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“It
has ever been the boast of the Jewish people, that they support their own poor,”
declared Kentucky attorney Benjamin Franklin Jonas in 1856. “Their reasons are
partly founded in religious necessity, and partly in that pride of race and
character which has supported them through so many ages of trial and
vicissitude.” In That Pride of Race and
Character, Caroline E. Light examines the American Jewish tradition of
benevolence and charity and explores its southern roots.
Light provides a critical analysis of
benevolence as it was inflected by regional ideals of race and gender, showing
how a southern Jewish benevolent empire emerged in response to the combined
pressures of post-Civil War devastation and the simultaneous influx of eastern
European immigration. In an effort to combat the voices of anti-Semitism and
nativism, established Jewish leaders developed a sophisticated and cutting-edge
network of charities in the South to ensure that Jews took care of those
considered “their own” while also proving themselves to be exemplary white
citizens. Drawing from confidential case files and institutional records from
various southern Jewish charities, the book relates how southern Jewish leaders
and their immigrant clients negotiated the complexities of “fitting in” in a
place and time of significant socio-political turbulence. Ultimately, the
southern Jewish call to benevolence bore the particular imprint of the region’s
racial mores and left behind a rich legacy.
— Laura Levitt,Temple University
A deeply researched and beautifully written account of a neglected chapter of American Jewish historyand of national belonging. By telling the story of Jews in the Jim Crow South, Caroline E. Light vitally illuminates the ongoing production and negotiation of racial and religious difference not just in the South, but in the U.S. more broadly.
— Ann Pellegrini,author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race
Lights study strikes out in new and interesting directions, including the use of previously untapped sources for the study of southern Jews, such as case files from orphan homes and immigrant relief associations. Coupled with oral history interviews, these sources give rare insight into family and gender relations, the economic struggles of Jewish immigrants, and the social anxieties driving Jewish elites to impose a strict cultural discipline on aid recipients.
Through its well-organized chapters and thorough research,That Pride of Race and Characteryields an important and thought-provoking examination of the exceptional ways in which two southern Jewish communities & took care of their own.
Light has identified a significant topic that touches upon important matters such as the intersection of race and gender in the Jim Crow South, the changing nature of child welfare work in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America, and the influence of regionalism in American Jewish history.That Pride of Race and Characterconstitutes a very interesting and useful investigation of this topic
Using historical records and social-worker case files of charitable organizations and 'social uplift' societies, Light compellingly details the nuanced and varied ways that southern Jewsin all their cultural and regional diversitynavigated local strictures and mores in order both to maintain their Jewishness and to create a home in the South.