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The Jewish Experience in North Carolina
THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN NORTH CAROLINA
06.15.10 - 09:16 pm
Book, film and exhibit tell the immigrant story
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN
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RALEIGH -- If "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" were a book, museum exhibit and movie chronicling Jewish history in New York, the way the stories are told would be very different. New York was the first stop for many Jewish immigrants, while North Carolina was a second stop or no stop at all.
"Down South, we call it 'Explaining Judaism.' We knew, this being North Carolina, our audience would be overwhelmingly not Jewish," said Leonard Rogoff, author of the book and curator of the exhibit that opened Monday at the N.C. Museum of History in downtown Raleigh.
The project has two missions: "To tell who we are. To tell how we are," Rogoff said.
Visitors to the exhibit at the history museum can relive the experience of a Jew in North Carolina. They can look at ritual objects. They can sit at a seder table. They can look at a replica of an early immigrant's peddler cart. But first, they are given questions to ponder before they enter, like "Why do Jews need to study? Isn't belief enough?" and "If I'm a Jewish American, am I different than other Americans?" and "Why is it said where there are two Jews, there will be three questions?"
The exhibit's first installation, "Keeping the Faith," answers a question non-Jews might have:
"Is Judaism an ethnicity, a culture or a religion?"
"Yes, yes and yes."
The exhibit explains Judaism -- like the differences between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform strands -- as well as sharing our state's Jewish history in a hands on way. One area displaying merchants' information and photographs from over the years includes a familiar name in Durham: E.J. "Mutt" Evans, a 1928 graduate of UNC and the mayor of Durham from 1951 to 1963. His store, Evans United Department Store, was the only store on Main Street with an integrated lunch counter before integration. When a local judge told him that the state prohibited blacks and whites from sitting together in public, Evans took out the stools and raised the countertop to elbow height.
In the kitchen exhibit, North Carolina Jews share their food memories and recipes. Helen Stahl of Durham still uses her great-grandmother's chicken soup with matzoh balls recipe. Eliza Filene of Carrboro thinks there should be a challah-flavored jelly bean. Visitors can write down and submit their own food memories and recipes.
The book "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" is a sizable narrative history.
Jews are still and were a minority since the first, Joachim Gans of Prague, arrived at Roanoke Island in 1585 with Sir Walter Raleigh's second expedition. Gans returned to England the next year, but like many Jewish immigrants to come after him, came from Europe for a job.
In North Carolina, they settled in port areas like Wilmington, which was the first and largest Jewish community and home to the first synagogue in the state. Jews served in the Confederate army, like Louis Leon, who wrote "Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate."
Late 1870s Durham included Polish, Bavarian, Prussian and Dutch Jews, as well as those born here. The 1870 census recorded 300 Jews across the state.
In 1881, tobacco magnate Buck Duke sought immigrant labor through a Jewish man and strike leader he met in New York, Moses Gladstein. Gladstein brought more than 100 workers to Duke's tobacco factory, where they were supervised by Joseph Siegel. The tobacco competition, W.T. Blackwell, hired Siegel's brother David to bring workers to the Bull Durham factory. Duke clashed with his workers, who organized a local chapter of the Cigarmaker's Progressive Union, and after Duke reduced quotas and wages, they left and were replaced. But Gladstein stayed after settling with Duke. His brother, Louis operated Gladstein's men's clothing store, which was passed on to his son Melvin.
Melvin Gladstein was Lynne Gladstein Grossman's dad. She worked in the store from age 11 on. Gladstein's, which was last located at 209 W. Mangum St., sold everything to outfit the man, Grossman said. The store also sold military uniforms for Camp Butner in the 1940s. When Levi's blue jeans became popular, Gladstein's was the place to get them. The store closed during urban renewal in the 1970s.
Grossman knew her family's merchant history, but not the tobacco link until Rogoff told her. Her mother, Grace Gladstein, will turn 99 on Friday. Grossman, like her mother, has been president of the Beth El Sisterhood and the local chapter of Hadassah. The family has always been an integral part of the Jewish community, Grossman said.
"Faith is important to us and been a guiding force," she said.
Rogoff said that the "Down Home" project, which took about six years to complete, included researching oral and written histories as well as sorting through extensive records of Jewish peddlers from the 1840s to 1880s, which he considered an invaluable resource. While the exhibit is geared toward educating those who don't know about Judaism and Jewish history in North Carolina, the movie, out on DVD, is a way to let Jews share their stories in their own words.
Rogoff and Will Grossman, of the North Carolina Jewish Heritage Foundation, said that they are still hearing new personal recollections of Jews from Murphy to Manteo. Rogoff sees a second edition of the book possibly to come, with updates.
"There are always stories you can't get to," said Will Grossman, whose wife is Lynne Gladstein Grossman. "Down Home" is a project of the heritage foundation, based in Durham.
In the book, Rogoff writes: "The challenge for native and immigrant Jews alike was to become southerners while remaining Jews."
