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.
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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 |