The Jewish South: An American History, with Shari Rabin

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In 1669, the Carolina colony issued the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which offered freedom of worship to “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters,” ushering in an era that would see Jews settle in cities and towns throughout what would become the Confederate States. The Jewish South tells their stories, and those of their descendants and coreligionists who followed, providing the first narrative history of Southern Jews.

Drawing on a wealth of original archival findings spanning three centuries, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the complicated decisions that Southern Jews made—as individuals, families, and communities—to fit into a society built on Native land and enslaved labor and to maintain forms of Jewish difference, often through religious innovation and adaptation. She paints a richly textured and sometimes troubling portrait of the period, exploring how Southern Jews have been targets of antisemitism and violence but also complicit in racial injustice. Rabin considers Jewish immigration and institution building, participation in the Civil War, the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, and Jewish support for and resistance to the modern fight for Black civil rights. She examines shifting understandings of Jewishness, highlighting both the reality of religious diversity and the ongoing role of Christianity in defining the region.

Shari Rabin is an historian of modern Judaism and American religions. Her first book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU Press, 2017), won the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies. She is associate professor of Jewish studies, religion, and history at Oberlin College and serves as vice-president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society.