Just Jew It! Living a Jewish Life Online via Social Media

This post is probably the most important one I’ve written for this blog to date. It is about how Jews like me, (which almost became the title of this post, LOL), who are the only Jews where they live, can successfully utilize social media (Facebook, etc.), and the internet in general, not only to celebrate the Jewish holidays, such as Hanukkah, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Purim, Shavuot, etc., but to find Jewish fellowship, inspiration, knowledge, philosophy, classes, foods, Judaica, Chabad, books, recipes, etc., create community, and make friends around the world! I hope that, like myself, and many friends whom I’ve come to know over the last 20 years, you find that your social media experiences are largely positive! l look forward to your comments below- and don’t forget: sharing is caring! 🙂

The Jew in McDowell County…

I am 63, and I have spent the last 20 years of my life being, among other things, the only Jew (as far as I know) in The Free State of McDowell County, West Virginia. (Yes, that is really the name of our county, and you can Google it for lots of Very interesting info!) I am American-Israeli, and in Israel that wasn’t the case, nor was it in NYC where I was born and raised, or in many other places I have lived or visited, but this is not the first time in my life I’ve been in this position. I was also the only Jew to live in Duelmen, Germany, 1988-1992, after the last 7 Jews of that community- which dated back to the Middle Ages- were murdered in 1943 at the start of WWII. So it’s occurred to me that G-d’s plan for me is perhaps to make me a bit of a “light unto the nations”… (It’s also, apparently a bit of a family tradition: My maternal grandparents, who were born in Ukraine, went to Tulsa, Oklahoma around 1915, and were founders of the Jewish Community there. Grandma Tanya told me that when she made a pilot trip to Tulsa from Chicago (leaving hubby Yasha, a fine artist and photographer, with baby David, in Chicago), she was enchanted: “There was nothing there!” she told me with glee! So they went there and made something: Rivkin Photography Studio, and, as Tanya was an actress in English, Yiddish, and Russian, The Little Theatre. My mother was born in Tulsa in 1922).

When Dan and I bought our flood-damaged, historic building in 2002, after back-to-back floods had devastated McDowell County, (we both worked for FEMA, and Dan was FEMA Logistics for that Disaster Response & Recovery Operation), our concept was largely altruistic: he’d save and restore the building, and we’d open our huge, new home as an historic inn, to kick-start the creation of a post-flood tourism industry for McDowell County. And we did it: We’ve had the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre here for the last 20 years! McDowell County once had a long-standing, vibrant, and thriving Jewish Community, with several synagogues, and even a kosher butcher- see the list of resources at the bottom of this post for more information on the Jewish Communities of southern West Virginia. B’nei Israel, the first synagogue in this region, opened in 1890 in Keystone, just 5 minutes from our Inn- and, by 1914, Kimball and Welch had synagogues, too! But when US Steel pulled out of the area in the 1970s, 100,000 people left McDowell County inside 5 years, and by the time we bought our building in 2002, a County Commissioner told us that the last, two, elderly Jewish couples had left the county two years prior to our arrival… making me the only Jew in the county. (Chabad sent “Roving Rabbis” to this area a number of years ago, and they visited our inn while meeting with “Hidden Yidden”- Jews who don’t want anyone to know they’re Jewish. So there were, at least at that time, some Jews in this region, but they have remained Very hidden). I am not hidden, and my being Jewish was (and is) no secret. My maiden name is Goldstein, and when we bought our property in 2002, “Goldstein-Clark buys last historic property in McDowell County” was plastered across 6 columns of the Raleigh County newspaper! My being Jewish has never been a problem here, and in the 20 years we’ve lived here we have experienced only one ugly, antisemitic incident: when Nazi swastikas were spray-painted on a sign in our garden in 2014.

Being “the only Jew” in a place does have its issues- as my father would have said, it keeps you on your toes! I know that for a lot of people who have never met a Jew before- or an Israeli- I represent All Jews and All Israelis to them. All they may know is whatever they’ve seen in the often biased media, or, perhaps, a TV show such as NCIS, with a character like Ziva, or Gal Gadot in Wonderwoman… or Ruth Bader Ginzburg, Fran Drescher, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, or Joan Rivers… (I mention these particular women, as, at one time or another, I’ve been compared to all of them, LOL). So it definitely makes you think about the impact of what you do and say… hopefully before you do it or say it, LOL.

