Commentary: "The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South" by Eli N. Evans
Reading time: 30-40 minutes
Content Warning: Offensive language (censored)
In this great period of awakening, where each of us (to various degrees) are confronting our identities in new ways— reckoning with history, facing whiteness, exploring (or rejecting) anti-racism, attempting solidarity, failing often, falling short, but driven by the ticking clock— I opened Eli N. Evans’ book The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South with one question in mind: How does Jewishness intersect with whiteness in America (through the lens of the South)? And I deeply appreciate the complex answer I was given by reading the oft-overlooked history of Jews in the American South, the homeland of Christian evangelism, and battleground between the old and new.
I was born and raised in East Tennessee and though I am now Jewish, I did not convert until I left the South, so I don’t have personal anecdotes that back up or disprove Eli N. Evans’ perspective on being a southern Jew. Therefore, I will focus on my question, not my personal experiences.
Like many Jews, I attend discussion groups with other Jews, particularly elders, where we talk Torah and Talmud while making jokes and telling stories. It was at such a discussion group where I first encountered the question of how Jewishness in America intersects with whiteness. The rabbi asked if we felt Jews with white skin were white— meaning they carried the same white privilege and access as a white gentile. My answer was yes because all my life I’d been considered white, but I was a convert, so I listened to the elders first. And the elders surprised me.
Some of them said that they weren’t white because they weren’t treated as white growing up and at university. Growing up they were discriminated against on the basis of their religion and culture in a Christian-dominated nation. They were segregated from gentiles at university, meaning they ate separately, they joined separate fraternities, etc. Furthermore, they felt that facing antisemitism altered their whiteness; they may have access to some privileges that Black and Brown people don’t but they still faced oppression that white gentiles did not. Therefore, they weren’t white even though they had white skin.
While I knew the discrimination and violence they described was all too common, this answer still rubbed me the wrong way, because I felt it was an easy way to avoid confronting the anti-blackness and racism in the white Jewish community, particularly in America. And by separating ourselves from whiteness, we block history from our minds— history that shows how often white Jews benefited from whiteness in America at the expense of Black and Brown people. How can we stand in solidarity with Black and Brown people to fight for an anti-racist America if we don’t understand that history? Furthermore, as I listened to elders describe the discrimination they faced at university, I couldn’t help but think, Yeah, and you got to go to university. That’s a privilege that many people in this country don’t have the funds or the right skin color to access. Though my Jewish elders were discriminated against on-campus for being Jewish, they at least got to be there. This example showed me that discrimination is a spectrum.
Ultimately, the answer to my question that I discovered in Eli N. Evans’ book was this: White Jews in America perform a balancing act— benefiting from whiteness to protect their families and to achieve prosperity while also taking risks when the opportunity arises to support Black communities. It’s a messy answer; we fall into an awkward space whereby white Jews are ‘not quite allies’ but also ‘not quite enemies’ to Black and Brown folk. A truly dissatisfying spot to be in. But it’s a real answer and it leads to more difficult questions, like is that enough? Can’t we do more? Can’t we be more?
Let’s explore what this balancing act looked like for white Jews in the South.
As a Jew, I can’t help myself; I have to quote the opening of Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye says,
“A fiddler on the roof… sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka [which may as well be any small town in the South] you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof. Trying to scrape out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous? Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: TRADITION!”
Balancing is not just something Jews in America do. As a largely diasporic community, Jews are found all over the world spanning small pockets and massive communities. Because we are a scattered people, in most places we are a minority (except in the state of Israel, which I have strong feelings about but those thoughts won’t be the centerpiece of this commentary). All minority groups experience a version of the balancing act, as Tevye says, to “scrape out” a living without getting killed. Survival. And that’s all the balancing act is: a best-attempt at survival. It isn’t glamorous nor particularly idealistic; it’s getting through the day doing the best you can to do right and live to see another day. This is the reality for Jews in the American South.
What is the culture of the American South? In a few words, it’s evangelical Christianity, militarism, and hierarchy. But it’s also a culture of intimate personal relationships, mutual assistance, and a generational reverence for hard work. The South is musical and quiet. It’s a blend of legend and hard truths. It’s a battleground and a loving embrace. It’s a firm handshake with your right hand and a rock held in your left hand, ready for anything. It’s a land of contradictions that blur the line between truth and fiction. Romanticized versions of “Southern Heritage” and revisionist histories fill you up like a balloon with pride for your region’s survival and for the resourcefulness of your neighbors.
For Southern Jews and Gentiles alike, it’s about survival and feeling pride in that survival.
But survival at what cost? For instance, Abraham Seixas was Jewish and a “slave trader”, someone who directly profited off of the institution of the enslavement of African peoples. Though gentiles often claim that Jews only make money off of “the war” (whichever one we’re in) and don’t actually fight, by the lowest estimate 1,200 white Jews fought and died on the Confederate side of the Civil War; the highest estimate is around 10,000.
