(RNS) — When I look back on my career as a Reform rabbi, I come to the following observation: For almost half of those years, I was a Southern rabbi.
I served congregations in Georgia and south Florida. Mind you: Some people think that south Florida is another county of New York City.
Wrong. Florida is the South. If you don’t believe me, check out its politics. The South is the three Bs: Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, and yes, Biloxi.
I started my career in Miami in 1981. Today, it is an international city. But, at the dawn of my rabbinate, it was still, in many ways, the South. Miami-born Jews referred to their city as “Miamuh.” They remembered segregated hotels and water fountains. It wasn’t that long ago that the KKK marched in Broward County, a stone’s throw from Fort Lauderdale’s beaches. Not far from where they used to burn crosses, you can now find a JCC, a Jewish day school and thriving synagogues. The joke is on them.
So, as we mark Jewish Heritage Month, how do we embrace the heritage of Southern Jews?
Ask Shari Rabin, one of the rising stars of Jewish studies in America. She is associate professor of Jewish studies, religion and history and chair of Jewish studies at Oberlin College. This “born-in-Milwaukee-moved-to-Atlanta-after-her-bat-mitzvah” woman has just written a new book — “The Jewish South: An American History.” I could not put it down, and you will love our conversation.
But, here’s the thing. I spoke to a New York Jewish woman recently, who told me that she had never realized that there were Jews in the South — “Oh, sure, Atlanta,” she said. “But, you mean there are Jews in Mississippi?!”
Yes, there are.
But, that’s not our default definition of being an American Jew. For many of us, that definition is Northeastern and/or big city or suburban. The Jews of the South are the “other.” The South itself is “other.” To quote W.J. Cash: the South is a distinct entity, “almost a nation within a nation.”
Look at American popular culture. There are more ugly terms for Southerners than there are for any other group in America: “rednecks,” “hillbillies,” and the worst — “white trash,” which originally referred to the fact that England had cast off many of its “undesirables” and exported them to the colonies. In the 1960s, this subtle bigotry appeared in television shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” “Petticoat Junction” (all of which were located in Appalachia) and “The Andy Griffith Show.”
And, Southern Jews? They would be the “other” of the “other.”
What is the most complex part of Southern Jewry? How the “other” of the “other” dealt with the “other others.”
It’s about race.
To quote the Facebook status: “it’s complicated.”
News flash: There were Southern Jews who owned slaves. Some Southern Jewish preachers taught that the Torah permits, though humanizes, some form of slavery. Jews served in the Confederate army, and some even provided leadership for the Confederacy.
Why? Because there were Southern Jews who bought into Southern notions of race. How could they not? They had been in the South since the 1600s. To quote W. Fitzhugh Brundage: The conviction of its white inhabitants that the region should remain a “white man’s country” was both the driving force and central theme in the South’s history. It would have required a super-human effort for Jews to have totally resisted that.
To quote one rabbi: “I have members—and of course, the Delta is full of such—who firmly believe that the Negro must be kept as a second-class citizen.”
So, yes: Some Jews had bigoted ideas; others were committed to the status quo; others did not want to disturb their precarious position. Some Jews joined white citizens’ councils reluctantly, owing to fear or pressure. Jews themselves spoke about “white” Jews and “black” Jews — the white ones being those Jews who were acceptable.
But, on the other hand: Southern Jews were involved in the Civil Rights Movement — probably more so than white non-Jews, although they tended to keep their opinions private.
Why? Because they were the other, and they knew it, but were afraid of emphasizing their otherness. Harry Golden referred to them as “the trembling tribes of Israel.”
Yes, many rabbis spoke out in favor of integration. Some of them paid severe prices, both personal and professional. The most famous: the 1958 bombing of The Temple in Atlanta because of the pro-integration preaching of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild.
But, here is what you might not know: There were attempted bombings in no fewer than seven Southern cities. In 1967, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, which caused significant damage but no injuries. Two months later, they bombed the home of the rabbi Perry Nussbaum; he and his wife escaped unharmed.
But, as for other rabbis? There is a Southern Jewish term: shushkied — and some rabbis “shushkied” themselves.
A rabbi in Nashville confessed to reporters that:
with a profound sense of shame, that with the exceptions of my sermons during the High Holidays last September, and one Parent-Teacher Association address … I have not made a single public utterance or statement on this subject of integration, and have not been as active on behalf of social justice as my faith demands.
Other rabbis resented the presence of Northern rabbis who had traveled south with the freedom riders. Others complained about the organized Reform movement’s pro-civil rights statements, saying that such proclamations endangered their congregants.
I enjoyed my years as a rabbi in the Deep South. I loved the warmth of those communities. I loved how those Jews were deeply committed to Judaism, their communities, and to each other. They were Jewish “Mayberrys,” in which everyone cared for each other. I herald the work of such organizations as the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life for supporting Jewish life in the South.
But, there is one last question that haunts us: Jews care about social justice. That is part of the biblical tradition. How could they have bought into a Southern system that made so many other?
It is too glib to say that they were assimilated.
Actually, they were just being modern. A major feature (I would call it a design flaw) of modernity is that we keep discrete mental file folders: “the real world” and “religion.” We compartmentalize.
Or, to quote a Black preacher, whom I heard many years ago and whose name I can no longer find: “A religion that ain’t no good on Monday, ain’t no good on Sunday, either.”
Or, on Saturday.