Southern Jewish History

What began eight years ago as a modest oral history program at the College of Charleston has blossomed into a major traveling exhibit with the ambition of revolutionizing how American Jews think about their history. "A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life" chronicles the long, eventful saga of Jews in the American South—anticipating the 350^th anniversary of Jews in America in 2004.

The exhibit title comes from a letter written in 1816 by Charleston-born Isaac Harby, journalist, playwright, and leader of the Reformed Society of Israelites, to Secretary of State James Monroe. Protesting the removal of the American consul to Tunis, Mordecai Manual Noah, because he was a Jew, Harby reminded the future president, "They [the Jews] are by no means to be considered as a Religious sect, tolerated by the government; they constitute a portion of the People."

In the context of the show, "a portion of the people" has an ironic twist. The acceptance Jews enjoyed in South Carolina and the ease with which they integrated into society came at a price. For while Carolina was the first political entity to treat Jews as equals, it also was the only colony on the American mainland whose charter sanctioned racial slavery. Jews were equal—to other white people. Along with Huguenots and diverse groups of Christian dissenters, they bolstered the number of whites in a colony and state with a black majority. Subscribing to the dominant morality, Jews accepted slavery, as well as other distinctively southern institutions such as states' rights and dueling.

Becoming "a portion of the people" also meant that southern Jews might assimilate into the mainstream and marry out of Judaism altogether. Indeed, few descendants of Carolina's first families are still Jewish, though most are proud of their Jewish lineage. The drama of the exhibit lies in the simultaneous efforts Jews have made to become a part of southern society and to sustain their Jewish identity.

"A Portion of the People" has come a long way—from the tidal flats and foothills of South Carolina to the bright lights of New York City, where the exhibit, co-sponsored by Yeshiva University Museum and the American Jewish Historical Society, is on view through July 20, 2003 at the Center for Jewish History. In September 2003, it moves to the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina—not a Jewish museum, but named for a major Jewish contributor. (Yeshiva is the only Jewish museum on the show's two-year tour.)

When the project began in 1995, each of its three sponsors had its own agenda and goals. Founders of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, led by the late state senator Isadore Lourie, were driven by a profound sense of loss for the small-town Jews who were passing from the scene. They wanted their stories recorded, their memories preserved. The College of Charleston wanted to expand its Jewish archives and develop its Jewish Studies program. The University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum aimed to mount a nationally traveling exhibition about a neglected aspect of the state's cultural landscape.

The curators of "A Portion of the People" set out to dispel myths. They aimed first to convince an uninformed public that there are indeed Jews in the South, and second to contest the stereotype of Jewish immigrants as men in black hats and women in babushkas who traveled in steerage and arrived at Ellis Island around 1900. Contrary to public opinion, not all of America's earliest Jews settled in Newport and New York.

The exhibition challenges the accepted wisdom that Jews came to America in three waves: first, exiles from Spain and Portugal; second, German-speaking people from Central Europe; and finally, Eastern Europeans fleeing persecution and pogroms. Historian Oscar Handlin disputed this formulation more than fifty years ago, but the notion persists despite evidence that all three strands were woven among Jewish arrivals in every era...