The Temple Bombing

by Greene, Melissa Fay

• ISBN13: 9780306815188
• ISBN10: 0306815184
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-29
• Publisher: Da Capo Press

Summary

At 3:37 on Sunday morning, October 12, 1958, a bundle of dynamite blew out the side wall of the Temple, Atlanta's oldest and grandest synagogue. The South was in the grip of a vast backlash against the Supreme Court's order to desegregate the schools; a "Confederate underground" of White Citizens Councils, Ku Klux Klan Klaverns, and armed cadres of neo-Nazis plotted to "retake" America. When a liberal rabbi from Pittsburgh, Jacob Rothschild, took the helm of the Temple and began to speak out on civil rights, his congregants begged him to be careful.

Author Biography

Melissa Fay Greene is an award-winning author and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, and Newsweek. She is also the author of Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster and the forthcoming There Is No Me Without You (Bloomsbury Press). She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(14)
PART I
1. A Cracker Camelot	15	(18)
2. The White Man's War	33	(19)
3. The Most Beloved Jew Next to Jesus	52	(26)
4. The Invisible Checkerboard	78	(23)
5. "Dear Rabbi: My Son Melvin..."	101	(25)
6. The Yiddish Capital of the South	126	(21)
7. Black Monday	147	(19)
8. No Middle Ground	166	(27)
9. Brotherhood Night	193	(12)
10. Against the Chosen and Circumcised Elite	205	(32)
PART II
11. When the Wolves of Hate Are Loosed	237	(32)
12. "If It's the Bombing You're Interested In, I Don't Know Anything About It"	269	(19)
13. "The Jewish Race Is Not on Trial in This Case"	288	(35)
14. "I Am One of Them That Bombed Your Temple"	323	(51)
15. "Oratory Is Not Enough"	374	(27)
16. The Rabbi's Wife Did It	401	(13)
17. The Table of Brotherhood	414	(12)
18. "I Don't Like Being Told It's Not My Fight"	426	(11)
Notes	437	(34)
Bibliography	471	(8)
Index	479	(22)
Acknowledgments	501