After we bought our building in Dec., 2002, and Dan- the ultimate “can-do” US Army Ret. Guy- put doors on it, (and took 5′ of mud out of the basement with a shovel, gutted the whole first floor and power washed it with bleach 3 times, wired and plumbed it, installed 240 sheets of drywall, laid marble and laminate flooring, etc.), the first thing we did was put a mezuzah on our front door post, with a Kosher klaf (scroll) inside, thus making our home a Jewish home! (Photos of three of our mezuzot are below) The next thing we did- once Dan built our walls, LOL- was put up all the Israeli art and Judaica we have, including my collection of Israeli Hanukkiot (better known in the USA as Hanukkah Menorahs). Dan hung them above our kitchen door just in time for HGTV’s filming of their first program on our Inn for their “Building Character” program in 2004!

The Internet as Judaica Store- among other things!

Having very few places to shop in this extremely rural area made me an online shopper literally The minute we got internet- a dial-up connection at first, which was a Real Treat, LOL. I built our Inn’s first website on dial-up, and I’d literally click on a page, and go take a bath while it opened! But, hey- dial-up was better than no internet at all, and, at that time, we were the only place with internet in our part of the county! (Actually we still are; a LOT of people pull into our parking lot to use our WiFi…) And, when we finally got DSL, I literally did the Snoopy Happy Dance around our dining room! (When, a few years ago, we actually got REALLY high-speed internet from Shentel, and could finally host the www.railstream.biz Railcam on our balcony for our many “railfan” guests, I darn nearly went out of my mind from joy!) eBay was my first go-to shopping site, for everything from Judaica to our vehicles, and from designer and vintage décor for the Inn’s guest rooms, to building supplies and our hot tub; if not for eBay, the Elkhorn Inn would look like Wally World! I also discovered that the only Jewish things available within an hour of us were Manishevitz Concord Grape Kosher Wine at Walmart, and Shabbos Candles at Food City- for reasons that still escape me! Early on in our McDowell County life, hubby Dan once spent a Very long day driving across West Virginia and Virginia trying, unsuccessfully, to buy us Hanukkah candles, and came back Very upset at the fact that no one he met with at any store across two states even knew what they were! (“Canica? Conica? What’s that?”) I realized then, that everything Jewish that I’d heretofore taken for granted as being readily available, was going to have to be planned and ordered online way in advance; unlike when I lived in Israel, or NYC, there’d be no running down to the corner market to buy a box of Matzoh Ball Mix or a Havdalah candle… So my online shopping intensified, and while I order a lot of Jewish & Israeli things on amazon (including tons of books…), as well as eBay (my source for giant, inflatable menorahs and Hanukkah candles, among other things!), and etsy, I also order from many specialized sites, such as Avi Glatt, which has the Israeli spices, condiments, canned, and frozen foods I love and miss, such as Melauach (a delectable, buttery, layered Yemenite pancake), Schug (Yemenite Israeli hot sauce), Israeli-Indian Amba Sauce, Israeli Sura Olives and pickled mini eggplants, Hawaiij Yemenite spices for soup and coffee, Israeli Baharat spice mix for making Meurav Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Mixed Grill), etc. Between social media & Googling (and entering sweepstakes, LOL), I discovered tons of cool, Jewish, and Israeli websites, including Lev HaOlam, which sends me a box of goodies from Israel each month, Seppy’s Challah, where I found (thanks to Facebook), delicious challah that she makes with Colorado Pueblo Chilies, www.ModernTribe.com, www.JudaicaWebStore.com, and Chabad’s Judaica Store on www.chabad.org (where I always buy our mezuzah scrolls, to make certain that they are Kosher), Online Kosher Wine (where Dan scored us a case of our favorite Israeli wine from the Golan Heights Winery for my birthday), MyEsrog.com, a seasonal site for lulavs and esrogs for Sukkot, and www.MidrashManicures.com, with their super-cool Passover nail decals, and fabulous Matzoh Dress, pictured below, which I Absolutely Had To Have! And I even found adorable Hanukkah presents for our dogs and cat on Chewy, and Hanukkah Dog Cookies on several sites, including The Dog Bakery and Pampered Paw Gifts! And so I’ve basically spent 20 years living for the arrival of the UPS and FedEx Guys, LOL.

