When I first noticed the opening on CornellTrak—Cornell’s online program for job and internship listings—for a summer internship in Jackson, Mississippi doing historical research on Southern Jews, I was completely dumbfounded. There were Jews in the South? There are Jews in the South? And in Jackson? And they had survived recurrent swells of white supremacist violence? It turns out that the answer to all these questions is yes. Given the intense competition for almost all internships nowadays, I applied for the internship with great ambivalence and checked out some books on what I had thought to be an esoteric, if not fictional, subject: Jews in the American South.
It turns out that “Jewish” and “Southern” have been identities that have inextricably intertwined for centuries. Southern Jews have a longstanding presence in the Southern United States, first coming ashore in the late seventeenth century as part of exploratory voyages and trade expeditions from Europe to the “New World”. In fact, some of the nation's earliest Jewish communities were founded before 1750 in Savannah and Charleston. I was surprised to learn that far more Jews lived in Charleston than in New York City at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Jews now make up merely one-half of one percent of the total southern population yet provide critical sustenance and support for their communities. How, then, are Southern Jews any different than the Jews—namely, the metropolitan New York Jews—with whom I have interacted and co-existed my whole life? Firstly, Southern Jews eat pork. That’s no great surprise, especially considering that the base of the southern food pyramid is pork barbeque and they need to get basic sustenance. Jews in an area that is predominately Protestant are likely to some degree assimilate, even if it spells the egregious violation of one of the chief rules of keeping kosher. Secondly, and more importantly, Southern Jews are much more important to their community. I’ve never attended synagogue on a weekly or even a monthly basis but I’m certain that services still occur in my absence thanks to the incredible local abundance of Jews. In an area more sparsely populated with Jews, however, the individual commitment to religious and cultural activities is far more important. If a Southern Jew doesn’t pull his weight to sustain his or her small community, its structure weakens and may in time collapse like a house of cards. Today’s southern landscape is scattered with these piles of cards and the internship to which I applied is with an organization which more-or-less plays fifty-two card pick up. Working throughout a twelve-state region, the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life provides educational and rabbinic services to isolated Jewish communities, documents and preserves the rich history of the Southern Jewish experience, and promotes a Jewish cultural presence. Due partly to the valuable research experience and the fact that a summer in Mississippi is a rare opportunity that I will likely never have again, I accepted the internship.
So where does that leave me now? Next Friday, I will be embarking on a two-day, twelve-hundred mile journey down the Appalachian Trail to Jackson. From then until mid-August I will be a resident of the state with the second-lowest cost of living and the sixth-highest amount of pork per capita. Hence the blog: I will ruminate on life in the South to a mainly Northern audience with an insatiable appetite for Tocquevillian commentary on geographic differences. I sincerely hope that this is more interesting than the average blog by college students in which their semesters hopping around Europe are highlighted with tales of sangria and sex clubs and footnoted with the rare trip to a cultural or historical landmark. There probably aren’t any sex clubs in Jackson anyway. Nonetheless, feel free to leave comments and I wish you all a safe and relaxing summer.
