A volume for keepsake and reference
In the Down Home book, which will be published simultaneous with the opening of the museum exhibit, 400 years of North Carolina Jewish voices will speak for themselves. The book is named in memory of Anna Lou Cassell. Richly illustrated and attractively formatted, this volume will sit with equal comfort on the coffee table and the scholar’s shelf. It will be authoritative in its scholarship but accessible to general audiences. The emphasis will be on social history.
Leonard Rogoff, Ph.D., JHFNC’s historian and research director, will serve as editor and chief writer. He has laid the research groundwork in his extensive publications on Southern and North Carolina Jewry, including articles on the state’s synagogue history, rabbinic responses to civil rights, and racial anti-Semitism. Editor of The Rambler, the newsletter of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Leonard recently contributed entries on North Carolina for the forthcoming revision of the Encyclopedia Judaica. His award-winning book, Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was critically praised for its readability, scholarship, and human interest.
The distinguished editorial board for this publication includes - Sydney Nathans, Associate Professor of History, Duke University (retired), and co-editor of The Way We Lived in North Carolina series;
- Eric Meyers, Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor, Department of Religion and founding director of the Judaic Studies Program at Duke University;
- Jonathan Sarna, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and chair of the Academic Advisory Council of Celebrate 350: Jewish Life in America.
Creation of a permanent archive
When completed, the research material for Down Home will comprise the most extensive body of historical records about the Jews of North Carolina. The JHFNC will create a permanent home for this archive, “The North Carolina Jewish Collection” at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, where it will be professionally preserved and made available to scholars of both the South and American Jewish history.
The JHFNC is also working with a consortium of university libraries from across the state—including Duke University, UNC-Asheville, UNC-Chapel Hill, and UNC-Charlotte—that hold Jewish North Carolina collections. We intend to create a master guide that will be an invaluable resource for those interested in Jewish or Southern heritage. These collections can be digitized, adapted for the World Wide Web, and linked to other important historical collections.
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