Guest Editors' Introduction

On June 5, 2006, more than a hundred scholars arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, for the seventh Biennial Scholars' Conference on American Jewish History, sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Jewish Archives, and the College of Charleston. Focused on the theme of regionalism in American Jewish life, the gathering drew individuals from various disciplines—architectural historians and literary critics, graduate students completing their doctorates and senior scholars in American history, newcomers to the study of American Jews and veterans of the field. The current issue of American Jewish History gives readers a chance to experience this diversity, as well as the range and scope of the conference.

In editing the first issue of the journal drawn from the proceedings of a biennial scholars' conference, we have been mindful of both the need to provide continuity and our desire to innovate. Thus we have encouraged contributors to expand on the papers they presented and to include photographs and drawings to illustrate and extend the reach of their articles. We also have transcribed the opening remarks in a roundtable discussion on the significance of place in American and American Jewish history, albeit recognizing that the written word cannot fully capture the liveliness of the face-to-face encounter.

The conference presentations by Adam Mendelsohn and Daniel Ackermann constituted a single session entitled "Languages and Landscapes." In their essays, both scholars emphasize how connected Jews were across the Atlantic and throughout the English-speaking world. Mendelsohn demonstrates the impact of "twin revolutions" in transportation and communication that permitted, indeed propelled, a transnational flow of goods, ideas, and preachers. He argues for the power of English-language publications to annihilate time and space and for renewed attention to their significance. Ackermann shows how, in the architecture of their 1794 synagogue, Jews in Charleston, South Carolina, negotiated a shrinking divide between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, while at the same time accommodating and in some ways mimicking their non-Jewish neighbors. The spire that marked Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim's position on the skyline was visible but not overreaching, symbolizing the congregation's "aspirations to full integration into the city's civic and religious life."

Architecture also serves as metaphor in Joseph Butwin's "Tevye on King Street." The essay breaks new ground in several ways. It focuses not merely on place in terms of cities and their social spaces, but also on street level interactions. It grounds its observations in a blend of memoir, biography, and literary criticism, a new form of interpretive filiopietistic writing. In a nuanced reading of influences, Butwin suggests how Charlestonians' preoccupation with creating a usable past shaped a comparable Jewish undertaking. Sholem Aleichem's fictional shtetl may have its roots as much in South Carolina as in Eastern Europe. The new world imagines the old one not only in translation but also in its own image.

"Whistling 'Dixie' while Humming 'HaTikvah'" by Hollace Weiner moves us from the southeastern seaboard to Fort Worth, Texas. The article is "a tale of two congregations," dissecting the differences between a Reform temple and an Orthodox shul. The rediscovery and painstaking translation of a minute book, dating from 1898 to 1905 and containing nearly two hundred pages of notes in Yiddish, has made possible the restoration of Ahavath Sholom to its rightful place in the historical pantheon. Weiner explores multiple dimensions of accommodation among congregants even as they remain steadfast in their attachment to Judaism.

The concluding tribute to Gerald Sorin on the occasion of his receiving the Lee Max Friedman medal celebrates his pioneering and influential career. Since Sorin's "cross-over" in the 1970s from the field of American history to Jewish studies, he has illuminated the struggles of Jewish workers and radicals, youth and immigrants, and has explored the dynamic relationship between Jewish religious culture and secular politics in lucid and accessible prose that narrows the gap between specialist and generalist.

We hope our effort to translate three days of conference into a single volume captures a taste of what participants enjoyed. We cannot bring you the sunshine and southern hospitality, the Creole cooking, the distinctive streets...