Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History

by Marcie Ferris, Mark I. Greenberg, Eli N. Evans

Overview

Jews have long been a presence in the American South, first arriving in the late seventeenth century as part of exploratory voyages from Europe to the New World. Two of the nation’s earliest Jewish communities were founded in Savannah in 1733 and Charleston in 1749. By 1800, more Jews lived in Charleston than in New York City. Today, Jews comprise less than one half of one percent of the southern population but provide critical sustenance and support for their communities. Nonetheless, southern Jews have perplexed scholars. For more than a century, historians have wrestled with various questions. Why study southern Jewish history? What is the southern Jewish experience? Is southern Jewish culture distinctive from that of other regions of the country, and if so, why? Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History addresses these questions through the voices of a new generation of scholars of the Jewish South. Each of this book’s thirteen chapters reflects a response with particular attention paid to new studies on women and gender; black/Jewish relations and the role of race, politics, and economic life; popular and material culture; and the changes wrought by industrialization and urbanization in the twentieth century. Essays address historical issues from the colonial era to the present and in every region of the South. Topics include assimilation and American Jewish identity, southern Jewish women writers, the Jewish Confederacy, Jewish peddlers, southern Jewish racial identity, black/Jewish relations, demographic change, the rise of American Reform Judaism, and Jews in southern literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781584655893
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	11/08/2018
Series:	Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

EITAN P. FISHBANE is an assistant professor of Jewish thought at the Jewish Theological Seminary. JONATHAN D. SARNA is Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Table of Contents

Foreword - eli n. evans • Acknowledgments • Introduction: Jewish Roots in Southern Soil - marcie cohen ferris & mark i. greenberg • One Religion, Different Worlds: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Immigrants in Eighteenth-Century Savannah - mark i. greenberg • American, Jewish, Southern, Mordecai: Constructing Identities to 1865 - emily bingham • “The Pen Is Mightier than the Sword”: Southern Jewish Women Writers, Antisemitism, and the Promotion of Domestic Judaism • jennifer a. stollman • Entering the Mainstream of Modern Jewish History: Peddlers and the American Jewish South - hasia diner • Jewish Confederates - robert n. rosen • “Now Is the Time to Show Your True Colors”: Southern Jews, Whiteness, and the Rise of Jim Crow - eric l. goldstein • The Ascendancy of Reform Judaism in the American South during the Nineteenth Century - gary phillip zola • A Tangled Web: Black-Jewish Relations in the Twentieth-Century South - clive webb • An “Intense Heritage”: Southern Jewishness in Literature and Film - eliza r. l. McGraw • Dining in the Dixie Diaspora: A Meeting of Region and Religion - marcie cohen ferris • Jewish Antiques Roadshow: Religion and Domestic Culture in the American South - dale rosengarten • The Fall and Rise of the Jewish South - stuart rockoff • Jewish Fates, Altered States - stephen j. whitfield • Selected Bibliography - eric l. goldstein and marni davis • About the Contributors • Index

What People are Saying About This

Yaakov Ariel

“Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: a New History is a superb collection of essays on the still not fully known topic of Jews in the American South. The breath of the topics discussed and the depth of the individual essays make the book an essential and highly compelling reading. It provides readers with everything they wanted to know about the subject and more.”

Pamela S. Nadell

"With Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, the history of Jews in the South has finally come of age. Boldly asserting the power of place, it demonstrates Southern Jews negotiating complicated identities across time and space. The result, these essays masterfully convince, is a claim for this particular and unique American identity."
— Pamela S. Nadell, Professor of History, American University

Editorial Reviews

This anthology of original essays is the most recent addition to the widening body of work on the history of the Jewish South, a neglected area of research until about 30 years ago. This collection covers an extensive chronology, from the first Jewish settlers in the South in the 1730s up to the present day, and debates what it means to be both Southern and Jewish. The book serves the dual purpose of offering an introduction to the field and furthering discussion of the Southern Jewish experience in the United States.”—Library Journal

“The anthology provides thirteen fascinating articles on a variety of topics including southern Jewish women writers, African American-Jewish relations, Jewish peddlers, Jewish Confederates, and the blossoming of Reform Judaism in the region. The book will delight erudite scholars and ‘snowbirds’ who go ‘south’ to escape the cold weather and would like to learn how Jews shaped the region.”—Jewish Book World

“An area of history long neglected . . . this book is a must-have for anyone interested in the American Jewish experience.”—Virginia Jewish Life

“Jewish Roots in Southern Soil now stands as the best one-volume treatment of the history of Jews in the American South. The thirteen essays, foreword, and excellent introduction are well written, engaging, and informative. The methodologically diverse approaches enliven the volume without rendering it overly eclectic. The editors Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg have collected representative, top-rate scholarship that is sophisticated enough for academics while remaining accessible for undergraduate students.”—Journal of American Ethnic History

“It is the central theme of race, appearing repeatedly in the essays as a whole, that accords a unique dimension to Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, which thus offers an important contribution to American Jewish historiography.”—Studies in Contemporary Jewry

From the Publisher

This anthology of original essays is the most recent addition to the widening body of work on the history of the Jewish South, a neglected area of research until about 30 years ago. This collection covers an extensive chronology, from the first Jewish settlers in the South in the 1730s up to the present day, and debates what it means to be both Southern and Jewish. The book serves the dual purpose of offering an introduction to the field and furthering discussion of the Southern Jewish experience in the United States. It is similar in scope to such recent books as Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History (ed., Mark Bauman). Although that collection was of previously published pieces, the volumes share some authors and subjects. There is enough unique content in this new collection to justify its purchase, particularly for its exploration of the diversity of culture within Jewish populations in the South. Recommended for academic libraries, particularly ones with strong collections in the areas of Southern history and Jewish cultural studies.-Elizabeth White, Univ. of Georgia, Athens Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal