Asheville Jewish Business Forum (AJBF)

Jews have a long history in Appalachia. Downtown Asheville has a vibrant Jewish business past, and Jewish merchants helped shape the downtown we know today. It became a regional hub for shoppers from several states as well as from Asheville and surrounding western North Carolina. Business leaders helped establish a branch of the University of North Carolina, contributed to desegregation, and worked toward the betterment of impoverished citizens, as well as adding to the economic growth of the city.

With the coming of malls and other suburban shopping centers in the 1970s, Asheville experienced dramatic changes in its retail businesses. Today, the Jewish retail businesses are almost gone. Although Asheville's contemporary downtown thrives as an arts center, its stores no longer provide the necessities of daily living, from clothing to house wares.

The Family Store: A History of Jewish Businesses in Downtown Asheville, North Carolina, 1880-1990, an educational exhibit, documents 435 Jewish businesses and has inspired the Asheville Jewish Business Forum to carry on the traditions of their forbearers and create a networking opportunity for newcomers and old timers alike to help each other get established on Asheville and grow their businesses. We invite you to visit www.history-at-hand.com to learn more about Jewish Asheville’s business heritage. The Family Store exhibit was created in 2003 by Sharon Fahrer, an urban planner, and Jan Schochet, a folklorist, to preserve Asheville’s local and Jewish history.

Asheville and Western North Carolina comprise one of the most active Jewish communities of any small-city environment in the United States. For most of the 20th century, Asheville had the second largest Jewish population in North Carolina. It is the smallest community in the nation (fewer than 70,000 residents) with its own Jewish Community Center www.jcc-asheville.org, founded in 1940.

Today’s Asheville Jewish community includes a Jewish Day School, Maccabi Academy www.maccabiacademy.org; Reform, Congregation Beth HaTephila http://bethhatephila.org, and Conservative, Beth Israel Synagogue www.bethisraelnc.org,  congregations, both founded in the late 1800s; and The Chabad House of Asheville www.JewishWNC.com. Jewish education opportunities can be found at the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville www.unca.edu/cjs/, and students are served by the WNC Hillel Foundation http://orgs.unca.edu/wnchillel/ on campus. UNCA’s Ramsey Library houses Asheville’s Jewish Archives in the Special Collections Department, and portions can be searched on the Internet. Agudas Israel Synagogue www.agudasisrael.com serves the Jewish community in nearby Hendersonville.

The Hard Lox www.hardlox.com, Asheville’s annual food and heritage festival, is held every October in downtown Asheville, and the WNC Jewish Federation www.JewishAsheville.org serves the community and links it to Israel all year ‘round.