The Previous Times of a Modest-Town Synagogue

In a tranquil room of a when bustling Texas synagogue, Laura Romine sits alone, pulling dusty textbooks off the library cabinets. She meticulously logs just about every title and writer: “A Kid’s Background of Jewish Life” by Dorothy Zeligs, “Leo Rosten’s Treasury of Jewish Quotations,” Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer.” Romine, 60, has expended several hours each individual 7 days above the last six months going from room to place, logging 640 publications and about as a lot of other goods: star-formed Seder plates, oil paintings, a ping-pong desk, guest guides and, of course, Torahs. There are 3 holy scrolls that belong to Temple Emanu-El in Longview, Texas, and they, like everything else — together with the massive, mid-century synagogue creating, committed in 1957 — have to go.

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