The Quiet Voices

by Bauman, Mark K.; Kalin, Berkley

• ISBN13: 9780817308926
• ISBN10: 081730892X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

These wide-ranging essays reveal the various roles played by southern rabbis in the struggle for black civil rights since Reconstruction. The study of black-Jewish relations has become a hotbed of controversy, especially with regard to the role played by Jewish leaders during the Civil Rights movement. Did these leaders play a pivotal role, or did many of them, especially in the South, succumb to societal pressure and strive to be accepted rather than risk being persecuted? If some of these leaders did choose a quieter path, were their reasons valid? And were their methods successful? The contributors in this volume explore the motivations and subsequent behavior of rabbis in a variety of southern environments both before and during the civil rights struggle. Their research demonstrates that most southern rabbis indeed faced pressures not experienced in the North and felt the need to balance these countervailing forces to achieve their moral imperative. Individually, each essay offers a glimpse into both the private and public difficulties these rabbis faced in their struggle to achieve good. Collectively, the essays provide an unparalleled picture of Jewish leadership during the civil rights era.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(20)
Mark K. Bauman
PART I: Genesis	21	(46)
Rabbi Max Heller, Zionism, and the "Negro Question": New Orleans, 1891-1911	21	(18)
Bobbie S. Malone
Morris Newfield, Alabama, and Blacks, 1895-1940	39	(11)
Mark Cowett
A Plea for Tolerance: Fineshriber in Memphis	50	(17)
Berkley Kalin
PART II: The Heyday	67	(194)
"Hamans" and "Torquemadas": Southern and Northern Jewish Responses to the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1965	67	(28)
Marc Dollinger
Civil and Social Rights Efforts of Arkansas Jewry	95	(26)
Carolyn Gray LeMaster
Rabbi Sidney Wolf: Harmonizing in Texas	121	(14)
Hollace Ava Weiner
Rabbi David Jacobson and the Integration of San Antonio	135	(17)
Karl Preuss
The Prophetic Voice: Rabbi James A. Wax	152	(16)
Patricia M. LaPointe
Rabbi Grafman and Birmingham's Civil Rights Era	168	(22)
Terry Barr
Divided Together: Jews and African Americans in Durham, North Carolina	190	(23)
Leonard Rogoff
Big Struggle in a Small Town: Charles Mantinband of Hattiesburg, Mississippi	213	(17)
Clive Webb
What Price Amos? Perry Nussbaum's Career in Jackson, Mississippi	230	(31)
Gary Phillip Zola
PART III: Memoirs	261	(64)
Jacob M. Rothschild: His Legacy Twenty Years After	261	(25)
Janice Rothschild Blumberg
The Year They Closed the School: The Norfolk Story	286	(25)
Malcolm Stern
A Personal Memoir	311	(14)
Myron Berman
PART IV: Afterword "Then and Now": Southern Rabbis and Civil Rights	325	(14)
Micah D. Greenstein
Howard Greenstein
Notes	339	(84)
Contributors	423	(6)
Index	429