we don't ket to load their wagons with produce, then have a strong community to back up the fam- walked the streets all day selling door-to-door. ily." Cook was a supporter of creating the joint The Jewish immigrants who settled in Bay City were "entrepreneurial people," Sherman Congregation Am Yachad. "I wanted to see recalls. Like the Bernstein family, who an eventual merger ... We've come up opened silent movie theaters. And Koffman. against so much resistance, mostly in Mid- and Blumenau, originally a malt company land and Bay City, that we had to abandon that plan." and later a grocery supplier. Does that disharmony forecast the even- Bay City used to be a place of "distinct Jew- ish neighborhoods," says Andrew Rogers, a tual demise ofJudaikn in the Tri-City area? musician who lives there now. It reached its Cook says it does. "As soon as Rabbi Scott retires, I feel we peak in the early 1940s, Sherman says. "When I was growing up, we had a thriving will not be able to replace him, and whatev- Jewish community — hundreds of families, er cooperation we have will fall apart. Merg- parties, lots going on. Probably you had your er is the only solution." Sherman says, "You have a community World War and I think a lot of the popula- tion found out there was another world oth- like ours, which has a very beautiful, large synagogue, built with contributions and not er than Michigan." Bay City is a town of big, majestic houses cheap to maintain." synagogues, two kosher butchers and one kosher bakery. Today, 70 families belong to Temple Israel. Bay City's Jewish community comprises mostly the descendants ofJewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia, who came to mid-Michi- gan in the late 1800s. Ralph Isackson's mother, Lillian Biller, was born in Bay City in 1890. Her parents left Riga in 1880 to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. "My grandmother Biller, after she moved here, her home became a place for Jews," says And, Ruby notes, who will the three teen- aged Jewish boys in Bay City date? Ralph Isackson's daughter, a lawyer in Miami Beach who married a Cuban man, sends her children to Jewish private school. His step- daughter married a Jewish man, but his step- son married a gentile — "I don't know what his kids will be," he laments. Small-town Jew- ry builds strong identity but, sometimes, must deal with an equally strong threat of inter- marriage. "Some people overlook the advantages of a small community," Cook says. They build "personal feeling, a feeling of belonging and identity, which you might take for granted in a larger community. "Even with all our problems and dis- agreements, we're still together in some way, and I have to be optimistic about that," Cook adds. Rabbi Scott insists that "everybody from the rabbi on down has to make com- promises. [We must ask] not are we all ha- lachic? But do we want to be together as Jews?" Above left: Bennett Ruby, Bob Sherman and Patti Ruby: Family business. Top: Beth Cook wants to see a Tri-Cities merger. Above: Naomi and Verne Primack: Keeping Judaism alive in Saginaw.