Bentonville, Arkansas — Walmart’s hometown — offers more than just low, low prices. It’s also an anomaly in the small-town South: a Jewish community that is actually growing.
Since 2004, when a handful of families met in a suburban home to discuss the possibility of founding a synagogue, Walmart has attracted both Jewish corporate employees happy to call the town home for a few years and vendors who roll in and out supplying products and services to the mega-retailer. The community now has a non-denominational synagogue, a Chabad house, a Jewish section in a cemetery, a mikveh, and — as of last September — a full-time rabbi.
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