A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility

by Mark K. Bauman, Ronald H. Bayor (Foreword by)

Overview

Winner of the 2023 Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Award

Essays from a prolific career that challenge and overturn traditional narratives of southern Jewish history
 
Mark K. Bauman, one of the foremost scholars of southern Jewish history working today, has spent much of his career, as he puts it, “rewriting southern Jewish history” in ways that its earliest historians could not have envisioned or anticipated, and doing so by specifically  targeting themes and trends that might not have been readily  apparent to those scholars. A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility features essays collected from over a forty-year career, including a never-before-published article.

The prevailing narrative in southern Jewish history tends to emphasize the role of immigrant Jews as merchants in small southern towns and their subsequent struggles and successes in making a place for themselves in the fabric of those communities. Bauman offers assessments that go far beyond these simplified frameworks and draws upon varieties of subject matter, time periods, locations, tools, and perspectives over three decades of writing and scholarship.

A New Vision of Southern Jewish History contains Bauman’s studies of Jewish urbanization, acculturation and migration, intra- and inter-group relations, economics and business, government, civic affairs, transnational diplomacy, social services, and gender—all complicating traditional notions of southern Jewish identity. Drawing on role theory as informed by sociology, psychology, demographics, and the nature and dynamics of leadership, Bauman traverses a broad swath—often urban—of the southern landscape, from Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore through Atlanta, New Orleans, Galveston, and beyond the country to Europe and Israel.

Bauman’s retrospective volume gives readers the opportunity to review a lifetime of work in a single publication as well as peruse newly penned introductions to his essays. The book also features an “Additional Readings” section designed to update the historiography in the essays.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817392291
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	05/14/2019
Series:	Jews and Judaism: History and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	616
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mark K. Bauman spent twenty-six years teaching at Atlanta Metropolitan College, where he retired in 2002 as a full professor. He is the editor of Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History and the coeditor of The Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights, 1880s to 1990s and To Stand Aside or Stand Alone: Southern Reform Rabbis and the Civil Rights Movement.
 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Variations on the Mortara Case in MidNineteenth-Century New Orleans

During the mid-nineteenth century, three major international incidents galvanized American Jewry and pushed it toward unified action. In 1840, with the instigation of the French consul, Jews in Damascus were charged with murdering a Capuchin monk and his servant to use their blood for making Passover matzah. A number of Jews were jailed, some of whom underwent torture and died. Jews, recognizing an identity that transcended national boundaries, protested in many American cities as well as in Great Britain and France. President Martin Van Buren expressed his disgust at this anti-Semitic blood libel through foreign policy channels. In the second incident, the Senate ratified a trade treaty with Switzerland although the Swiss cantons denied Jews basic rights and denied visas to Jewish American citizens. A delegation of Jews requested that James Buchanan revise the treaty, but to little avail. The most important event for American Jewry occurred in Bologna in 1858. On the basis of canon law established by Pope Benedict XIV a century earlier, the Italian police took six-year-old Edgardo Mortara from his parents. They did so based on the testimony of a family servant, Anna Morisi, who claimed that she had baptized the Jewish boy to save his soul when she feared that he, while still an infant, was about to die from an illness. Despite international protest, the kidnapped child received a Catholic education and became a priest. Again, the Buchanan administration refused to intervene when lobbied by American Jews.

Given the prevalent friction over distinctions based on national origin and religious practices, prior attempts at unity instigated especially by Isaac Leeser had failed. Now cognizant that similar incidents were bound to occur and that a unified response would be most effective, representatives of various congregations established the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Persecution accomplished what American freedom and voluntarism had discouraged. The Board of Delegates, representing lay leadership rather than rabbinical authority, attempted to encourage unity by recommending educational improvements, collecting demographic data concerning American Jewry, and making more rational the provision of charity. It also collected funds and attempted to influence public opinion.

In his study of the Mortara incident, the late Bertram W. Korn indicates that although the American Jewish response to the incident reflected a lack of unity and the "inexperienced fumbling which characterized most Jewish leaders," it also indicated the willingness of American Jews to voice their opinions, the association of American Jews with Jews in need overseas, and the belief of American Jewry that it had the equality and liberty to protest, petition the government, and appeal to fellow Americans for aid. Thus, the Mortara case illustrated both the strengths and weaknesses of mid-century Jewry in the United States.

Korn places the incident squarely within the political and sectional debates of the era and explains how various interest groups used it to their advantage and reacted to it within these frameworks. In so doing, he emphasizes the impact of slavery and sectionalism on southern Jewish reactions. In essence, Jews in the South were less willing to protest openly and expressed greater agreement with Buchanan's equivocal position than did Jews elsewhere.

In Charleston, South Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, for example, the Jewish communities did not report their protest activities in local newspapers, and they tended to support Buchanan's position of limited national power and states' rights. Like Buchanan, southern Jews supported the Democratic Party and were reluctant to have the American government criticize a foreign country's position on the civil rights of its citizens when they, and the United States, were vulnerable to a similar rebuff over the issue of slavery.

At the 1859 annual banquet of the Jewish Widows and Orphans Homes of New Orleans, Korn explains, four speakers, including D. C. Labatt, Henry M. Hyams, and Benjamin F. Jonas, praised the positions of Buchanan and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. Rabbi James K. Gutheim chaired the meeting. These men were among the most politically connected and influential Jews in the community. All were also future supporters of the Confederacy.

Gutheim became an ardent Confederate and fled New Orleans during the war to avoid giving an oath of loyalty to the Union. A successful attorney and plantation owner like his cousin Judah P. Benjamin, whom he accompanied from Charleston to New Orleans in 1828, Hyams served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana during the Civil War, the first Jew elected to such a position. The owner of dozens of slaves, he had actively opposed abolitionist agitation beginning in the 1830s. Hyams and Benjamin Jonas were law partners. Jonas's family illustrated the vicissitudes of geography, the divisions wrought by the war, and the countervailing unifying influence of blood and religious identity. Those of his brothers who were raised in Kentucky served in the Confederacy and those raised in Illinois did their part for the Union. His father, Abraham Jonas, was an attorney, a Kentucky and Illinois legislator, the postmaster of Quincy, and a friend and political supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Jonas helped found the Illinois Republican Party, and Benjamin Jonas became a legislative leader of the Louisiana Redemption movement and the first observant Jewish US senator. While Benjamin participated in the protest over Mortara in Louisiana, Abraham urged Senator Lyman Trumbull to introduce a Mortara resolution in the Senate, according to Korn, as a political ploy to help the Republican Party in 1860.

Korn recognized that the Mortara baptism and kidnapping were not isolated events. In 1826, for example, a young Jewish woman was forced into a convent, and during the 1840s a Jewish child was "separated," as the Catholic Church described it, from his parents. Both incidents occurred in Italy but did not result in protest, because Italian Jews had not been free to protest prior to the unification of that country. In St. Louis, Missouri, Captain Paulson Dietrich, a Jew, was baptized without his consent as he lay dying in the Sisters of Charity Infirmary. A fellow Jewish patient reported the incident to the president of the local congregation, who intervened. The priest in charge of the infirmary refused to discuss the situation or to allow visitors to see Dietrich, and appeals to Archbishop Kendrick were denied. The church buried the young man in a Catholic cemetery, although official action resulted in his disinterment and reburial in a Jewish cemetery.

Korn did not realize that a similar incident to the Mortara case had taken place in New Orleans almost simultaneously and that this incident and its outcome reflected the positions taken by southern leaders to the more publicized international event. This case related to a young Jewish girl who was orphaned; it involved the French government, did not require national or international protest, and had a decidedly different outcome.

Context

The New Orleans Association for the Relief of Jewish Widows and Orphans was the key agency involved in this incident, and its leaders were those who framed the community response to the Mortara case. In 1854 twenty-one "gentlemen" created this organization, the first Jewish orphanage in the country, under the leadership of Gershom Kursheedt. Obtaining a state charter the next year, the men referred to themselves as "Israelites." Following the flowery language of the era, the preamble of the society's constitution waxed poetic: "Within the compass of humanity there is nothing which touches more powerfully the heart of the true Philanthropist, than the destitute, forlorn condition of the poor widow and orphan Bereft of their natural Protector, exposed to the merciless sufferings of a selfish World — the one, with the fine Sensibilities of her Sex, cramped in her executions to secure a maintenance — the other, with powers and capacities yet undeveloped, tossed about by the fierce waves of privation and hunger, and unguided impulse, they represent the Strongest claims to the Sympathies of the good and benevolent."

Although this statement reflected the nineteenth-century perceptions of the roles of men and women in society in a condescending fashion, in reality, the frequent yellow fever epidemics and particularly those of 1847 and 1853 in the Mississippi area created the demand for assistance. The preamble characterized the provision of such assistance as a Jewish religious responsibility. It noted that the Jewish population of New Orleans was increasing dramatically, that many of the newcomers died while they became acclimated, and that the current Jewish charities could not meet demands.

According to the bylaws, a matron directly responsible to the male board "shall be charged with the domestic economy of the Home and regarded as head of the household." The men held the power but recognized the woman's role over daily governance. The committee on applications for relief gave the board reports documenting "the merits of every applicant after due and careful investigation," as well as the "character of employment best adopted to each applicant." These and other policies were in keeping with the nineteenth-century view of charity. Recipients, in this case the "inmates," had to demonstrate their worthiness and were subject to intense control.

Individuals from throughout the South joined the association, and contributions were received from as far away as Philadelphia. As in the Mortara case, the provision of assistance to fellow Jews overcame all other divisions. Nonetheless, subscriptions to a building fund were insufficient, and loans and a subsidy from the Louisiana legislature had to be solicited. The donation from the legislature, requested by David C. Labatt, one of the speakers Korn identified, was particularly welcomed in that it represented the honor and esteem in which Jews were held by the Christian community of Louisiana. It also reflected the willingness of the New Orleans leadership to solicit state government aid and to become visible even when such visibility might be negatively construed.

By April 1856, the association had erected "a Home for the unfortunate of our race." The following year a primary school and domestic economy program were added, and President M. M. Simpson reported that "beneath this roof may be found the aged friendless spinster ... whose sole aim in life is to go hence in peace ... the aged matron with widowed heart still clinging to the past." Yet all was not well. Simpson continued: "Perhaps in this particular [general discipline], more than all other, combined, has the forebearance and sagacity of the Board been tested." To overcome the problem, "industrial pursuits" were to be expanded. "From profitable employment among the Adults, it is confidently hoped, the seeds of cheerfulness will spring; it will relieve a sense of dependence too keenly alive, and render all more subservient to the rules and regulations."

The Case of Alice Levy

Five months after Edgardo Mortara was abducted, Joseph Simon, chair of the application committee, applied for Alice Levy's acceptance into the Home. A resolution passed unanimously accepting the child "in obedience to the dying injunction of the Mother" and to inform Mr. and Mrs. Capdeville that the Home was "prepared to receive [the] child at once." M. M. Simpson presided, Gutheim served as secretary, and Labatt participated as a board member. The decision was made December 26, 1858, a date important because of its relation to the Mortara protests. President Solomon Cohen of Savannah's Mickve Israel wrote to Buchanan on November 17, urging the president to exert moral influence on the papacy. On the following day, delegates of twelve New York synagogues met to plan concerted actions. Representatives of New Orleans's congregations did the same on December 12, with Gutheim as chair, and passed resolutions condemning papal policy and agreeing to work with other American synagogues if a convention were called for such a purpose. Shaarai Shomayim of Mobile acted similarly on December 19. The next day, representatives of five Philadelphia congregations appealed to Cass. Thus, the Levy case unfolded at the same time that Jews in New Orleans and throughout the country were enmeshed in lobbying on behalf of Mortara.

Simon officially delivered Alice Levy to the Home on January 2, 1859, two days before Buchanan wrote his first and only direct response to the Mortara case. The monthly board minutes indicate that "Mrs. Capdeville had acted a very kind and charitable part towards said orphan" and that a motion was passed to thank her "for the kind care she has bestowed on the said child, activated by motives of true charity and benevolence." The Capdevilles were invited to the society's "next anniversary celebration ... as a slight token of our esteem." This was the meeting to which Korn referred, at which society officers paid tribute to President Buchanan. The association also allocated twenty-five dollars "to be paid to Mrs. Francois, the guardian nurse of the orphan child Alice."

Thus far, Alice Levy's situation could only be viewed as unusual in the recognition given to the Capdevilles and the seemingly positive contribution to the nurse. Yet later in the same minutes the following appears: "The President [M. M. Simpson] states that the French Consul Count de Mèjan had officially enquired concerning the orphan Alice Mortara Levy, at the instance of the French government. On motion it was resolved that the Secy. furnish him with a statement of the case."

Although a copy of Simpson's letter could not be located, the consul's response and subsequent correspondence explicate the incident:

Consulate of France at New Orleans New Orleans, March 16, 1859
Mr. President,

His Excellency, the minister of Foreign Affairs of His Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon, has done me the honor of writing me, under the date of the 9th February last, for the purpose of calling my attention to the facts concerning a young orphan girl, Alice Levy, daughter of French parents, who had been delivered to a charitable woman of New Orleans, for the object of being raised in the Catholic religion, contrary to the last disposition of her mother, who had expressed the desire that her child be raised in the bosom of the Jewish religion, which was that of her parents. Attached to this communication were several papers, and among others, a letter of the grand-mother of this young girl, Madame Widow Meyer Lichtenberg, nee Levy, who stated, that the delivery of said child had been refused by the Jewish Society of New Orleans, because it had already been baptized.

His Excellency, the Count Walewsky, has given me the order to use my influence and, if necessary, take legal steps, in order to realize the wishes of the deceased Mrs. Levy.

According to the information which I have gathered, this intervention has become unnecessary, since the said child has been, after some prudent considerations (après quelques discrétions), entrusted to the good care of the Jewish Society.

This information, however, can not fully satisfy me. I therefore believe that I cannot do better than to address myself to you, Sir, as the president of the association and of the Jewish Asylum, and to beg of you to let me know the result of the intervention, in order that I may act accordingly, and transmit an answer to His Excellency, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Please accept, Mr. President, the assurance of my high consideration. The Consul of France

(Sig.) Cte [Count] Mèjan

Mr. Simpson

President of the Society for the care of Israelite widows and orphans of New Orleans

Although the attachments including the grandmother's letter could not be located, Simpson's response followed directly in the minutes of March 15, 1859:

New Orleans March 19th, 1859
Cte [Count] Mèjan Consul of France at New Orleans Respected Sir,

In compliance with your request, on behalf of your government, I have the honor to communicate to you the desired information, regarding the orphan child, Alice Levy.

Mrs. Levy, the mother of said child, died in the early part of September last. During her sickness she was attended by Israelites and on her demise she was buried with the Jewish rites in a Jewish cemetery. Prior to her death she expressed a desire to have orphan child Alice, then about 16 mos. old, placed in the Jewish Widows and Orphans' Home. The nurse having charge of said child pleaded, that she was much attached to it and asked permission, to keep it about a week longer, when she would deliver it to the custody of the Home. She, however, did not keep her promise, and her residence being unknown, some time elapsed, before the where about of the child could be discovered.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Ronald H. Bayor

Introduction

Part I. Community and Institution Building

Chapter 1. Variations on the Mortara Case in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

Chapter 2. Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces Facing the People of Many Communities: Atlanta Jews from the Leo Frank Case to the Great Depression

Chapter 3. The Emergence of Jewish Social Service Agencies in Atlanta

Chapter 4. The Transformation of Jewish Social Services in Atlanta, 1928–1948

Chapter 5. Southern Jewish Women and Their Social Service Organizations

Part II. Lay Leadership

Chapter 6. Factionalism and Ethnic Politics in Atlanta: German Jews from the Civil War through the Progressive Era

Chapter 7. Victor H. Kriegshaber: Community Builder

Chapter 8. Role Theory and History: The Illustration of Ethnic Brokerage in the Atlanta Jewish Community in an Era of Transition and Conflict

Chapter 9. The Youthful Musings of a Jewish Community Activist: Josephine Joel Heyman

Part III. Rabbinical Leadership

Chapter 10. Demographics, Anti-Rabbanism, and Freedom of Choice: The Origins and Principles of Reform at Baltimore’s Har Sinai Verein

Chapter 11. The Rabbi as Ethnic Broker: The Case of David Marx. Cowritten with Arnold Shankman

Chapter 12. Harry H. Epstein and the Adaptation of Second-Generation Eastern European Jews in Atlanta

Part IV. International Leadership

Chapter 13. Beyond the Parochial Image of Southern Jewry: Studies in National and International Leadership and Interactive Mechanisms

Chapter 14. The Blaustein–Ben-Gurion Agreement: A Milestone in Israel-Diaspora Relations

Part V. Historiography and Synthesis

Chapter 15. The Southerner as American: Jewish Style

Chapter 16. The Flowering of Interest in Southern Jewish History and Its Integration into Mainstream History

Chapter 17. A Multithematic Approach to Southern Jewish History

Chapter 18. A Century of Southern Jewish Historiography

Notes

Additional Readings

Mark K. Bauman’s Publications on American Jewish History

Index

Editorial Reviews

Bauman has, unlike nearly everyone else who has written in southern Jewish history, provided a scholarly perspective that goes beyond descriptive and, for lack of a better term ‘cute’ stories about the oddities of Jewish life.”
—Hasia R. Diner, author of We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962 and The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000

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