A Jewish Christmas Tradition

[Charles]

Originally Posted by cncracer

I hope the trend has changed; I was a child in the 50’s and 60’s. I returned from school and the service after Viet Nam with a lack of tolerance for prejudice, and still found the South filled with it. Examples abounded, they consisted of business clubs (called “City Clubs” in many larger cities) which were closed to non christians and non whites, Country Clubs were closed well into the 90’s. I personally stopped doing business with agents who supported any organization I saw in a negative light, and although it might not have changed their views, it did let me feel better about myself.

They (still) have (had) these in more cosmopolitan communities too. Some elite private clubs in Los Angeles still have an unspoken ban on Jews and blacks no matter how rich and powerful they are. Only WASPs need apply. The LA Country Club, The California Club, and The Jonathan Club are most notorious.

While it isn't a hard line, and not absolute, there has always been a discreet social divide among LA's moneyed class: the downtown business establishment (WASP) and Hollywood (Jewish). As a result Jews established their own clubs such as Hillcrest and Brentwood Country Clubs, among others. That's where you might find entertainment industry types.

[Mawoods]

I spent a few years of my childhood in small town south (C0lumbus, GA) and that was my Mom's hometown. I remember having really good Jewish friends and going to synogogue with them even though my father was a minister. There was and I believe still is a wonderful community there of very prominent Jewish civic leaders, very involved in the life of the town. I don't remember them as being ostracized although I know that there are always individuals who do such things anywhere, not just the south.

Several years ago, my daughter married a wonderful young Jewish man from Australia, whose parents are Holocoust survivors. We always want them to feel accepted and our children attend services at both. When his parents are here I also prepare special stuff for them. I just hope and pray that one day we will all be able to accept one another in our society. Would be a wonderful day wouldn't it?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Mawoods

I just hope and pray that one day we will all be able to accept one another in our society. Would be a wonderful day wouldn't it?

As long as someone says "I'm [fill in the blank]ish", there will be someone else who hates them (probably because they were raised that way).


Brainwashed Children Call for Genocide of Jews

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by cornutt

When I was in college in the early '80s, I don't know that there was any place in Huntsville to get bagels. The first time I saw one was after I moved to Ft. Lauderdale in '83.

I don't think bagels became "mainstream" or even "out of New York" until later in the 80s (Ft. Lauderdale even then had a LOT of NYC retirees and transplants and heavily Jewish even then, so it might be an exception, more later in this post).

I am from the NYC area and went to college just 150 miles from home in the Albany, NY area from 1985-89 and when Bruegger's Bagels (now a national chain but was first founded in that area at that time), people there thought it was something completely new and different, even with NY City just 3 hours to the south.

Originally Posted by cncracer

I hope the trend has changed; I was a child in the 50’s and 60’s. I returned from school and the service after Viet Nam with a lack of tolerance for prejudice, and still found the South filled with it. Examples abounded, they consisted of business clubs (called “City Clubs” in many larger cities) which were closed to non christians and non whites, Country Clubs were closed well into the 90’s. I personally stopped doing business with agents who supported any organization I saw in a negative light, and although it might not have changed their views, it did let me feel better about myself.

I have to admit, I'm never on this board (usually in the NY and CT boards and some of the "General" boards) but this thread caught my eye and exposed a prejudice (or more accurately bias) of my own. As a Jew from the north, I assumed Jews were completely nonexistant in a place like Huntsville. Yes, I know there are SOME Jews in the South, but I assumed they were recent economic transplants to places like Raleigh or Virginia or Texas or Atlanta where a lot of "Yankees" have gone (or rare exceptions like the characters in "Driving Miss Daisy", and then, again only in major cities like Houston or New Orleans or Atlanta). It was very surprising to see the kinds of responses here and (based on some responses) that there actually are Jews in places like Huntsville.

I did have a lot of relatives in FL as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (mostly though in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area and all "transplants", thus my point above), and every couple of years we'd drive down to them, and the way my dad described Southerners (mainly based on his own experience when he was in the military decades earlier) I thought once we passed DC we'd have to be very quiet and fearful, and (although there was nothing obvious about our "look" or identity, our last name is a common Jewish last name but a very "simple" name that one who never heard it before might think is "anything", and no it's not "Cohen" before you ask) was very surprised to see how friendly everyone was (especially one time when our car got a flat tire after leaving our motel despite the NY plates on our car). Now this doesn't mean it really was completely like this (I remember one time stopping to eat in SC back then and noticing some "Archie comic books" for sale that didn't look like the "normal" Archie comics and it turned out they were special "Christian" Archie comics, which felt a tiny bit unnerving), but just a memory I wanted to share. We used to stay at the famed "South of the Border" comple at lot halfway there for the night, didn't know until I was an adult that the place was owned/run by a southern Jewish family!

Bias can go either way.......

[Mawoods]

I will try to find the web site and a book that I shared with our daughter's inlaws several years ago. I believe the book and film were called Shalom Ya'll. The web site is dedicated to Jewish life in the South. There is even unique southern Jewish food. What is sad is that there were many very small towns across the south with temples. As people moved away - both gentile and Jewish, they closed up. There is a very rich southern Jewish history if you dig a little. The Jews who came to my hometown on Columbus, GA came from Russia primarily and started off as shopkeepers in the late 1800s. Here in Huntsville, the synagoge is very beautiful in the historic district and designed by a famous architect in AL. It was built in the 1800s ( can't remember exactly).