A Century of Jewish Life In Dixie
272 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:27 Mar 2003
ISBN:9780817350215
A Century of Jewish Life In Dixie
The Birmingham Experience
University of Alabama Press
The first substantial history of the Jews in the industrial south
This is the first substantial history of the Jews in any inland town or city of the industrial South. The author starts with the Reconstruction Period when the community was established and he carries the story down into the 1970’s. First there were the “Germans,”' the pioneers who built the community; then came the East Euopean emigres who had to cope not only with the problem of survival but the disdain if not the hostility of the already acculturated Central European settlers who had forgotten their own humble beginnings. After World War I came the fusion of the two groups and the need to cooperate religiously and to integrate their cultural, social, and philanthropic institutions. Binding them together and speeding the rise of a total Jewish community was the ever present fear of anti-Jewish prejudice and the “peculiar” problem, a real one, of steering a course between the Christian Whites and the Christian Blacks.
This is the first substantial history of the Jews in any inland town or city of the industrial South. The author starts with the Reconstruction Period when the community was established and he carries the story down into the 1970’s. First there were the “Germans,”' the pioneers who built the community; then came the East Euopean emigres who had to cope not only with the problem of survival but the disdain if not the hostility of the already acculturated Central European settlers who had forgotten their own humble beginnings. After World War I came the fusion of the two groups and the need to cooperate religiously and to integrate their cultural, social, and philanthropic institutions. Binding them together and speeding the rise of a total Jewish community was the ever present fear of anti-Jewish prejudice and the “peculiar” problem, a real one, of steering a course between the Christian Whites and the Christian Blacks.
Mark H. Elovitz is author of A History of the Jews of Birmingham, 1871–1971. He served as associate editor of The Cumberland Law Review and as book review editor for the Reconstructionist.
