The Jewish South
An American History
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Princeton University Press
Published:27th May '25
Should be back in stock very soon
A panoramic history of the Jewish American South, from European colonization to today
In 1669, the Carolina colony issued the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which offered freedom of worship to “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters,” ushering in an era that would see Jews settle in cities and towns throughout what would become the Confederate States. The Jewish South tells their stories, and those of their descendants and coreligionists who followed, providing the first narrative history of southern Jews.
Drawing on a wealth of original archival findings spanning three centuries, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the complicated decisions that southern Jews made—as individuals, families, and communities—to fit into a society built on Native land and enslaved labor and to maintain forms of Jewish difference, often through religious innovation and adaptation. She paints a richly textured and sometimes troubling portrait of the period, exploring how southern Jews have been targets of antisemitism and violence but also complicit in racial injustice. Rabin considers Jewish immigration and institution building, participation in the Civil War, the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, and Jewish support for and resistance to the modern fight for Black civil rights. She examines shifting understandings of Jewishness, highlighting both the reality of religious diversity and the ongoing role of Christianity in defining the region.
Recovering a neglected facet of the American experience, The Jewish South enables readers to see the South through the eyes of people with a distinctive religious heritage and a southern history older than the United States itself.
"Shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in Nonfiction, Jewish Book Council"
"[An] engaging study. . . . [Rabin’s] deep archival research reveals how Jews participated in and were shaped by a dominant culture in which their status could be uncertain. . . . A rich account of how the Jewish minority claimed its place in Southern culture even as it retained its identity." * Kirkus Reviews *
"Crucial."---Rien Fertel, New Orleans Advocate
"Comprehensive. . . . The Jewish South is a compelling narrative of the complex relationship between Southern Jews and the region they called home."---Martin Green, Jewish Book Council
"The book is a triumph in both breadth and depth. It will anchor the field of Southern Jewish history while also making these fascinating stories and insights accessible to a broad readership."---David Weinfeld, Jewish History
"Incisively researched and filled with surprising connections, the book offers a reimagined map of American Jewish history. . . . The Jewish South is a compelling decentralization of the American Jewish story, revealing that the South, too, has always been a Jewish place."---Etan Nechin, Haaretz
"The Jewish South is based on an impressive mastery of secondary sources and lesser-known materials from the archives. The work is significant as a new reprise of the theory that US Jewish history develops along two fundamental subjective axes of the persecuted and the privileged. . . . This longstanding dialectic and paradox—Jewish freedom and African subjugation—infused with irony and ambivalence by generations of writing about ‘race’ in the US, continues to frame histories of Jewish life across the Americas and makes this narrative history a capacious and teachable book."---Eli Rosenblatt, American Religion
"An exemplary work of scholarship. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *
ISBN: 9780691208763
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
296 pages