WHAT: "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" exhibit
WHERE: N.C. Museum of History
5 Edenton St., Raleigh
WHEN: Now through March 7. It will close between July 11 and Aug. 1 to move elsewhere in the museum. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
BOOK: "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" by Leonard Rogoff, $35, UNC Press
The book and documentary DVD are available in the museum gift shop. Educational DVDs and teacher resource guides will be available for use with North Carolina fourth grade and eighth grade curriculum.
The long history and deep roots of Jews in the Tar Heel state are coming to life in an ambitious new multimedia project that kicks off June 14 with an exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.
“Down Home,” which encompasses a slickly produced documentary film and handsomely illustrated coffee-table book, celebrates Jewish contributions to North Carolina social, civic and commercial life. But the project also aims to capture a nearly vanished way of life for Jews in the state’s mill and market towns, according to Leonard Rogoff, an organizer of the project and historian at the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, which is producing “Down Home.”
“Elderly Jews who lived the rural small-town experience are an endangered species,” said Rogoff, who also authored the companion book, “Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina” (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). “Synagogues have shuttered in cities like Tarboro and Lumberton. Smaller communities are expiring. We need to document them.”
The project “tells an important part of our state’s story,” wrote Linda A. Carlisle, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, in an e-mail to the Forward. “Jewish culture has helped shape North Carolina in its rural areas as well as its urban centers for centuries.” North Carolina’s state legislature kicked in $350,000 toward the project’s $1.25 million budget, according to Rogoff; the rest came from foundation grants and individual donations.
The investment has paid off with research that “contributes new insights into Jews in the South,” Rogoff said. “Histories typically focus on the pre-Civil War era and German-Reform Jews as normative southerners. We’ve emphasized the East European experience in the New South as well, and it’s updated to include the Sunbelt.” Rogoff’s team at JHFNC is also creating classroom material for 4th- and 8th-grade “People of North Carolina” courses in the state’s public schools with talks about expanding the lessons “across all grades and disciplines,” he said.
According to Rogoff, the “Down Home” project tells stories of Jews from Joachim Gans, who arrived on Roanoke Island on Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition in 1585, to Jacob Henry, who in 1809 delivered a speech in defense of religious freedom after his right to serve in the state legislature was challenged. And it spotlights civil-rights era heroes like Harry Golden, publisher of the esteemed The Carolina Israelite newspaper, “known nationally for his civil-rights advocacy, delivered in a Lower East Side accent,” Rogoff said.
In a folksier vein, the book, film, and exhibit highlight experiences of prominent, prosperous families like the clan of Eli Evans, whose own history provides one narrative thread of the “Down Home” project. Evans’s paternal grandfather was an immigrant peddler, his mother’s father a shopowner; his businessman father, Emanuel, became a wildly popular six-term mayor of Durham in the 1950s, and his mother Sara served on Hadassah’s national board for 40 years. Now a New Yorker, Evans himself went on to write what many consider the definitive history of southern Jews, “The Provincials” (University of North Carolina Press, 1973), which has continuously been in print for nearly three decades.
“The story of the Jews is the untold story of the South,” said Evans, a onetime speechwriter for President Lyndon Baines Johnson who, after serving from 1969 to 1977 as a senior executive at the Carnegie Corporation, went on to run several charitable endowments, including the Revson Foundation. “The region has whatever image it has from whatever violence there was. But that’s not the story of the Jews. Ours is the story of successful integration and good relationships.”
The Jewish experience in North Carolina was unique in the South, Evans said, because North Carolina was unique in the South. “We didn’t have a strong Klan in our state. We had a commitment to public education, a more moderate political atmosphere, and enlightened political leaders,” he said. “I’m not saying no antisemitism existed. But there was a philo-Semitism that manifested itself in many ways.”
The exhibit itself, which will travel across North Carolina over the next year, uses artifacts and photos to recreate a series of “environments”: A synagogue sanctuary, dry-goods store, family Sabbath table, and a study based on Harry Golden’s Charlotte home. The 81-minute “Down Home” DVD documentary, (available through the JHFNC’s website), complements the museum show with a somewhat academic mix of archival footage, insightful interviews and unfortunately costumed re-enactments.
While the exhibit’s partly intended to educate North Carolinians about their own history, Rogoff said he hopes “Down Home” might reach other Jews — especially from the Northeast. “All native southern Jews have humorous stories about meeting New Yorkers who cannot believe that Jews actually live in the South,” he said. “They associate a New York accent, not a southern drawl, with being Jewish. That’s a very old cliché. New Yorkers especially can be terribly parochial, and the famous Saul Steinberg cartoon of a terra incognita beyond the Hudson aptly illustrates their provincialism.”
While it spends a lot of time looking back, the “Down Home” project also suggests a Jewish southern future that looks increasingly suburban and metropolitan. “Jews are finding opportunities in the hospitals, universities, research laboratories, and financial centers that have typified the development of the state’s post-industrial economy,” said Rogoff. “North Carolina is especially inviting for two-career couples where both are professionals. Newcomers who explore the local Jewish communities generally report finding warm welcomes, contrasting the neighborliness with what they found up north. You get a heckuva lot more house for the money, and the climate is a whole lot better.”