Finding Facebook…

Around 2008 a good friend of mine in NYC tried to convince me to get on Facebook– telling me that I would “love” it. I rolled my eyes and almost didn’t do it, convinced that it was just more time-wasting nonsense… But she pushed, and I did it, setting up a page for our Inn first, and then personal pages for Dan and I, and Facebook became, rapidly & literally, essential to my life, both for promoting our Inn business, and for me, personally. (She also had to teach me the meaning of all the acronyms the Cool Kids use, like LOL, ICYMI, BRB, IRL, TYVM, & IMHO!) I almost immediately reconnected with old friends around the world who found me on Facebook- “I knew you’d be here!” was a repeated comment, LOL. I also joined Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, largely to promote our Inn, at first, but they also became ways for me to join and participate in Jewish and Israeli communities around the world, and find people who shared my diverse and eclectic variety of hobbies, interests, and passions.

When the winter holidays came around, and we were decorating the Inn, in addition to the de rigueur inflatable Santa Claus decorations, I went on eBay and found us a 6′, and later an 8′, inflatable, light-up Hanukkiah (Menorah), and then a kippa-wearing Hanukkah Bear with a Dreidel, to put outside our Inn! And I just Had to take photos of them and post them- sharing it all not only with hundreds of Facebook Friends, but, as most of my posts were and are Public, with many thousands across the globe! It’s been a lot of fun over the years to see our photos reposted on Chabad’s sites, and many others, and I hope that over the last 2 decades I’ve inspired a few people to do similar things. While it’s fairly easy to find Hanukkah decorations in the USA, it is Not easy to find outdoor décor for other Jewish Holidays, and so I’ve kept up a pretty constant online search for 20 years! (I am still trying to find giant, inflatable decorations for Purim, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Sukkot, so if you manage to locate an 8′ high, inflatable Hamantaschen, or giant, light-up Apples-and-Honey, a humungous, inflatable Seder Plate, or a 10′, glow-in-the-dark Lulav-Esrog, please let me know in the comments below!) This year I finally found, online, thanks to friends from Tanya Today on Facebook, an adorable portable Sukkah for Sukkot!

In the spring, when Purim and Passover arrived, up on Facebook went the photos of my Hamantaschen pastries for the former, and of the handmade, shmura matzoh sent to us by Chabad in Morgantown, our seder plate, Dan’s Matzoh Necktie, our Got Matzoh? mug, and me in my AbFab Matzoh Dress that I scored on Midrash Manicures, for the latter! And it became Very clear to me that my entire Jewish life was basically being lived on- and made possible by- the internet.

Living “out in the boonies” (Walmart is an hour from us), meant that we were- and still are, 20 years later- largely dependent on the internet for many things, and Jewish community was- and is- one of them; the nearest synagogue is 3.5 hours away, in Charleston, WV, and we have never been able to get there… Given that my whole Jewish and Israeli life is basically lived online, and that the holiday celebrations we make at our home/inn are usually only for Dan & I, unless I share them on social media I’m basically doing everything alone- which can be monumentally depressing. And so Facebook, which became indispensable for the success of our Inn business, also became indispensable for me, personally.

I believe I first started my Jewish social media posts with photos that Dan took of me with our giant, inflatable Hanukkah Menorahs each year, (see the slide show below for “Hanukkah Throughout the Ages at The Elkhorn Inn”), and of each night of Hanukkah, as I lit the candles on all our Menorahs in the Inn’s dining room…

