History of the Jews in the Southern United States
Jews have inhabited the Southern United States since the late 1600s when several waves of Western Sephardim and a minority of Ashkenazim settled in the European colonies of Britain, France, and Spain.
After 1830 many early German Jewish settlers were traveling peddlers, which facilitated greater mobility and enabled them to save up money and eventually start their own businesses.
[13] They experience a type of bicultural identity as a result of adopting many of the customs, practices, and values of Southern life.
[13] Other culinary assimilation is seen in the Jewish practice of eating sweet potato pancakes and beignets to celebrate Hanukkah.
On July 11, 1733, forty-two Jewish immigrants coming from London, England arrived in Georgia, drawn by the promise of religious freedom.
[17] The first Jew to arrive in North Carolina, Joachim Gans, came with Sir Walter Raleigh's second expedition to Roanoke Island (1585).
While anti-Semitism rose in the rest of the country following the Civil War, North Carolinian Jews did not seem to feel the same effects, and even seemed to be welcomed by the state.
Overwhelmingly, when Jews were willing to follow the basic cultural practices of their Christian neighbors, they were welcomed into the community and usually fared well both socially and economically.
There was a period of disrepair after it was seized by the Confederate government and used as a barn, but the Levy family purchased it again and restored it before eventually selling it to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.
The government of Virginia forced them to move their synagogue in favor of a post office, even though there were large unused tracts of land available throughout the city.
In addition, many immigrants from Europe appreciated the freedom and tolerance they enjoyed in the United States, and wanted to show that they were contributing members of society.
[19] Historians have often portrayed Jewish participation in the Civil War as zealous, eager, loyal, and for the most part unanimous; however, recent scholarship has revealed that such enthusiasm and loyalty to the Confederate cause was not so widespread.
[21] Many Jews managed to avoid conscription by temporarily or permanently leaving the South while others only chose to enlist in limited positions where they could remain close to home.
In response to antisemitic statements made by prominent abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Edmund Quincy, American rabbis in both the North and South generally adopted an anti-abolitionist stance.
[25] The Second World War, with Adolf Hitler's attack on the Jews in Europe, alarmed Jewish people worldwide, and the American South was no different.
[25] Jewish communities in Alabama worked alongside national organizations to resettle refugees fleeing Europe both during and after the war.
Sixteen rabbis in St. Augustine, Florida joined with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight segregation, facing violence and arrest alongside African American protesters.
Rabbi Jacob Rothschild from Atlanta, Georgia was a good friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and fought alongside him in the civil rights movement.
Two Jews, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were killed in Mississippi while trying to help African Americans register to vote during the Freedom Summer.
