A Tribe Apart: Jews of the American South

The Jewish Press ^ | Jason Maoz

[PetroniusMaximus]

Shalom yall!

[airforceF4]

These folks were Sephardic Jews...wanderin' since 1492!
What he says, shalom y'all

[billbears]

bump

[Alouette]

Jews in the Civil War

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[Coast2Capitol]

thanks - very interesting

[hlmencken3]

I found it quite surprising when I found small Jewish populations scattered around South Carolina.

Not just the university town and state capital Columbia, or the resort towns of Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head, or the historic Charleston, but seemingly odd places like Greenville-Spartanburg, Sumter and Florence.

[myheroesareDeadandRegistered]

Thanks for posting this. Good read.

I've always heard liberal whiney babies reference the supposed anti-semitism crap about the South, blah, blah.

My father was born in the heart of the "Heart of Dixie" and the culture that is supposed to entail. I've also heard him sing the praises of a jewish man he once worked for. This fellow was 'salt of the earth' and 'genius' rolled into one. In his life he'd made three separate fortunes. The first was taken by the Nazis in the 30's and his second was stolen by Mao and Co. Of this man, my (white, southern) father said: "That little Jew was the single, best man I ever did know."

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[kalee]

Judah Benjamin ping

[Zionist Conspirator]

A great article, dispelling a lot of groundless nonsense that sees the American South as the equivalent of (lehavdil) Nazi Germany.

Mr. Maoz is a good man whom I admire, but it took him a little while to get to the matter of Biblical Fundamentalism. This should have been stressed more, except that the article is about Jews in the South, and the South was not always the Bible Belt (originally, New England was). It is ironic that Orthodox Judaism is probably the most Fundamentalist religion in the entire family of "Biblical religions," yet this remains largely unknown. It is the only religion that insists that the Torah was written by G-d prior to Creation and was the "logos" through which the world was created, and that this Torah was dictated to Moses letter for letter. Similarly (aside from some modernity-influenced "orthoprax" philosophies) everything in the Torah is accepted as literal history, though the Torah does not necessarily narrate the events chronologically. There are times I want to pull the few remaining hairs out of my head at my people's own "Babylonian captivity" to chr*stianity when Judaism/Noachism would be so much more appropriate. Oh well. There is a small yet growing Southern Noachide movement (most contemporary Noachides are Bible-Belt Fundamentalists).

"Reform Judaism" might have suited the pre-Fundamentalist South, but Orthodox Judaism (especially as practiced by traditional 'Ashkenazim) is much more suited to the contemporary, Bible-Belt South with its "Roundhead" seriousness about religion ("that Teutonic Puritanism" as one rightwing Catholic critic called it).

My Southern ancestors fought against the Confederacy and I am not a Confederate. But the day may come when the post-Cavalier, Fundamentalist South may wish to indeed become an independent state. When that comes it should reject the "new testament" (how can anything "new" be conservative) and embrace the ancient, eternal Torah. I also suggest that adopting Hebrew as a new national language (as the Fundamentalist Puritans once thought of doing) would accomplish the most in creating a distinctive national identity apart from an English-speaking secular USA.

Teach your children Hebrew.

[stainlessbanner]

diXie Ping

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

During the Great Confederate War southern Jews enlisted at a many fold rate higher than northern Jews.

While Grant,and Sherman banned Jews from their areas of operations, Lee and Davis granted every consideration and positions of trust to Jews.

I once read an article in a reprint from the "Confederate Veteran," To paraphrase as remembered ; "Rally on our Jewish major, enemy musketry and shot flying thick, there he sits his horse unperturbed, cigar clenched in teeth."

The only Hebrew war veterans cemetery outside Israel is located in Richmond, VA. and it is Confederate.

http://www.jewish-history.com/shockoe.htm

Jews in the Civil war, note the positions given to Soother Jews.

http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar.htm

[peacebaby]

Interesting read...very interesting the Jews were less prosecuted because the blacks suffered the blow.

I never understood anti-Semitism (I was born in the 50s). My grandmother did a great deal of business with the Schombergs. My best friend was Jewish. She and her dad ate Christmas dinner at our house. When the sanctuary in our Methodist church was being renovated, we held church in the synagogue down the street.

i didn't know there was anti-semitism until I was aware that a certain Jewish family wasn't invited to a debutante ball at the local country club which didn't accept Jews. It was a new, foreign, inexplanable world to me then.

[Convert from ECUSA]

Southern American Jews - very interesting Ping!

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

fingers out ran brain, again. Soother SRA Southern.

[JerseyHighlander]

Not all were Sephardic, my Southern Jewish roots were from the St. Petersburg, Russia region, immigrate in the 1840's to Savannah. Survived the Civil War, Reconstruction, collapse in cotton prices, and finally lost most everything in the Panic of 1893, and moved to NYC.

[stand watie]

NEVER FORGET that SOUTHRON JEWS were singled-out for "ESPECIAL TREATMENT" by the invading UNION army.

one of the things that the damnyankees were REALLY good at, was ROBBING/LOOTING/BURNING synagogues & Jewish homes!

one of the first (if not THE first!)of those "mysterious fires" was the large & historic synagogue in yankee-occupied Alexandria,VA.

but of course, the "gubmint pubic screwls" don't/won't tell you that. NOT PC, don't you know?

free dixie,sw

[Rockingham]

I got a good view of Jewish Southern religious sociology as a conservative, pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic at Tulane University in the 1970's. Tulane has long had a strong Jewish contingent, and while times were a-changing, there were strong distinctions and some tensions between Southern and Northern Jews.

In my freshman year, I made some Jewish Northerner friends convulse with laughter when I admitted that I did not know what a bagel was until I came to Tulane -- and they were stunned into disbelief when a Jewish Southerner with us acknowledged the same thing. Jews from the North were distinctly, adamantly ethnic Jews and tended to be very liberal, while Jews from the South did not particularly see themselves as distinct from other Southerners except in faith, and many of them were instinctively conservative.

On the whole, the worst of the flaming leftists were Jews from the North and Presbyterians from the suburbs of the New South. My chosen circle of friends at Tulane was mostly conservative or apolitical and included a number of Jews from both North and South. With strong support from New Orleans' Jewish businessmen and professional, Tulane was unique among American universities in never having had a quota limiting the number of Jews admitted.

Several of Tulane (and Newcomb's) Jewish trustees, fund-raisers, and donors helped to ease them into abandoning the vestiges of Jim Crow early and without a serious fight or much publicity. This was an example of the practical and humane approach to divisive issues that Jewish Southerners are known for, often serving well both their communities and their faith. The Jews of the South have much to their credit.

[stand watie]

i, too, went to grad school at Tulane in '76-'78.

NICE school, grand CITY, PURTY girls!

free dixie,sw