Those were followed by photos I took of Chef Dan with his fabulous Hanukkah Latkes (potato pancakes), wearing his “Latke King of Landgraff” chef’s apron (thank you, etsy…),. and it grew from there! When I light Shabbat Candles on Friday evening and make Kiddush, and when I make Havdalah on Saturday evening, lighting the braided candle and celebrating the start of a new week, when Dan and I make Israeli dishes like Meurav Yerushalmi, or I whip up classic Jewish ones like Matzoh Ball Soup, I post photos on Facebook, and often on Instagram and Twitter, as well. I started doing these Jewish posts for me- because it made me feel less lonely, less isolated- and, as I stated above, “sharing is caring”, right? If a few of my 802 Facebook Friends at least clicked “like” I wouldn’t be- or feel- so totally alone… My running joke for years has been that if something isn’t on Facebook it didn’t really happen, LOL, and in a sense that’s true… To paraphrase the bon mot about a tree falling in the forest, if you light a Menorah, and no one sees it, was it really lit at all? I happily noticed that a lot of my Facebook Friends- many of whom are not Jewish, and only about half of whom actually know me IRL- were clicking “like” and “love” on on my Shabbos posts! And when I didn’t post on time, several PMed me to ask me why I hadn’t, as they looked forward to them each week! I also post my Shabbat and Havdalah photos in several groups on Facebook, including “The Shabbos Candle Club“, where the members post each week; it’s fun to share what we do, and to see everyone else’s photos, too! By posting on Facebook I learned, to my surprise, that there were a lot of people in similar situations to mine, who were also living their Jewish lives largely, or completely, online.

The Jewish Foodie in the Land of KFC

Living in an area where the only places to eat out are fast food chains, (unless you want to drive for an hour), I sorely missed a lot of the delicious Israeli and Jewish dishes I love- like Felafel, Yemenite Melauach, Iraqi Kubeh Soup, Syrian Kibbeh, Italian-Jewish Stuffed Squash Blossoms, and Meurav Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Mixed Grill)- and realized quickly that if Dan and I weren’t going to make them, we wouldn’t be eating them! Dan has been the Chef of our inn for the last 18 years, and so I’ve amassed a huge collection of recipes from around the internet, including a lot of Israeli recipes, and Jewish recipes from around the world, and, in the process, I discovered tons of great websites, YouTube channels, and Facebook Groups for Jewish and Israeli “foodies”! I began joining “foodie” and recipe-sharing groups on Facebook, including “We Love Jewish Food” and “Sephardic Spice”, as well as others, such as “Little Italy WV”, posting and sharing recipes and photos of our culinary creations, and many of the people behind the recipes and groups became my Facebook Friends. Yaffa Turgeman’s “Sephardic Flavors“, cookbook author Adeena Sussman, Jamie Geller’s “Joy of Kosher” website: www.jamiegeller.com, Jewish Drinking: http://jewishdrinking.com/, The Nosher / MyJewishLearning (for Michael Solomonov’s recipes, among other things), and the Jewish Food Society, are all key resources of mine for excellent Jewish and Israeli recipes, as well as video tutorials, to learn things like how to braid a Challah! And www.Chabad.org has a great Kosher recipe section, too- of course! David Leite, of Leite’s Culinaria has The best recipe for Cilantro-Jalapeno Latkes, and even Martha Stewart, and the many other mainstream food websites, are worth a look at holiday time! Goldbelly is great for a splurge, as are Zabar’s, and Williams-Sonoma, as they all have really great Jewish foods that can be shipped right to your door! (Note: Not all foods known as “Jewish” are Kosher, so check carefully to see if they are. If they are Kosher they will have a “Hechser” – certificate- from a Kashrut authority, such as the OU (Orthodox Union), and this will be printed somewhere on the label). Food is an essential and integral part of Jewish life and holiday celebrations, and “Jewish food” goes Way beyond “bagels & lox with a shmear” and pastrami on rye at the deli! There are fabulous Jewish dishes from all around the world, including Italy, India, Georgia (Gruzia), Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine- nearly every country- and gazillions of recipes online if you Google for them! Jewish holiday foods are especially important- the Passover Seder, fried foods on Hanukkah, cheese dishes on Shavuot, Hamantaschen on Purim, etc.- and this is one of my fave memes that I post periodically on Facebook that brings that issue home:

Speaking of memes, there are a lot of really funny Jewish ones out there on the ‘net, as well as beautiful Jewish art, and one of the fun things we do online is share them- especially during difficult times, when things are sad and depressing… A few of my faves are here in this slide show:

One of my fave online Jewish foodie experiences was when Dan and I recreated the most authentic version of Meurav Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Mixed Grill) we’ve eaten outside its “source”: the kiosk on Agrippas Street, near the Machane Yehudah Market in Jerusalem! We tested a bunch of recipes that didn’t make the cut, I ordered all the needed spices online, and we worked on perfecting the spice mixture and recipe for quite some time. When we finally got it Just Right I posted the recipe on Facebook: Meurav Yerushalmi in West Virginia: The Recipe: https://www.facebook.com/notes/3533670803360331

Other fun Jewish Foodie Facebook posts have been about my Green Matzoh Balls for St . Patrick’s Day, and the history of the Yiddish Sons of Erin (of which my father was a card-carrying member): https://www.facebook.com/ElkhornInn/posts/pfbid0tKMWUFHXw4beqEVuuKwrcZQ2RUHoSWVKqsn4JAxmVe6ViPydQh929hg3hs1LW8Ktl

The creation of my Apple Roses for Rosh Hashanna: https://www.facebook.com/ElkhornInn/posts/pfbid0ZNGFvbdgpiswwKXZTRLNhCwNs8M1L7fHWSii9wz8LpX34B8vw3gRSRdt4kzUPdfcl

I’ve posted often about Chef Dan’s Fabulous Latkes, as I mentioned above, as well as the more “exotic” dishes we make, such as the gloriously delicious, deep-fried, Kurdish Kibbeh I learned to make from the cookbook “Middle Eastern Delicacies” by Nina Mellman, which I found and ordered from- yes- Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/ElkhornInn/posts/pfbid0ufL9EBoidVFaoZSnqrdy3pHCug1e3KSTsKXKKFPVp9Wvo6qdVQmz3hbYBM15wHbKl

It may sound silly, but sharing our dishes and recipes on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, (and enjoying the nice feedback), is half the fun of making and eating them! My most recent Jewish foodie project was creating a recipe for, and making, Dreidel Sliders for Hanukkah, which came about after I posted a stock photo of dreidel-shaped burgers on Facebook, and dozens of people wanted to know how to make them! I found the Dreidel Cookie Cutters on eBay- natch!

My other Facebook-inspired Jewish foodie project has been learning to make Challah for Shabbat– something I haven’t done for decades! The last time I made Challah I was in high school, and I did it to write an article about it for a magazine; I didn’t have a Clue about it being a Mitzvah (commandment/good deed)! But now, thanks to Chabad on Facebook, and the www.chabad.org website, I know all about it- or enough to be dangerous, at any rate! So far I’ve made one, good Challah, (photo in the slide show below), using one of Jamie Geller’s many recipes, and her video tutorials, and once I am truly happy with the results I will post photos and the recipe on Facebook- and on this blog!

For all my questions about Judaism- like the exact wording of the prayer one says when hanging a mezuzah, or how to do the mitzvah (commandment/good deed) of “taking challah” when you make a Challah for Shabbat- and to answer questions from our non-Jewish inn guests about Judaism that I don’t feel qualified to answer- I turn to the Aish HaTorah and Chabad websites; www.chabad.org is my “go-to” site for all things Jewish! And when I needed serious help I reached out to Chabad Rabbis by email, through Facebook, and via the “Ask The Rabbi” feature on www.chabad.org, and they have always responded to me within a day or two. The nearest Chabad House to us is the Rohr Chabad Jewish Center in Morgantown, West Virginia, but it is 5 hours away, and we have never been there… But their Rabbi, and several other Chabad Rabbis, have been very kind and helpful to us in real life- sending us handmade, Shmurah Matzoh for Passover, helping to arrange my mother’s US Military Funeral, and assisting Dan when he was hospitalized- and they are all people who I know only from the internet! I do visit Chabad Houses around the nation when I am deployed on disaster response operations, often during the High Holidays, as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur often fall during Hurricane Season, and I am always made welcome, and Dan and I even went to the Chabad House in Saigon when we were in Vietnam! (There is a very cool map of Chabad Houses all over the world on chabad.org, so you can find the one nearest to you). Qesher on Facebook, Oorah, and Ofek Learning Hub also have great Jewish courses and programs- and there are many others: just Google! 🙂

