Down Home
Down Home

Author: Leonard Rogoff

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0807895997

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A sweeping chronicle of Jewish life in the Tar Heel State from colonial times to the present, this beautifully illustrated volume incorporates oral histories, original historical documents, and profiles of fascinating individuals. The first comprehensive social history of its kind, Down Home demonstrates that the story of North Carolina Jews is attuned to the national story of immigrant acculturation but has a southern twist. Keeping in mind the larger southern, American, and Jewish contexts, Leonard Rogoff considers how the North Carolina Jewish experience differs from that of Jews in other southern states. He explores how Jews very often settled in North Carolina's small towns, rather than in its large cities, and he documents the reach and vitality of Jewish North Carolinians' participation in building the New South and the Sunbelt. Many North Carolina Jews were among those at the forefront of a changing South, Rogoff argues, and their experiences challenge stereotypes of a society that was agrarian and Protestant. More than 125 historic and contemporary photographs complement Rogoff's engaging epic, providing a visual panorama of Jewish social, cultural, economic, and religious life in North Carolina. This volume is a treasure to share and to keep. Published in association with the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, Down Home is part of a larger documentary project of the same name that will include a film and a traveling museum exhibition, to be launched in June 2010.

Building Community and Identity in a New South City
Building Community and Identity in a New South City

Author: Kathryn Bolick Wells

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13:

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This thesis examines the formation and reformation of the Jewish community of Charlotte, North Carolina, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century through the most recent wave of Jewish immigrants in the 1990s. The influence of southern Christian practices, small communities, and a clearly defined hierarchical system of race in the South represent factors that affected adaptation for Charlotte's Jewish community. In addition to adapting to external factors, the Jewish religious obligation of Tzedakah (meaning justice or righteousness) took on the function of bridging the resources from the Jewish community to the at-large community and in turn created social bonds that reflected the broader community. This thesis argues that beginning as early as the 1930s, Tzedakah actually served two simultaneous functions as it strengthened Jewish identity and community, and as it facilitated assimilation into the community at-large.

Carolina Israelite
Carolina Israelite

Author: Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2015-05-11

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1469621045

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This first comprehensive biography of Jewish American writer and humorist Harry Golden (1903-1981)--author of the 1958 national best-seller Only in America--illuminates a remarkable life intertwined with the rise of the civil rights movement, Jewish popular culture, and the sometimes precarious position of Jews in the South and across America during the 1950s. After recounting Golden's childhood on New York's Lower East Side, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett points to his stint in prison as a young man, after a widely publicized conviction for investment fraud during the Great Depression, as the root of his empathy for the underdog in any story. During World War II, the cigar-smoking, bourbon-loving raconteur landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and founded the Carolina Israelite newspaper, which was published into the 1960s. Golden's writings on race relations and equal rights attracted a huge popular readership. Golden used his celebrity to editorialize for civil rights as the momentous story unfolded. He charmed his way into friendships and lively correspondence with Carl Sandburg, Adlai Stevenson, Robert Kennedy, and Billy Graham, among other notable Americans, and he appeared on the Tonight Show as well as other national television programs. Hartnett's spirited chronicle captures Golden's message of social inclusion for a new audience today.

Silent Approval
Silent Approval

Author: Arieh Sclar

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13:

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ABSTRACT: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a busing controversy engulfed the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Whites throughout the city and surrounding county feared court-ordered busing to integrate the public schools and organized anti-busing organizations. Among the white community, Charlotte's Jews refused to support or oppose busing, as they continued a history of silence concerning any non-Jewish issues, especially those with racial overtones. Their religious and ethnic differences seemingly threatened the homogeneity of the Southern white Protestant elite, and they found themselves socially segregated from the rest cf the white community. While they had silently supported previous efforts of school desegregation, busing proved different as many Jewish parents found their children assigned to schools in black neighborhoods. Like other white parents, they wanted their children attending schools near their homes, but their foremost concern throughout the crisis remained their children's education. Despite their white skin, they remained too isolated and insecure to advocate social change above their children's education. Their social segregation caused an isolation which made their position in society uncertain, and most of Charlotte's Jews refused to participate in the crisis, on either side of the issue. Even as local blacks became a political force, the Jewish community did not feel comfortable enough to assert a visible presence in Charlotte.