Growing up in a Connecticut suburb, Ben Slen attended a Jewish day school and was active in his synagogue and other Jewish community activities.

He found many of those same offerings in Louisville, long home to a small but thriving Jewish community, when he moved here seven years ago.

"It's important to have a vibrant community that has a number of different activities," said Slen, 33, the father of two preschoolers. "… That's something I hope we can preserve."

But he and other Jewish residents are recognizing that preserving those offerings is a growing challenge as some disappear and others feel the strain of population shifts and tight budgets.

In recent months, the city's only non-Orthodox Jewish day school closed, as did its only kosher restaurant.

Two synagogues are in merger talks.

The Jewish Community Center is negotiating a consolidation with another agency.

And some are talking about moving the community center, located in the St. Matthews area, and other agencies further east in Jefferson County, now home to nearly half of Louisville's increasingly spread-out Jewish population.

It all adds up to the biggest institutional flux in the Jewish community since the 1950s and '60s, when families left Louisville's urban core for its eastern neighborhoods and suburbs.

Today, Louisville's Jewish population is aging and slightly declining, with large numbers of Jews married to people of other faiths -- echoing trends in other Jewish communities in the Midwest and beyond.

Though small -- at roughly 8,300 today -- the Jewish population has played an influential role in Louisville since immigrants began arriving from Europe in significant numbers in the 1840s, producing such figures as legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Its members today are prominent in medical and legal professions, interfaith activities, social service agencies and politics, including Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson and U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd.

"The good news is that the Jewish community in Louisville is fully assimilated, and no longer do members of the Jewish community feel that they have to live in the same neighborhood, that they have to attend the same cultural events, that they have to attend the same athletic facilities, and so on," said Helene Kramer, co-chair of a committee exploring a merger of the community center with the Jewish Community Federation of Louisville, an umbrella fundraising and policy-making body.

Pressure on synagogues

But that puts new pressures on synagogues and other organizations that count on the loyalty and attendance of Jewish residents.

"We are in competition for both the Jewish and the non-Jewish customer," Kramer said.

"And we cannot take members of the Jewish community for granted," she said. "Not only do we have to offer programming, we have to offer great programming."

The community center -- which offers fitness programs, performing arts, summer camps and Jewish educational programs -- currently has a balanced budget of $4.5 million, executive director Robin Stratton said.

But it faces competition from other health clubs and cultural centers and has a 50-year old facility prone to expensive breakdowns, she said.

The center has more than 8,000 members, about 38 percent of whom are Jewish, she said.

It closed Café J, its on-site kosher restaurant, because of declining demand, although it continues to offer kosher catering.

The federation -- which raises money for an array of Jewish programs and agencies -- has seen fundraising levels remain flat for the past five years, its most recent annual campaign raising $2.8 million.

Combining the two agencies could "create a very strong team," Kramer said.

While Jewish leaders have pondered moving the community center and other offices to eastern Jefferson County, no decision is imminent, and some prefer the current St. Matthews site because it is centrally located.

Synagogues ponder consolidation

Besides the proposed federation-community center merger, two Conservative-denomination synagogues also discussing a consolidation -- Adath Jeshurun and Keneseth Israel.

"It's a demographic inevitability that you have to consolidate," said Slen, an Adath Jeshurun member. "I just don't think there will be as many people to support as many institutions as there were in the past."

But Michael Jackman, a Keneseth Israel member, believes the opposite.

Having more, smaller synagogues would enable people to be in touch with issues in various neighborhoods and ensures that "social action favors the city and people don't just retreat to the suburbs. (That) is a strong value to me as a committed Jew," he said.

The congregations are studying the merger proposal and plan to vote on it in November.

The federation is trying to get more such opinions from rank-and-file members of the Jewish community. It's conducting a written survey on what institutions people value and where they should be located, and it's also planning focus groups.

These actions follow the release of a 2006 study indicating that the local Jewish population has slightly declined since the last study in 1991 -- from 8,700 to 8,307. The drop occurred despite an influx of hundreds of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Twenty-six percent of Jewish residents are older than 65 -- twice the Jefferson County average.

"Louisville is facing the problem which many Midwestern communities are facing," said Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. "The Jewish community has moved significantly toward the Sunbelt regions and coastal regions, and so the Jewish communities are literally shrinking in some of these communities."

Nationally, the Jewish population declined from 5.5 million to 5.2 million between 1990 and 2001, according to two major surveys. Others estimate there are 6 million Jews in America.

Presbyterians, Episcopalians and other religious groups that share characteristics with the Jewish community, such as high rates of education, have also experienced declines in birth rates and membership.

Interfaith marriages

Another major demographic shift is the high rate of intermarriage involving Jews.

Thirty-seven percent of Louisville households including Jews are headed by interfaith couples.

That's similar to national figures, with higher rates among younger couples, leading to fears of a dilution of Jewish heritage.

The Louisville survey didn't ask interfaith couples how they were raising their children, but a recent Boston survey found 60 percent of children in such families being raised Jewish.

"It puts the whole conversation of intermarriage on its head," said Rabbi Joe Rooks Rapport of The Temple, Louisville's largest synagogue, which has many interfaith couples. "That says in theory that intermarriage would be a population gain."

The federation is promoting new efforts such as a study group for non-Jewish mothers raising their children as Jewish.

"We're not looking at it as maybe our grandparents looked at it, maybe as a loss," said Sara Wagner, who is organizing a study group for non-Jewish mothers who are married to Jews. "But this is reality, this is who we are."

Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.