Jewish & Israeli Studies on Social Media

As the years have gone by, I have wanted more and more Jewish knowledge, and at the suggestion of an old and dear friend I re-found on Facebook after losing touch for many years, I began to study Tanya (Chabad philosophy) on Chabad’s Facebook page each morning, live, with Rabbi Fine, the “Tanya Rabbi” of “Tanya Today”. Rav Fine breaks down the Tanya into small, understandable pieces each morning, and makes it comprehensible even for the likes of me! That 15 minutes of study every morning has made my life better in many ways, and a number of my fellow students, from all around the world, and not all Jewish, have become part of my growing circle of friends. As the months passed, I found myself watching more and more Chabad classes on Facebook Live, reading more on www.chabad.org, doing more mitzvot, buying & reading more books… (I am currently reading “Secret Jews” by Juan Marcos Bejarano Gutierrez, about the Crypto-Jews, and Jews who were forcibly converted during the Inquisition in Spain). Another wonderful book I discovered, thanks to Facebook, was Howard Jay Smith’s “Meeting Mozart”, about Mozart’s Italian Jewish Librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte. And lots of excellent cookbooks, such as “Middle Eastern Delicacies” by Nelly Sultan and Nina Mellman. Thanks, essentially, to Facebook, I am growing more learned as a Jew, and more devout- a pretty amazing concept, if you ask me!

I am also a Moderator of the large, pro-Israel Facebook Group “Israel: The Eternal Nation“, which has over 36,000 members, and posting on, and growing that page is a key part of my online Jewish life- and many of the members of that group are also my Facebook Friends. I have been invited into a number of other Israeli and Jewish Facebook groups, as well, and have joined most of them! I watch and listen to the concert pianist Gershon Wachtel play piano from his home in Jerusalem on Facebook, too, and I enjoy, save, and re-post countless Israeli and Jewish music videos from YouTube. Some of my (many) fave sites are The Hebron Fund, Streetwise Hebrew with Guy Sharett, TLV1 https://tlv1.fm/, LevHaOlam, David HaIvri – Israel Heartland Tour Guide, Israel With Eliyokim, Israel In Photos, The Jerusalem Post, Arutz7 Israel National News, and World Israel News for Israeli news, Dry Bones, by the wonderful Israeli political cartoonish Yaakov Kirschen, Friends of the IDF, and United with Israel…

As everyone knows, the internet is wonderful for travel planning, and as that is something I do professionally, as part of my job as Partner in our Inn, I’ve become quite good at it over the years! For me, researching destinations, and finding new, cool things to do, is half the fun of a trip! And so, when Dan and I travel, I do stupid amounts of internet research, emailing people around the world at all hours of the day and night! When we went to Israel in 2011, I had a total blast finding all sorts of amazing things for us to do that even I, an Israeli, hadn’t known about before finding them online! For example, Israel now has over 300 excellent wineries, from the Negev Desert to the Golan Heights, and Dan and I were able to visit a number of them, and stay at lovely guest houses on farms and wineries! I rented us apartments online, and found us “foodie” tours and cooking classes, and so we met wonderful people, had some fabulous adventures, got to spend time with my BFF from the IDF and her daughter, and even, as is shown in the small slide show below, drank wine from the Rota Winery in a 2000 year old wine cellar at the Ovdat archeological site! And when we returned home, I created 19(!) public Facebook albums of our photos, tagging all the people and places we’d visited, and shared them with literally thousands of people interested in Israel, showcasing as many of the wonderful, fun, and delicious things Israel has to offer as possible! When we went to China, I discovered, online, the Jewish history of Harbin, and was able to arrange for us to go there and see some of what remains, and when we went to Vietnam, I found us the Chabad House in Saigon, which we visited! Through social media I can keep the friendships we make when we travel alive; social media not only makes it possible to make new friends, and find old friends, but also to stay in touch with people one might otherwise lose contact with- a truly wonderful thing!

In short, the internet is truly my Jewish oyster, LOL, and even though I lived happily without it, all over the world, for most of my life, it’s difficult to fathom how I’d live without it now!

And then came the Etrogs…

Etrogs (etrogim in Hebrew) are a special variety of citron (in the lemon family) that are used to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in the fall. After Dan and I returned from Israel in 2011, I grew a number of etrog plants from Israeli seed (etrogs must be grown from seed (not cuttings or grafts) in order to be Kosher), but they all died one winter when our small greenhouse failed. I was bereft… and tried to buy replacement etrog plants online, only to discover that they were totally unavailable in the USA– at any price! In 2014, through a wonderful journalist I finally found online, Dan & I were able to buy several very special Assad’s Etrog trees from the Moroccan Jewish Community, from a grower in California, made possible by an agricultural exchange program called “Unforbidden Fruits”, and #Mama Etrog was born! Dan and I have coddled those trees since 2014, repotting them periodically into larger and larger pots, until they finally graduated to the huge pots on wheels they’re in now- as you can see in the photo below. We’ve shlepped them outside every spring, and inside every fall, picking the bugs off them, and babying them as best we can… and, finally, in 2021, they flowered outside where the bees could pollinate them, and we got etrogs! And where better to share this “aggie miracle” than on Facebook?!

