Yes, There Are Jews in Charlotte: Living Jewishly in the American South
I recently introduced myself to a professional deeply immersed in Jewish communal work, and we asked each other the common “Where are you from?” get-to-know-you question. When I said North Carolina, she responded semi-jokingly, “Well, that ends Jewish geography.”
You, too, might have thought something similar.
Personally, I was taken aback—not by her lack of connection to Southern Jewry, but by her combined bluntness and seemingly unselfconscious ignorance.
About one out of every four Jews in America live in the South.1 I can play Jewish geography, and, dare I say, I’m fortunate to play well. But I’m not surprised many Jews don’t realize there are fellow Jewish people in North Carolina. (How could they be expected to know unless they’ve met or heard of them?)
Frankly, it reinforces my conviction to broaden people’s perception of American and world Jewry. North Carolina is home to approximately 50,000 Jews.2 We’re more than a fly-over state for the annual snowbirds’ journey to Florida and more than a drive-through state on the way to popular beaches and historic towns.
True, the Jews are scattered throughout; there are no mostly Jewish neighborhoods. There’s no kosher restaurant open for lunch. No Jewish high school. These aren’t points of pride, rather matters of the present reality—and matters that speak to the resilience, intentionality and sacrifice of those who persist in their commitment to living Jewishly in these areas.
I didn’t grow up walking to shul, but now, when I go back to visit, I walk upward of three and a half miles between my home in Charlotte and the local Orthodox shul. To all those drivers who saw someone walking solo across a major thoroughfare in fancy chag attire, schlepping a lulav and etrog, I affirm that for me, too, it was an unforgettable experience.
‘Out of town,’ there’s no norm to living Jewishly; it requires an unpopular—and deliberate—choice.
On my long walk to the Charlotte Torah Center, I pass by the Reform temple, the Conservative synagogue and the JCC. In a remarkable prioritization of Jewish unity over difference, these institutions as well as the Chabad-run Charlotte Jewish Day School (CJDS) all reside on a designated fifty-four-acre campus, appropriately named Shalom Park. The campus was initiated and preserved since the 1980s by a pivotal Charlotte Jewish philanthropist and founder of the well-known Family Dollar store chain, Leon Levine, a”h.
In my lifetime, numerous individuals have stepped up with a sense of responsibility to provide for the community in unbelievably significant ways. The kosher grocer in town is the only one in the state, and the relatively small demand for kosher food in the area does not suffice to support the shop. Knowing the community depends on him, owner Jeff Gleiberman pursues a niche supplementary revenue source to ensure his business can stay open: He delivers kosher food to observant inmates in the South. Every kosher-observant resident, traveler or inmate between Atlanta, Asheville, Nashville and Norfolk has had access to prepared kosher foods for decades because of the dedication and mesirut nefesh of the Gleiberman family.
Similarly, community educator Rebbetzin Sara Oppenheim recently achieved a longstanding dream. Until this year, there has never been an eruv in the city. Through countless meetings, emails, calls, prayers and chizuk from fellow Jews, Rebbetzin Oppenheim collaborated with the municipality and spearheaded a taskforce to install a halachically kosher eruv that now enables families to take their young children to the park on Shabbat and meet and share meals with other Jews in the community.
Time can change many things, but so far, there is still no distinctly Jewish neighborhood in Charlotte. Walking to shul feels like a microcosmic ingathering of the exiles: a busy Shabbat morning means you might see one other person, fifty to one hundred feet away, headed in a similar direction, and you share the same thought: “Hey, that Jew is doing what I’m doing, too! Not many in this city do it, but Jews all around the world are also on their walk to shul.”
But walking alone to shul carries with it its own feeling of spiritual empowerment. “Out of town,” there’s no norm to living Jewishly; it requires an unpopular—and deliberate—choice.
Out of the approximately 15,000 Jews in Charlotte,3 those affiliated generally choose to become members wherever they have generational ties or—in the case of new Charlotteans—wherever the youth program best suits their family. Parents enroll their kids in one of the Jewish preschools, and occasionally in elementary school at Charlotte Jewish Day School. By fifth grade, however, the vast majority of Jewish kids experience Judaism primarily through extracurricular activities, such as Hebrew school, refreshing their Hebrew literacy in preparation for their bar or bat mitzvah ceremonies.
That describes Jewish life for me growing up, and some variation of this is what Jewish living looks like for many Jews in America. Often, Jewish parents scattered throughout American cities and towns speak about and live by Jewish values of tzedakah, chesed and hachnasat orchim, tracing these principles more to culture than to Torah. Jews are proud to be Jewish and act Jewish in whatever way that means to them; it doesn’t necessarily correlate with Torah knowledge or observance.
When we speak to G-d, how well do we understand the breadth of the Jewish community on whose behalf we pray?
My “extracurricular Judaism” deepened in high school. I began to take on leadership roles within a local chapter of a large Jewish youth group. Only when I visited family out of state did I learn about NCSY, which contrasted starkly to the teen-led social programming I’d known. NCSY has rabbis and advisors to share Torah and provide a listening ear, and it’s cool for teens to ask philosophical Jewish questions. At my first NCSY event, I saw more peers than I had thought possible exploring Torah concepts— and enjoying it. There were so many teens like me, equally in awe of the depth and beauty of Jewish practices. This was an entirely different model of Jewish youth programming than what I was used to, and it struck me as a gaping hole within North Carolina’s opportunities for young Jews.
So, with the dedication of NCSY rabbis in Ohio and Georgia and advisors from New York, we brought the first NCSY Shabbaton to Charlotte in February 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, there was a combination of virtual and in-person weekly chaburahs, a handful of Shabbatons and holiday events. Every event engaged between two and ten Jewish teens. Sometimes low attendance felt like failure, especially knowing how much mentors had invested in me and these programs to get things started. But this is where I learned tenacity and the importance of pivoting rather than abandoning a mission.
And so, this group of geographically scattered klal workers fiercely devoted to deepening the Jewish connection of Southerners they’d never met brainstormed how to better serve the state’s Jewish teens. We decided to shift our efforts from running programs to promoting more Jewish Student Union (JSU) clubs. JSU, a project of NCSY, is a network of after-school Jewish culture clubs in public schools and non-Jewish private schools throughout North America that aim to teach teens about their Jewish heritage and help them meet other Jewish teens. What happened next was remarkable: between 2023 and 2025, JSU clubs have exploded in double digits across North Carolina.
And that’s where things stand now, in my corner of the South.
In densely Orthodox areas, it’s easy to forget—or never know about—the breadth of Jewry and how Jews live so differently in some ways yet so similarly in others.
We often play Jewish geography—and the stakes are low. Far more often, though, we daven and recite tefillot that call on us to keep our fellow Jews in mind. When we speak to G-d, how well do we understand the breadth of the Jewish community on whose behalf we pray? Thrice daily, we make requests such as “shema koleinu—hear our voice” and “ya’aseh shalom aleinu ve’al kol Yisrael—may He make peace upon us and upon all of Israel,” speaking on behalf of the Jewish people.
It’s important to remember there are Jews beyond the ones you know.
And some are in North Carolina.
Notes
1. https://ajpp.brandeis.edu/us_jewish_population_2020 and https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-demographics/#geographic-distribution.
2. https://welcome-israel.com/blog/jewish-population-by-state#population-demographics-most-jewish-states and https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/jewish-population-by-state.
3. https://jewishnc.org/jewish-communities-in-north-carolina/jewish-life-in-charlotte-nc/.
Adina Peck is talent development coordinator at the Orthodox Union.