MJCCA Book Fest: The Jewish South

The 34th Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents Shari Rabin, The Jewish South: An American History

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shari Rabin is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion at Oberlin College. A historian of American religions and modern Judaism, she received her PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University in 2015.

Books will be available for purchase on the day of the event from our partner bookseller, A Cappella Books.

All sales are final. Tickets and books are non-refundable.