Growing up in a town with pretty decent Jewish population, it is hard for me to imagine what it would be like to live in a place without other Jews, especially in regards to preserving my Jewish identity. As a child, I never had a problem telling my classmates or neighbors that I was Jewish; however, if I was from an area with a less prevalent Jewish community that may not have been the case.
Stella Suberman is an example of being raised in village with only one Jewish family, which was her own. In her memoir, The Jew Store, she recounts the experience of moving to a small town in Tennessee with no Jews so that her family could start a Jew Store—a store to sell goods, such as clothing, bedding, and yard goods to the poorer people of the town. Jew stores were found in many small towns of the south. As I was reading her memoir I kept thinking how someone in a situation like that could preserve their self-identity and not try to conform to the culture and lifestyle around him or her, especially with the pressure of prejudice from the Ku Klux Klan and civilians of the town. Trying to put myself in Suberman’s place, I noticed the prevalent theme of identity throughout her story, focusing on the ways in which she described physical appearances and the importance of each person’s name. Just as in our society today, Jews then had the same stereotype about their looks. Miss Simmons confesses to have instantly identified that the Bronsons were Jewish because she saw “certain looks”, such as the “ravishin’ black curls” on Suberman’s older brother. Despite being so easily recognized, Mr. Bronson did not necessarily want the people of Concordia, Tennessee to know that him and his family were Jewish right away, and he denies that he looked like a stereotypical Jews because of “his light coloring”. Physical appearance is just one indication of how strong Jewish identity is, and regardless of being thrown into areas with few Jews, southern Jews still had their physical characteristics to maintain their cultural identity. Suberman’s memoir also touches on significance of names: a way that Jews can not only identify with their ancestors and their heritage but also make connections with others. Upon coming to America, Suberman tells us that her father’s name was changed in Ellis Island from “Droskowitz” to “Plotchnikoff”. She describes this name change as bad luck, which I think is fair to say since our names are the foundation of our identity, and it was especially important for Mr. Bronson to carry on his family name in a new country. Later in the memoir, Mr. Bronson lands himself a job after recognizing “Bronstein [of BRONSTEIN’S READY-TO-WEAR AND HOUSEHOLD] was a Jewish name”. Even though, I can not imagine how hard it would have been to preserve my self-identity in a town with no other Jews and with discrimination against my family, Suberman’s memoir expresses two underlying and inescapable identifications of being Jewish: appearance and name.
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Over winter break, I traveled to Poland with a group of Emory students to learn about the Jewish history there and to see the horrors perpetrated against our people during the Holocaust. Having visited concentration camps and death camps where Jews were tortured and killed solely because of their religion, the topic of Anti-Semitic discrimination is fresh on my mind. Therefore, I couldn’t help but think about the discrimination which fueled the Holocaust in the context of the marginalization of Southern Jews presented in Goldstein and Webbs’ sections of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil. Discrimination against Jews in the South did not progress into the extremities that occurred Eastern Europe, which makes me wonder what prevented a similar event in America and what fueled it in Europe considering much of the early discrimination was similar. Just as Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic turmoil, “Jews stood out…as agents of the economic changes” (Goldstein, 137) in southern America, and just as Germans shattered Jewish-owned stores during Kristallnacht, the onset of the Holocaust, white supremacists invaded and destroyed Jewish shops in the south. These parallels are eerily similar.
This reading additionally made me feel uneasy with the idea that “eastern European Jews in the South were increasingly learning to position themselves as white within the highly segregated society around them” (Goldstein, 149). I understand the need to assimilate in order to survive, but it appears as though these Jews in the South were disregarding the foundation of their religion, which has taught them to be kind to others and to never act in the way they were discriminating against the African Americans. These Jews, who were not being treated nearly as bad as those in Eastern Europe, were giving up their religious beliefs in order to assimilate, while European Jews did whatever they could to preserve their Jewish ties despite their lives being at risk due to their religion. During the Holocaust, Jews did not veer away from their culture, but rather used their belief in G-d and religious traditions, such as lighting Shabbat candles in the barracks of Auschwitz, in order to overcome the discrimination against them. On the other hand, Southern Jews were so easily giving up their Jewish identity to fit in and identify with the white supremacists. My final thought lies in Thomas Dixon’s statement that Jewish hatred “exists simply because the Jewish race is the most persistent, powerful, commercially successful race that the world has ever produced” (Goldstein, 134). Throughout my trip, a question the Rabbis constantly asked was “What made Jews so special that the Nazis wanted to get rid of us all together?” in an attempt to evoke pride of being a Jew. I believe that Dixon’s statement really comes to an important conclusion: that a lot of Anti-Semitism stems from jealously. It is evident that our success as a "race" which began back then continues today, as Judaism still stands strong despite Jews being victims of widespread discrimination and genocide efforts. Signing up for this course, Southern Jewish Writers, I didn't really know what to expect. I made the correct assumption that I would be reading written works by Southern Jews, but I didn't necessarily understand the complexity of Jewish life, culture, and identity that exists in the Southern environment that began with so few Jews. After breaking open Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, however, I have some new insights on this course.
Studying American Jews of the South is a recent phenomena; however, Ferries and Greenberg present that it is an important field to look at. During the first day of class, we posed some questions about the topic of the course, such as how Jews of the South differ from Jews of the North, and this reading addressed those same inquiries, noting that they are not as easy to answer as they may seem. Boundaries between Jews of the North and Jews of the South are not very distinct and it is also difficult to place all the Jews of the South under one classification. Going into the course, I had my own, and pretty much shallow, stereotypes about what a Jew of the South may be, but after reading a brief history about these Jews, I am beginning to realize the huge range of regions that Jews of the South resided in and the vastness of the background and culture. Even after honing in on one specific region, Savannah, in the first chapter, there is still variety in the Southern Jews of that area due to differing backgrounds: Sephardic and Ashkenazic. It is clear that there is a lot to studying Jews of the South, and I look forward to reading and analyzing personal accounts of some Jewish Writers from these areas, in order to get a better understanding of what it mean to be a Jew of the South in regards to culture, history, treatment, and lifestyle. |
Jordan Pincus
Emory Student. Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. South Florida Jew. ArchivesCategories |