Apart from concentrations of Jews in the major urban areas of the South such as Miami, Atlanta, and Winston-Salem (this last reference is obviously an effort at humor), Jews are "virtually unnoticeable in most areas" of the region, constituting less than one percent of the population. And yet, Jews have been part of the South almost from the region's beginnings in the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, the story of Judaism in the South has not been explored to any great extent by scholars probably the lack of any significant concentration of Jews outside major urban areas makes the task of evaluating the Southern diaspora nearly impossible.

If that were not enough, the problem of studying Southern Judaism is further complicated by the character of Judaism itself, and the "multifaceted ways in which individuals identify themselves with the Hebrew heritage." Because of the many different combinations of religious, ethnic, and cultural realities of Judaism, it can be, as Charles Lippy points out, "difficult to discern what is religious, what is ethnic, or what is cultural for purposes of analysis." Certainly, there are those who would argue any attempt to analyze these varying components are imposing an interpretation on a phenomenon that can only be evaluated as an integrated whole. Certainly, any student of Judaism who attempts to view it through standard measures of religiosity--such as the frequency of attendance at religious services or levels of giving and participation in the life of a religious community--will soon learn they do not apply. To that must be added the additional complications of Jewish denominationalism for want of a better term. The distinctions between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox have to be accounted for.

Finally, there is the problem of anti-Semitism. As Charles Lippy notes, "studies of anti-Semitism in the United States have tended to look at such sentiment in the nation as a whole; none deals exclusively with anti-Semitism in the South." But no student of the South can escape the fact that prejudice against the Jews is a common theme in Southern culture. It draws upon many of the same fears and emotions that helped to create a tradition of anti-catholicism and racism. Perhaps the best know of proponent of anti-Semitism in the South was Georgia's Tom Watson. Watson was a Populist, but with the collapse of that movement he turned increasingly bitter and blamed its failure on a variety of conspiracies. But Watson was far from the only Southern preacher of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has also been a staple of the second Klan. Like Watson, the Klan added Jews to its short list of groups (Catholics and Blacks) to hate.

For these reasons, the study of Judaism in the South is made difficult by a series of paradoxes. "While Jews have been intimately involved in all facets of Southern life," Lippy notes, "they remain on the fringes; while Jews can be identified, they cannot be neatly categorized in religious terms."

Sephardic Judaism

The roots of Judaism in the South extend back to the settlement of Charleston and Savannah. In these busy ports of trade, Jews were able to make their living by engaging in trade and finance. Most quickly established synagogues and were orthodox in their rites. Other Jewish communities developed in time in such places as Richmond, Mobile, Nashville, and Birmingham.

The earliest Jewish settlements in Charleston and Savannah, for the most part, consisted of Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. They were joined by a much smaller number of Ashkenazic Jews from Central Europe and Poland. Unfortunately, The darker skinned Sephardic Jews considered themselves superior to the Jews of Europe, and the resulting division produced internal dissension, that neither community could ill-afford, particularly in Savannah. (Similar divisions still remain in Judaism. In Israel, the Likud party draws much of its support form Shephardic Jews while the Labor party tends to be supported by Jews who are Ashkenazic.) There anti-Semitism was particularly high, and twice during the eighteenth century most Jews left Georgia as a result of the inhospitable climate.

Recognizing a need to accommodate Jewish life to their new American context, the Jews of Charleston began to explore adapting their traditions to the new context in which they found themselves. These adaptations were at first imperceptible. But by 1825, a group of young Jews in Charleston had formed the "Reformed Society of Israelites." The year before they had petitioned the established congregation for certain reforms and modifications--greater decorum in the services, elimination of Spanish from the ritual, and sermons in English--but their petitions were rejected and so they seceded. (That this secession occurred in Charleston in 1825 suggests the degree that these young Jews had absorbed the values of the culture around them.) They were not successful, however, and so they returned to the older congregation, but the future would prove to be with them.

Encounters With Anti-Semitism

As the foregoing demonstrates, Southern Jews adopted the values of their culture with little difficulty. A number of Jews, in fact, became very prominent in Southern life. Judah P. Benjamin held three cabinet positions in Jefferson Davis' administration, serving as the Secretary of State for the Confederacy, as well as it's Attorney General and Secretary of War.

Southern Jews adopted the culture of the South because, as Alfred Hero argues they "tend to be less cosmopolitan than their co-religionists elsewhere in the country, having absorbed some of the region's attitudes with regard to racial matters and demonstrating less public support for Israel than other Jews." Hero attributes much of this to the much greater contact Southern Jews have with non Jews which arises out of their much lower participation in Jewish activities (because of the distance to a synagogue), the pressure to convert to Christianity, "to assimilate into a predominately Protestant culture whether that assimilation be coerced or the result of intermingling in daily life," or to simply maintain their silence. This pressure to blend in, and to accept the values of the region is in turn reinforced by the anti-Semitism of the region that creates real fear. Jews in Atlanta, for instance, have not forgotten the bombing of a local synagogue in 1958.

The experience of the Atlanta Jewish community is illustrative of that of Jews throughout the region. By World War I, Atlanta had the largest Jewish community in the South. But it was divided between Orthodox and Reform. But before the War, it was also the scene of one of the most virulent outbreaks of Southern anti-Semitism in the twentieth century. The occasion of this outbreak of anti-Semitism was the case of Leo Frank. Frank was a Jewish businessman and factory superintendent in Atlanta who was accused of raping and murdering a thirteen year old female employee in 1913. Two years latter, he was found guilty in a court case that rivaled the recent trial in Los Angeles. Like the recent trial, it fired up the embers of hatred into full flame. This hatred expressed itself in a paroxysm of anti-Semitism. Frank was abducted from his jail cell and was lynched by an angry mob.

The interesting aspect to the Frank case is that his conviction came about as the result of the testimony of a black custodian at the plant. While that may not seem strange by modern standards, in the early years of this century the testimony of a black man against a white man would have carried little weight in a court of law. But it did in the case of Leo Frank because he was not white: he was Jewish. It was one of the rare occasions in Southern history when a white man was sent to his death on the word of a black man.

A Southern Israel

Given the level of anti-Semitism in the South, it is somewhat surprising to know that many early American Jewish leaders viewed the region as a "potential utopia for Jews or at least as a base for the establishment of Jewish communities that would remove Jewish immigrants from the assimilating, corruptive influences of the Eastern urban centers." In the early nineteenth century, M.E. Levy planned a Jewish colony in Florida. Another similar scheme was that of the Galveston Movement (1907-1914) which had as its purpose the settlement of thousands of Jews to that city where they could advance into the interior of the United States and create communities removed from the congestion and corruption of East Coast big cities.

This Southern Israel could not compete, however, with the land of Palestine for the hearts of Jewish immigrants. With the growth of Zionism within Judaism, this vision of a Southern Israel was displaced by a vision for a Jewish state in Palestine.

Some Closing Observations

The encounter of Southern Jews with prejudice did have one fortunate consequence. Having received just a taste of the prejudice and lynchings that had been visited upon blacks in a much more systematic way, it is not surprising that Jews were the earliest and most visible white supporters of the Civil Rights Movement.

There is much to still be learned about Judaism in the South. Many Jewish communities and synagogues have established archives that promise a fertile ground for the research of future scholars. Judaism has been part of the South for three centuries, and only now are we beginning to develop a greater appreciation for the role it has played in the region.