The black-and-white photograph depicts a sukkah much like any other open-aired booth one would see on Sukkot. But this one’s different.
This sukkah is decorated not with palm fronds but with a cloud bank of cotton bolls.
This is a sukkah of the American South.
That image, and 19 equally striking others, are now on display at San Francisco’s Brandeis Hillel Day School in an exhibit titled “Bagels & Grits: Exploring Jewish Life in the Deep South.”
The photos illuminate a lesser-known tale of the Jewish American experience — that of the Southern Jews.
Photographer Bill Aron spent the better part of 14 years criss-crossing Dixie with his cameras, following the trail of Jews who migrated south during the course of American history.
They settled in towns and cities — wherever they could make a living — built their synagogues, raised their children and, over time, wove themselves into the fabric of their adopted communities.
What Aron found, however, was a community in decline. Though many Jews continue to live all across the Southern states, most have migrated to bigger cities, such as Atlanta; Memphis, Tenn.; and Savannah, Ga.
The once-thriving small-town Jewish communities have largely disappeared, their synagogues abandoned, their untended cemeteries grown mossy.
Still, Aron’s work artfully captures their unique fusion of Southern culture and Jewish tradition.
The exhibit, which is subsidized by the Helen and Sanford Diller Supporting Foundation under the aegis of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, is part of Brandeis Hillel’s 40th anniversary, says Rabbi Henry Shreibman, the school’s head. “It was mounted as part of the school’s commitment to a diverse, pluralistic and egalitarian vision of educational community. The ‘Bagels & Grits’ exhibit exemplifies this diversity.”
Among other memorable images in the exhibit: a dinner table adorned with a Shabbat meal, candles and challah beside a window looking out on a field of blooming cotton; a Torah scroll cradled by two Jewish Mississippians, one of them a dead ringer for the prototypical Southern “bubba,” complete with burly moustache and U.S. Postal Service cap; a holy ark festooned with wisteria.
“I’m very interested in the plurality of Judaism,” says Aron. “There’s more than one way to be Jewish.”
That sentiment is echoed by exhibit curator Vicki Reikes Fox. “Jews came to the South as peddlers and merchants as early as the late 1700s,” she says. “Where they could find business they’d build a store and settle down. By the 1880s, there was a Jewish community in almost every town.”
One of the nation’s leading experts on Southern Jewry, Fox compiled the texts that accompany each photograph on display. She was the natural choice for the job, having co-founded the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, Miss., and herself a native of Hattiesburg, Miss.
She also teamed up with Aron on the book “Shalom Y’All,” a comprehensive collection of photos and texts published last fall. All the prints on display at Brandeis Hillel are included in the bound volume.
That’s where Fox’s museum comes in. Starting in the 1970s, she and Southern Jewish community leader Macy B. Hart collected Torah scrolls, ner tamid sculptures, arks and other Judaic artifacts from disbanded congregations across the region, and put them on display at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, which opened its doors in 1989.
Under that museum’s auspices, Aron launched his photography project.
It turned into a labor of love for Aron, whose work has been displayed in such prestigious galleries as the Museum of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum in New York, the Chicago Art Institute, the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv.
“Most of the people I met learned early on that ‘Sh’ma Yisrael’ was for home and synagogue, and ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’ is for everywhere else,” says Aron of Jews in the overwhelming evangelical Christian South.
Adds Fox, “Being Jewish in the Bible Belt meant someone was always telling you that you weren’t saved. But in the South, more Jews are members of congregations than anywhere else because Christians go to church and Jews go to shul. It’s a way of being Southern.”
Fox still has a fondness for Southern Jewish cooking. Among her favorite recipes: praline hamantashen; eggs, lox and grits; pecan pie; and corned beef.
However, she also remembers a darker side of Southern history, one stained by racism and intolerance.
“Jews do have more of a sensitivity toward groups who don’t have freedom,” she says. “[Southern Jews] empathized with blacks, but because their livelihood depended on getting along with everyone, they were usually not among the protesters during the civil rights movement. They were involved more quietly, but they needed to protect their position in society.”
Despite changing demographics, Jews continue to leave their mark on Southern life. “Southern Jews take tremendous pride in Southern culture,” notes Fox, “from the food, to the manners, architecture and flowers. Our mission with this project was to tell the world about us.”