The Jewish South

A panoramic history of the Jewish American South, from European colonization to today

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.

“The study of the Jewish South has come of age with the landmark publication of Shari Rabin’s transformational book. Telling this important story through the intersectional lens of race, religion, gender, and geography, Rabin skillfully leads readers into the complex ecologies of privilege and vulnerability southern Jews have navigated, from their settler colonial beginnings in the Caribbean and coastal South to the long civil rights movement.”—Marcie Cohen Ferris, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“The Jewish South cuts through the romance and rhetoric that has swirled around Jews and the American South. Rabin provides instead a clear-eyed history of American Jews in this very particular region. She makes a brilliant case that southern Jewish history, while not separate from the history of Jews in other regions of the United States, stands in a class by itself. Unflinching in its analysis and clear in its writing, this book will be the standard against which all subsequent studies will have to be measured.”—Hasia R. Diner, author of Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance between the Irish and the Jews in America

“This magnificent synthesis of more than 350 years of Jewish life in the American South displays mastery of a large literature, graceful prose, and sensitivity to issues of religion and race. From now on, anyone who seeks to ‘turn to the South’ should turn first to this book.”—Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History

“This panoramic history offers a compelling and colorful portrait of the Jewish experience in the South in all its complexity. Paying particular attention to race and religion—two defining features of the South—Rabin artfully explains how the region shaped Jewish life across more than three centuries. She does so by skillfully and sensitively recovering the voices of southern Jews. This will long be a landmark in the field.”—Adam D. Mendelsohn, author of Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army