But one area where Rogoff admitted the North may have an edge is bagels. “There isn’t much aside from the ubiquitous Bruegger’s,” he said. “Cary [near Raleigh] and Chapel Hill have independent bagel makers, but a really good deli and Jewish-style bakery are opportunities waiting to happen. “
“Down Home” runs through March 6, 2011 at the North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, N.C.
Michael Kaminer is a frequent Forward contributor whose writing has also appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times.
The Palm Beach Post
Museum presents exhibit on Jewish life in NC
The Associated Press
Posted: 9:06 a.m. Monday, June 14, 2010
The North Carolina Museum of History is hosting an exhibit on 400 years of Jewish life in the state.
"Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina," on view beginning Monday, chronicles how Jews blended their traditions into Southern culture while at the same time maintaining their religion.
If You Go...
DOWN HOME: Exhibit on Jewish life at the North Carolina Museum of History, 5 E. Edenton St., Raleigh; http://ncmuseumofhistory.org. Free. Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sundays, noon-5 p.m. Exhibit on view through July 10, closed July 11-Aug. 1, reopens Aug. 2-March 7.
___
June 14, 2010 09:06 AM EDT
Copyright 2010, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
RALEIGHMany stories about Jewish history end sadly.
Not this one.
The N.C. Museum of History's exhibit of Jewish life in North Carolina is an immigrant tale with a happy ending: European families settle in the South, work hard, rear children, fight for educational opportunities and thrive.
While not a comprehensive history, the exhibit, "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina," is the first of its kind, a celebration of a minority culture coming of age alongside the state's overwhelming Protestant majority.
Although Jews settled across the South, and other Southern states, notably South Carolina and Georgia, have synagogues dating back far earlier, North Carolina's Jewish community is finally getting its due. A documentary on the state's Jews aired last week on public television, and a school curriculum has now been developed.
In three rooms on the first floor of the museum, the exhibit conveys the essentials of Jewish life, vignette-style, with life-sized models of a Jewish peddler, a Jewish five- and-dime, a Jewish kitchen.
At Sunday night's opening, hundreds of Jews from across the state came to hear Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio talk about the joys of museum-going. Later, they watched former Gov. Jim Hunt cut the ribbon to the exhibit and noshed on pita bread and hummus.
"It was not always assumed North Carolina had a Jewish history or that it was significant," said Leonard Rogoff, exhibit curator and the author of a companion book published by UNC Press. "But we found it, and it dates back to 1585."
The history on display here begins in the late 1800s, when East European Jews were lured South by the owner of a Baltimore dry goods warehouse who sent his agents to the docks to meet immigrant Jews and offer them work peddling his wares in emerging manufacturing towns in the South.
Many of those peddlers eventually made a home in North Carolina, trading their wagons for stores. Some started chains such as Family Dollar and Pic 'n Pay Shoes. A few, such as Cones of Greensboro or the Blumenthals of Charlotte, built factories and assembly plants for denim, radiators, rubber parts and household chemicals.
From faith to food
The exhibit, which officially opens today, is intended to teach non-Jews about their neighbors, and it does so with religious artifacts such as prayer books, yarmulkes and a shofar, or ram's horn. But its most engaging section may be a recreated Jewish kitchen with a 1950s refrigerator visitors can open and a pot of matzo ball soup on the stovetop. On the countertop, visitors can practice braiding challah bread.
Of course, Jewish life here was not always rosy. In the 1930s and 1940s, Duke University had a 3 percent Jewish quota. Fraternities and sororities were segregated along religious lines. Davidson College, a Presbyterian school, denied a faculty post to a political science professor because of his faith.
But in time, most of these constraints were eliminated. In 1988 and 1994, Jewish residents of North Carolina won Nobel prizes for work in the sciences, though neither Gertrude Elion nor Martin Rodbell was born here.
"It was a great place to grow up," said Muriel K. Offerman, 74, former secretary of revenue under Hunt, who was born in the Duplin County town of Wallace. "Our Jewishness was not a problem."
Offerman remembers inviting her non-Jewish girlfriends Saturday mornings to her synagogue and attending the Presbyterian League Sunday nights at their churches.
'The Carolina Israelite'
No exhibit of Jewish life in North Carolina would be complete without mention of writer and raconteur Harry Golden. A former stockbroker, Golden moved to Charlotte in 1941 and began publishing "The Carolina Israelite," which became a platform for his civil rights advocacy. He is probably best known for his "Vertical Negro Plan," in which he recommended eliminating chairs to solve the problem of segregation. (Southern whites didn't mind standing with blacks, but they didn't want to sit down alongside them.) The exhibit contains four video clips of Golden, who died in 1981.
"We wanted to make it accessible so people could relate to it on a personal level," said Henry Greene of Durham, president of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, which sponsored the exhibit.
Sue Sandlin-Plaehn, who is not Jewish but attended the opening, said the exhibit succeeded in doing that.
"The more you learn about other religious outlooks," she said, "the more you broaden your own soul."
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Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina Winter 2009 Newsletter
In this issue...
History Book Published page 1 President's message page 2 Did You Know? page 2 Exhibit Premier at the North Carolina Museum Of History page 3 Exhibit in Final Construction page 3 Membership form page 4
