In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

American Jewish History 91.1 (2003) 189-191



[Access article in PDF]
Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights. By Clive Webb. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001. xvii + 307 pp.

From his academic perch on the other side of the Atlantic, University of Sussex scholar Clive Webb has emerged as one of the most talented experts on American Southern Jewish history. If his many articles and conference papers had not yet made that point, this volume leaves no room for doubt. It is fascinating, meticulous, and insightful: a marvelous contribution to the field.

Webb's introduction advises readers that his purpose is "to build on the revisionist argument of [Mark K.] Bauman and [Berkley] Kalin" which posits that southern Jews, "most notably their religious leaders, did play an important and unjustly forgotten role in the struggle against racial segregation" (xv). The chapters that follow analyze the southern Jewish approach to and involvement in the institution of slavery, the Black perception of Jews, antisemitism in the South, the reaction of southern Jews to national Jewish civil rights agencies (like the Anti-Defamation League), the dilemma of southern Jewish merchants, the role played by Jewish segregationists, southern Jewish women's involvement in desegregation, and, finally, the role of southern rabbis in the struggle against racial segregation.

When discussing the pre-Civil War era, Webb quite convincingly argues that Jewish southerners were by and large indistinguishable from their Christian neighbors in their approach to slavery and in their treatment of slaves. His explanation of why this was so becomes a major theme that weaves through every chapter: Being a very tiny minority, Jewish Southerners' main motivation was a desire for general social acceptance (8 ). This he uses to illumine why the southern Jewish press consistently reflected more the self-interest of its constituency rather than the message of Judaism's ancient prophets. When reading this material, I was reminded of how the New York German Jewish press in the early 1900 s carried editorials calling for our country to close its doors to the onslaught of the unwashed hordes of East European Jews.

There is a tension, however, between this insight and Webb's stated purpose to show that southern Jews, in fact, played "an important and unjustly forgotten role in the struggle against racial segregation" (xv). His analysis of the black community's perception of Jews reflects this tension: On the one hand it viewed southern Jews as being generally "more compassionate in their racial attitudes" (29 ), but at the same time expressed considerable disappointment in southern Jewry's role during the struggles of the 1950 s and 1960s. [End Page 189]

This tension reappears in his chapter on the growth of antisemitism, when Webb states that "most southern Jews sympathized with the incipient civil rights movement," but "political realities compelled their silence" (44 ). The assertion that Jewish sympathy lay with the integrationists is made frequently (see, e.g., pages 88 , 98 , 104, and 194 ), but it seems less substantiated than the point made in Chapter One and occasionally elsewhere which argues that most southern Jews were hardly to be distinguished from Christian whites in their attitudes. The chapter on the involvement of southern rabbis is particularly relevant, since Webb argues in it that "in stark contrast to the Protestant and Catholic clergy, no rabbi ever attempted to devise a religious justification for segregation" (170 ), and he puts great emphasis on the personal and institutional danger faced by any rabbi and his congregation when the religious leader took a stand against racial discrimination. Men like Ira Sanders and Zeke Palnik (Little Rock), Julian Feibelman (New Orleans), Emmet Frank (Alexandria, VA), Perry Nussbaum (Jackson, MS), Jacob Rothschild (Atlanta) and Charles Mantinband (Hattiesburg) were individuals whose courage took them beyond the call of duty, men of "remarkable bravery" (189).

There is obviously much truth in Webb's analysis; synagogues were bombed, death threats were made. On the lay level, deep financial penalties and general ostracism were the not unusual penalties for activism. And yet, though their lives might have been made difficult by...

pdf

Share