Upon the occasion of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America, it is opportune to recall the scholarship that helps us better understand the origins and evolution of Southern Jewish history over a span of three and one-half centuries.
Certainly no account of the Jewish communities of the South would be complete without Eli Evans’ “The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South,” first published in 1973 and now reissued by the University of North Carolina Press (the oldest university press in the South) with a new introduction, Evans family photos and a portrait gallery of notable Jewish figures in Southern history.
The personal history in the subtitle is a key to understanding the earlier volume, which focused on the larger issues of Jewish life through the eyes of a teenage boy raised in Durham, N.C.
Evans, a Yale-trained lawyer and for the last 25 years one of the deans of American philanthropy as the longtime CEO of the Charles Revson Foundation, provides insights about growing up in the South based on his experiences and two years of interviews conducted as part of a 7,000-mile odyssey throughout the South. “The Provincials” blends autobiography with history and journalism to give us an objective but nostalgic account of the rhythms and heartbeat of Southern life.
His father, EJ Evans, was one of the first Jewish mayors in the South. In that capacity, Mayor Evans led Durham through key years in the civil rights crusade from 1951 to 1962. He brokered racial peace (for example, he negotiated the first integrated lunch counter in Durham). Unlike so many other Southern cities, Durham never “exploded.” Eli Evans’ mother was politically active as well, as a founder of Hadassah and a leading Zionist.
Perhaps no theme runs through the narrative more insistently than the importance of religious liberty in the South, a bedrock value of American democracy and one of the fundamental tests of the nation’s commitment to the Bill of Rights. Yet the Jewish standing and achievements in the South seem all the more remarkable when one considers the overwhelming Christian religious presence that dominates Southern culture.
The experience of growing up in the Bible Belt leads Evans to the secret of Jewish success: Jews never became insular within the majority culture. Instead, Southern Jews have always been ardent supporters of and participants in civic life. They run for office, contribute financially to community causes, and volunteer time and talent for civic purpose. They understood, as Evans writes, “that a better community for everyone was a better community for Jews.”
The history of Southern Jewry is a singular scholarly contribution by Evans. Until this book appeared in 1973, there was no general account of comparable substance, even though the American Jewish community was first established in the South, in Charleston, S.C., which had the largest Jewish population in America in 1800. The local government was the first in the New World to grant Jews the ballot and the rights to own land, run for office and join the militia.
What of anti-Semitism, the Klan and racism? Evans tells how “the story of race has affected [him] powerfully,” but the focus is on how the Jews prospered despite their religious differences and the spasms of violence and demagoguery that mar Southern history. As Evans explains, America is not a Christian nation and “religious liberty is in the DNA of the American Dream.” He attributes this both to the First Amendment as well as to Southern “reverence for Jews, the chosen people with a Biblical dimension to them.”
The Jewish South has itself grown dramatically in recent decades, from 382,000 in 1970 to 1.2 million today. Atlanta is one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the United States: In 1969 it had three congregations and now boasts 37. Other growth areas in the South include Durham/Chapel Hill/Raleigh, N.C.; and Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando, Fla.
“The Provincials” is indispensable to understanding the place where “Jews in the South” became “Southern Jews” and then “Jewish Southerners.” To paraphrase Arthur Miller, Evans writes about “how Jews made of the American South a home.”
“The Provincials: a Personal History of Jews in the South,” by Eli Evans (393 pages, University of North Carolina Press, $21.95).