Darcie Fohrman, designer of the Down Home exhibit, is one of the most sought-after figures in the field of exhibition planning and design. Among her list of distinguished credits are “Daniel’s Story: Remember the Children” at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the award-winning “Courage: The Carolina Story that Changed America" for the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.

Henry Greene, president, Leonard Rogoff, historian and Will Grossman, director of operations meet with exhibit venue representative to discuss exhibit opening to read more

Down Home in North Carolina's museums

The Down Home exhibition takes an experiential, values-oriented approach in telling the narrative of Jewish life in North Carolina. Jews were instrumental in leading North Carolina into the New South. Their biblical traditions emphasized values of work, community, religion, family, and education that harmonized with those of the Southern peoples among whom they found homes. The exhibition’s center, “Who We Are: A North Carolina Story,” orients visitors by presenting an historical overview of Jewish immigration and acculturation. The surrounding modules, “How We Lived: New Lives in the New South,” create environments that allow visitors to experience how Jews realized their values in everyday life.

Who We Are: A North Carolina Story
At the center of the exhibition is a chronology of Jewish settlement in North Carolina that shows how Jews, through a process of struggle and negotiation, became a Southern people while preserving their ethnic and religious traditions. Panels, graphics, and artifacts illustrate the character of the community, the Jews’ role in building a New South, and their acculturation into Southerners. Large portraits of North Carolina Jews — such as a colonial Jew, a Civil War soldier, an East European immigrant family, a Miss North Carolina, a basketball player — draw visitors into the exhibition space.

How We Lived: New Lives in the New South
Modules based on the Jewish values of religion, family, community, education, and work present environments that encourage visitors to re-live the experience of being Jewish in North Carolina.

• “Keeping the Faith” features a reconstructed synagogue sanctuary with an ark and Torah from a synagogue in Winston-Salem.
• “Minding the Store” recreates an authentic dry-goods store, stocked with vintage merchandise and artifacts from family stores in Whittakers, Lincolnton, and Greensboro.
• “Family Comes First” centers around a table from Mount Airy, set for a Sabbath dinner as it was nearly a century ago.
• “A Commitment to Community” demonstrates how North Carolina’s Jews have contributed to the health, educational, and civic resources of the state.
• “A Love of Learning” focuses on the intellectual and cultural accomplishments of Tar Heel Jews within a reconstruction of Harry Golden’s study, with his own desk and typewriter.

How Bloom's Good Fortune Grew

The year was 1904. In those days, people often got married when they were quite young, and Max Bloom, a 21-year-old Jew from Lithuania had already been married and widowed. (A hundred years ago, there were no antibiotics or other modern medicine to cure most diseases.) Like many other immigrants, Max was peddling his way south by horse and wagon from his brother’s home in Pennsylvania. On the way, in Halifax County, Max got sick. The Peeles, a local farm family, were very kind to him, and took him in. Their daughter Lula nursed Max back to health.

It was love at first sight. Max and Lula wanted to get married, so they went to see the rabbi in Wilmington. Lula studied there for a whole month before converting to Judaism. After they married, Lula kept a kosher home. Just imagine how hard it was to find kosher meat in a small North Carolina town! All was well until one day, frustrated over the poor quality of the meat, Lula decided to make pork chops. Max got so upset that he threw the meat, the pan, and the dishes out the window!

Max had always dreamed of being a farmer, and eventually the Blooms owned a dairy in Wrightsville. We have a photo of Max and Lula with their horse and wagon from this time. They worked hard and prospered. Later on, they opened two dry goods stores, one in Whitakers and the other in Fayetteville.

When you visit the Down Home museum exhibit a few years from now, you will see a copy of Max and Lula’s ketubah (wedding contract) and a photograph of the Bloom family in their store in Whitakers. You’ll be able to walk through a recreation of a dry goods store and see the big iron safe, the counters, the glass display cases, and old wooden shelves from the very same store in the picture!