DEMOPOLIS, Ala. — According to family legend, Julius Rosenbush was a new immigrant living in Alabama when, in the late 1890s, he boarded a train for the countryside, looking for mineral water that he thought would cure his asthma.
The train stopped at a country town, and the conductor asked if Rosenbush was Jewish. Hearing that he was, the conductor told Rosenbush that nearby Demopolis was home to several Jewish businessmen.
Rosenbush made the brief detour and found three Yiddish-speaking merchants who invited him to join their pinochle game. The businessmen convinced their long-awaited fourth-at-cards to stay.
The newcomer opened Rosenbush’s, a furniture store that today is Alabama’s oldest family-owned business, according to Bert Rosenbush Jr., owner of the store and Julius Rosenbush’s grandson.
Some things have changed, though.
If the soft-spoken Rosenbush, 73, wanted to replicate his grandfather’s pinochle game today, he’d have to search for three other Jews: Rosenbush is the last Jew in Demopolis.
“We had a temple here and a Jewish community,” Rosenbush explains. He remembers 20 to 25 people attending services from the late 1930s until the 1950s.
“Then, in about 1990, we just had a few of us left. Some of the members took it upon themselves to railroad a deal through to form a corporation to take over the assets of the temple,” he explains.
The synagogue was sold to an Episcopal church across the street.
“The last time I went to the temple they had a lawn mower in there,” he complains. “It’s just a disgraceful thing the way the temple is used. It was built to be a holy place. I wouldn’t say it’s holy now. I’d say it’s abused now.”