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>> 81 3 “Virtue, Rectitude and Loyalty to Our Faith” Jewish Orphans and the Politics of Southern Cultural Capital What I’ve heard of orphanages, we lived at a country club. —Jacob Blaustein, Atlanta home inmate from 1914 to 1922 In an interview conducted in 1991, Jacob Blaustein described how inmates of “the Home” were rotated through specific jobs, in addition to their daily chores. Jacob’s job was “taking care of the pantry” in which food staples were kept, organized, and dispensed. At meal times he “would dish out the food to the cook,” Fannie Young, whom he described as “an old ex–Civil War slave.”1 Born in 1854 in Georgia, “Aunt Fanny,” as children and administrators called her, oversaw the preparation of meals for all of the home’s young residents.2 Jacob described how “she used to always tell me that I reminded her of her old master [also named Jacob]. And I don’t know whether it’s something I should be proud of or not (laugh). But those were the stories she used to tell me about the old slave days.”3 Jacob did not expand on the content of Ms. Young’s stories but suggested that he “was closer to her than some of the others” because of their working relationship. His laughter at the memory of “Aunt Fanny’s” comment suggests his recognition of the ways in which racial politics had changed over the seventy-year period. He likely experienced unease over his recollection of the elderly black woman’s oblique criticism of his childhood supervisory power over her. Jacob’s close proximity to Ms. Young, and the fact that the two chatted amiably in the course of their work together, reflects the widespread presence of black women in southern white children’s upbringing and the ambivalent intimacies, marked by a complex pairing of nurture with subjection, that characterized race relations in the Jim Crow South. As 82 > 83 and the approximation of an authentic “home life” was crucial to this project. As Superintendent Ralph Sonn explained in his annual reports to the Atlanta home’s Board of Directors, orphans required constant supervision and support to ensure their transition into upright, selfsupporting adults who would reflect a positive image of Jewishness to the larger world. Alternatively, their poverty and dependency threatened to expose Jews as “black posts” collectively lacking the intrinsic qualities of southern cultural capital. Institutional spaces were therefore critical to the project of fortifying Jewish belonging, as they helped raise poor children, many of whom had immigrant parents or were themselves foreign-born, “to be loyal Jews and Jewesses, true American Citizens and the type of men and women of whom we can justly be proud.”8 From the complex etiquette of fine dining and competitive sports to the conventions of “American-style” religious ritual and worship, the orphans learned to internalize the gender, race, and class ideals that comprised the essence of southern citizenship. This meant that orphan home leaders worked to produce manly, chivalric men who were capable of making a living and serving as future breadwinners for respectable , unassuming Jewish families living and socializing in “nice” (white) neighborhoods. Jewish girls were trained to become good housekeepers and mothers, respectable ladies whose religiosity was discreetly confined to private spaces. And, before children could be discharged, the institutions required proof that reputable relatives or friends, living in approved neighborhoods and in safe and refined surroundings, could ensure the former inmates’ careful supervision. For many children, the institution remained a parental presence until long after discharge, providing housing, financial support, and vigilant mentorship as they prepared for, in the words of New Orleans inmate Julie Newman, “a life of virtue, rectitude and loyalty to our faith.”9 The experiences of the children for whom the Atlanta and New Orleans orphan homes served as actual homes help uncover the process of orphan uplift as a means of cultivating idealized citizenship. The Atlanta home’s case files contain detailed information about orphans and their relatives, and two former inmates, Joseph Green and Jacob Blaustein, contributed oral histories in the late twentieth century. The New Orleans home case records no longer exist, but annual reports, 84 > 85 them to live with various relatives scattered throughout the eastern seaboard , but Blaustein could not bear imposing the additional hardship of separation on his grieving children. Witnessing his difficulty, the Waycross Jewish community appealed to the Hebrew Orphans Home of Atlanta to accept the four younger children...

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