Democracy Project
During this election year, the BDN’s politics team is focusing on how political polarization, cynicism and apathy is changing civic life in Maine. Read our full explanation of the series, see all the stories and share ideas by filling out this form.
A city in Maine is not the first place one would think to go to find tales of loss, joy and change in the year since Hamas suddenly attacked Israel, setting off a devastating conflict that has spread to several countries in the Middle East.
But Congregation Beth Israel of Bangor, Maine’s oldest continuously functioning synagogue, is filled with members who have worried about attracting new worshipers alongside rising antisemitism and political differences since the Hamas assault of Oct. 7, 2023, that left more than 1,100 people dead. The Israeli response has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, and the conflict shows no signs of stopping.
Formally organized in 1888 and located on Center Street before the Great Bangor Fire forced it to move to its current York Street location in 1911, Beth Israel and its roughly 100 families have felt the anguish of Oct. 7 from thousands of miles away. One member’s grandson and the great-nephew of another member were killed in Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel.
Still, the past year has brought fresh faces growing in their Judaism even while older members who make up the majority of Beth Israel’s membership worry about its future. Billy Miller, 90, whose family has attended the synagogue since the early 1900s, said around 120 kids attended its Hebrew School when his children were in it. Only a handful are enrolled now.
Miller ran Miller Drug for 55 years with his late wife, Gloria, and played percussion in the Bangor Symphony Orchestra for 65 years. He has four children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and he lamented how “not a single one lives here.”
“I don’t see the situation turning around to where there will be again a flourishing Jewish community in the immediate future, because the jobs are not here,” Miller said after a Saturday service in late September. “There’s no industry.”
The weekend service generally draws around 40 attendees, while weekday services average 10 worshipers, said Beth Israel’s president, Brian Kresge, who thinks attendance increased in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack and a “swell in antisemitism,” as new visitors found the synagogue to try to reconnect with their Jewish faith.
But he acknowledged most members are in their 70s or older, posing a challenge for the coming years. That’s a common trend within faith communities in Maine, the oldest state in the nation with one of the lowest shares of adults who regularly attend religious services.
The global turmoil has also affected Beth Israel. The congregation generally supports Israel, Kresge said, but members have “a range of opinions” on the ongoing war and politics, including the Nov. 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Trump, a Republican, said in September that “Jewish people would really have a lot to do with” him losing the election and that Israel would cease to exist in two years if he falls to Harris, a Democrat. Harris has expressed sympathy for students on college campuses who earlier this year protested Israel’s military offensive in Gaza but said she rejects some of their rhetoric.
Kresge said many members view Trump and his right-wing views as “frightening” while also grappling with the Democratic faction supporting Palestine.
“It’s a tortured dialogue,” said Kresge, an Army veteran from Winterport who ran for the Maine House of Representatives as a Republican in 2018.
Members agreed on at least one thing: Antisemitism has intensified in the last year and continues to threaten Jews around the country. Kresge remained by Beth Israel’s entrance after the start of the recent Saturday service to monitor who came inside, occasionally moving into the sanctuary to participate. He praised Bangor police for their support, with officers keeping a presence by the synagogue as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, started last Wednesday.
Rabbi Bill Siemers mentioned during the Sept. 28 service how one prayer that day was also repeated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his United Nations speech a day earlier in which he promised Israel would continue to fight its adversaries. The service was otherwise filled with prayers and singing rather than political references.
Paula Adelman, 82, grew up in Bangor and sits next to her sister in the same seat at Beth Israel that her father and grandfather sat in for decades. Adelman, who has two kids and six grandkids, was in the congregation’s kitchen at the start of the recent Saturday service to finish making a sugar, apple cider and oil dressing for a salad featuring field greens and apples.
Like Miller, she noted the congregation is old and rattled off out-of-state universities her offspring have attended, such as Emory in Atlanta and Northwestern in Chicago. The attendance was lighter at the start of the service, as one member poked her head in the kitchen to tell Adelman they were short of a “minyan,” or a quorum of 10 adults needed for certain prayers.
After worship, members gathered for Kiddush, or a lunch featuring Adelman’s salad along with other dishes, bagels, lox, fruit, drinks and desserts. Willow Noa, 23, who attends the congregation regularly and led various prayers during the Saturday worship, moved from Florida to Bangor last November with her boyfriend, his mother and his four siblings.
Noa said the siblings are all queer and that they came to Democratic-led Maine after feeling increasingly unsafe in Florida after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law various bills condemned as anti-LGBTQ+ by human rights groups.
“It’s been so important having a place to go every week,” Noa said while having lunch with a friend and one of her boyfriend’s siblings, also praising Beth Israel’s “gender egalitarianism” but mentioning seeing other young peers drift away from Judaism.
The Bangor congregation hopes more people like Noa discover it in the following years. Amid political differences, it hopes for peace in Israel and Palestine. The 90-year-old Miller called that “shalom at any price.”
“Do I have a special place for Israel in my heart? Of course I do,” Miller said. “But when I see children lying in the street dead, my heart bleeds.”