I discovered the Jewish Farmers Facebook Group, joined it, and began posting, among other things, (gardening has been a passion of mine since I was an FFA Aggie in High School), updates on #MamaEtrog and her rapidly growing baby etrogs! This past fall I had 9 ripe etrogs on the trees in time for Sukkot 2022, and, thanks to Facebook, they all went to happy homes in time for the holiday- and one special buyer even made it possible for us to make a donation to LIBI, the organization that supports Israeli IDF Lone Soldiers, like he and I once were! How cool is that?! I wrote about it here: “An Etrog Tree Grows in West Virginia” I then planted Israeli etrog seeds, as well as seeds from our Moroccan Jewish Community Etrogim, and now I’ve got quite the little “etrog farm” here in West Virginia- which I, #MamaEtrog, share updates about, periodically, on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter! And they need to go to good homes! So if you want to grow your own etrogs like we do, just let me know in the comments below!

You are not alone!

When I posted on Facebook about writing this article, a number of people in similar situations to mine expressed interest. Craig Michael, a member of the “Jewish Farmers” Facebook page wrote: “I’m an ag-pilot (crop-duster) who has lived in rural areas for the last almost 40 years as the only Jew in town. I love my job doing my small part to help feed the world, but it’s always meant being away from a Jewish community. Always used to fill my house for Passover seder people loved learning about Judaism!”

Michael W., my friend through Chabad’s “Tanya Today” on Facebook, who lives in a small town in Germany, wrote: “Shalom, I was asked by my dear friend Elisse to share how the internet and social media helps me to connect to the Jewish community and to learn Torah. Where I live there is no Jewish community, the internet and social media are the way I study Torah and connect to the Jewish community. The Rabbis I follow and learn from are on different platforms. I have found great friendships with other students around the world, some of whom are in situations like mine, and others who live in the center of vibrant Jewish communities. We have different Torah learning groups where we share our thoughts, and other Jewish groups where we talk about different things. I am in contact with my Jewish friends over the web throughout the day, it’s a part of my life, we are a community. I thank G’d for the internet, and that I can study from my Rabbis with it. But it’s much more, it is where my great friends who encouraged me to study Torah seriously are. This changed me and my life for the better. There were moments I will never forget. We learn in Rambam that vessels can be pure and impure; it’s like with the internet and social media, it’s the way in which we use it. And I thank G’d for the options it gives me”.

I am well aware that all is not jolly joy-joy on social media, and that there are a lot of problems, including the dissemination of antisemitism and hate, which has become increasingly and extremely virulent since 2009. I have been on the receiving end of some of that, as have many friends, and rather than get into pointless “discussions” with haters, (and risk getting banned, blocked, or put in “Facebook jail”, which has happened, sadly, to many friends- I was blocked from posting on Twitter for 1.5 years for posting a factual Israeli news article…), I immediately block anyone who even smells like they are going to start something ugly. As a Moderator of a pro-Israel Facebook Group, blocking haters has, sadly, become almost a full-time job. My goal is to keep my social media world an angst-free Happy Place where I am among friends, and where I don’t have to live in fear, or be subjected to a constant barrage of harassment, meanness, and hate. I do not believe that I can “change hearts and minds” on Facebook or Twitter by arguing with people, (and upsetting myself in the process), and I am leaving that job to others; I “preach to the converted”, as the expression goes! I have to say that as the lone Jew in an extremely rural environment, social media has been a marvelous thing for me- it has enabled me to have a very fulfilling Jewish life that I would otherwise not have.

Please comment below with your experiences on social media, and any ideas you may have for building and sharing community- I’m always game for another group to join! 🙂 And, as I stated at the beginning of this post, I hope your experiences on the ‘net have been, like mine, largely positive!

Resources for information on Jewish Communities in southern West Virginia: