Synopses & Reviews
“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 regions racial mores and left behind a rich legacy.
Review
“A deeply researched and beautifully written account of a neglected chapter of American Jewish history—and 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
Review
"This book sings. It is that rare beautiful volume that cuts to the heart of the matter—a groundbreaking, eloquent and meticulously researched book about Southern Jewish culture. Light takes us inside the heart of this regional Jewish community. Through careful and creative archival inquiry she illuminates the subtle labors of benevolence—the care of 'our own' widows and orphans—as the site where Southern Jews performed Southern gentility and whiteness as a means to achieve their own cultural citizenship. This book transforms our understanding of how American Jews do race. It changes the ways we think about Jewish life in the South. It is an astonishing accomplishment."-Laura Levitt,Temple University
About the Author
Caroline E. Light is Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvards Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.