“All over the South, Jews rallied to the Confederacy as ardent Southerners; for now that fate had cast the gauntlet, they would fight for the glory of the Southern flag, as steeped in the honor and insult as the other white men they fought with.”
While the working men went off to fight for their employers’ and exploiters’ right to utilize unpaid labor by enslaved Africans, the plantation-owning aristocrats stood on the sidelines, out of immediate danger. And some of them were Jews.
"But the South would reward with its highest honors the generation of Sephardic Jews, by 1860 almost totally assimilated, made up of men who had married outside their faith and drifted away from Judaism until they blended smoothly into the slave-holding plantation life of the aristocracy-- men like Judah P. Benjamin (known as 'the brains of the Confederacy')..." who Evans later said was “cruelly” stalked by antisemitism “throughout his career, as if to mock his success with ancient hatreds.”
And, while reading Evans’ book, I noticed that he too seemed enamored with the romanticized history of the Confederacy, repeatedly telling of Southern Jewish families swelling with pride at their Confederate infantrymen and their legacies. I found myself asking in the margins: When will we start talking about the remorse and guilt we all feel about America’s history of enslavement? Not for quite a while, apparently…
Eli N. Evans’ family has a long and fascinating history as Jews in the South. His father, “Mutt” Evans, was mayor of Durham, NC in the 1950’s and he was a fairly popular, well-respected man. But during his mayoral campaign, Eli and his family witnessed how antisemitism reared its head, paired with strong anti-blackness.
Firstly, when Evans announced he was running for mayor, the Jewish community of Durham came to him, begging him not to run, fearful of how the whites in town would react.
“They feared that if anything happened in the city, the whites would blame the Jews and that a divisive campaign might sink into an antisemitic slugfest that could cause racial unrest, threats to their business, and ugly incidents.”
The Jews who came to Evans no doubt knew that, should he run, the white gentiles would conjure up again the fear of “the New York Jews” working through Evans AND the entire Durham Jewish community towards world domination. To southern gentiles, the imaginary concept of “the New York Jews” represents money, greed, other-ness, and the antisemitic trope of “Jewish domination”. This is also tied to southern resentments of the North (Yanks), thus fear of domination isn’t just about Jews; it’s about any “outsider” coming in and telling them how to do things.
Evans stuck it out, believing that he could combat antisemitism through, “openness and pride”. But it got worse.
Prior to running for mayor, Evans’ record shows that he took an active interest in the well-being of the Black communities of Durham.
Evans had, "helped build the Negro hospital and his store has been the only place where Negroes downtown can get something to eat or use the restroom... he had been the first white ever to go into the Negro community to sit and eat with several hundred Negroes at their kick-off chicken dinner, a symbolic act in a Southern town in the 1940's."
Because of this record, the Black precincts supported his candidacy, which got the racists talking.
"As election day approached, The Public Appeal, a small local paper with a workingman's readership and run by vitriolic 'Wimpy' Jones, published the fake Protocols of Zion, under a headline that suggested Durham was becoming part of a Jewish plot for world domination."
If you don’t know what the Protocols of Zion are, they were a fabricated antisemitic text purporting a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax, which was shown to be plagiarized from several earlier sources, was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. The Protocols made it to America thanks to the one and only Henry Ford (which is why I don’t buy Ford vehicles.)
According to Facing History and Ourselves,
“Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company brought the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the United States. Between 1920 and 1927, his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, translated the document into English and printed it along with a series of articles accusing the Jews of using communism, banking, unions, gambling, even jazz music to weaken the American people and their culture. The entire series of articles was later published as a book, which sold over a half-million copies in the United States and was translated into sixteen languages, including German. Hitler read the book and quoted it often. As a result of a lawsuit, Ford publicly apologized for spreading a lie. But the damage was already done.”
The Public Appeal kept going on Evans, specifically linking him with communism and utilizing anti-Black rhetoric to frighten white voters away. They posted ads saying,
“'Who will choose your city servants? The Political Bosses, the Negro Bloc, or... YOU!' and 'What has Evans promised the Negro bloc?’”
Evans won his mayoral campaign without witnessing any violence to himself or his family. The Durham community did not lash out at his victory and he was able to serve honorably for six terms (1951-1963), which was a record at the time.
Does this indicate that Evans was able to successfully walk that tightrope?— balancing between “presentable” whiteness and supporting other historically-oppressed communities? His son, Eli N. Evans, leads us to believe that the answer is yes and I’m inclined to believe him.
However, it’s important to note here that this personal anecdote does not necessarily represent each and every Jew in the South. Frequently, and I know because I’ve done it before too, white people will look back in history and cherry-pick instances where a family member acted in an anti-racist manner, so to alleviate guilt at our participation in White Supremacy. Even for those of us who hold tight to numerous such examples, those individual acts do not absolve us of the legacy of racism.
Like in the example of his father’s campaign, Evans emphasizes the role that “foreign-ness” plays on discrimination that the broad Jewish community faces in the South,
"The Jews were, first of all, white, or at least men who could pass for white. But they would always be outsiders, for somewhere in the roots of populism and fundamentalism lurked a foreboding distrust of the foreigner, anyone who was not a Southerner and not Christian and therefore alien to the sameness all around."
Southern Jews felt this distrust and adapted accordingly,
“The Southerners were not men to be challenged but men to avoid; only to sell to, never to confront.”
We see the balancing act at work here, which spells out clearly the pattern of Jewishness and whiteness in the South: Benefit from the privilege of selling to white gentiles, but don’t challenge them. Interact only when necessary.
“They think the Jews of the South are nothing, and automatically assume you are a George Wallace and worse. The truth is that the Jews of Charleston, in their hearts, are on the liberal side of things. But most won’t say anything because it’s bad business.”
I have learned from Black and Brown women over the last two years that having the option to not say anything about racism is a privilege that non-white people aren’t granted. White people can opt-in and opt-out of facing the consequences of white supremacy because we benefit more from it. Holding “the liberal side of things” in our hearts but not acting upon them is still a legacy of complicity that all white people are tasked to face. But white Jews, unlike white gentiles, do face consequences of white supremacy, because antisemitism is a core tenet of that ideology. But, through complicit silence and proximity to whiteness, if white Jews can side skirt antisemitism well enough, they can enjoy the view from the ivory tower.
Economic relationships are important in this conversation— not only the economic relationship between Jews and white gentiles but also between Jews and Black gentiles. To understand this, let’s go back in history a bit.
Why did Jews immigrate to America? Over the centuries there were a number of causes as Evans explains,
"The German Jews flooded into America in the mid-nineteenth century when the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat in 1815 produced a succession of laws removing Jewish civil liberties in the German states-- in Bavaria, laws limiting the number of Jews in the professions and even the number of marriages; in Wurttemberg, laws restricting the ownership and sale of land to Jews. Unemployment and overpopulation cast an economic pall over Europe, and not only the Jews but the Italians, Irish, English, and Dutch were emigrating as well; when anti-Jewish riots occurred across Bohemia, and republican uprisings against Prussian draft policies failed in 1848, the Jews saw little choice and whole towns of them fled to America."
But why America?
Because America had been by that point branded the land of opportunity (so long as you weren’t Indigenous). The German Jews were said to have chosen America because of “the promise of opportunity” and were “attracted to the South because it seemed provincial, much like the places they had left-- farm country and simple, where a man with little capital could work hard and find a place.”
While immigrants are not responsible for the decisions their new nation made prior to their arrival, they still stand on, live on, work on, and profit off of stolen land just like the rest of us who are not native to the Americas. Inaction is complicity. It sounds harsh, perhaps; but it isn’t to say that those immigrants were awful people who were intentionally harming others. The harm that was caused unintentionally, however, is still harm. As we’ve said, this is a balancing act whereby white Jews are not quite allies but not quite enemies.
The first and only group of Jews to arrive in the South as a group came to Savannah, Georgia in 1733 when Colonel James Ogelthorpe conceived a plan for a colony in Georgia for the English poor. After the Spanish Inquisition scattered Jews all over the world, there were many Jewish immigrants looking for a new home where they could put down roots, sustain a family, and live peacefully.
"For most people, conditioned to look to New York City as the center of Jewish life in America, it will come as a shock to find that in 1800, Charleston, South Carolina, had the largest Jewish community in America."
What brought Jews to Charleston? In 1800, Charleston was the cultural center of America. As a port city, Charleston was a bustling town— an ideal home for those looking to establish businesses or work as merchants. In the early 1820’s, Charleston was also the center of the Reform Jewish Movement in America. Remarkably, it was the first community in the modern world to allow Jews to vote.
"Charleston early earned a reputation among Jews as a tolerant place where they could be free to worship, trade, own land, leave property by will, and appear as witnesses."
Jewish and gentile immigrants to the U.S alike see land ownership as their ticket to stability and good health for their families. But the truth remains that it’s on stolen land. We’re all complicit in that.
From the port cities, Jews spread throughout the South in search of prosperity. How did they fare? Fairly well! Some filled an otherwise unmet need in their communities, where there were few if any merchants and craftsmen.
"The immigrant Jew saw the gap, not because anybody told them but because it was there-- no merchants or tailors or cobblers between the genteel aristocrats and the groveling poor whites, and surely no one to sell or trade to the few freemen and the slaves whatever little things they could afford."
Despite the condescending tone of that sentence, the economic role adopted by Southern Jews— to fill in a seemingly middle-class gap in society— still relies on the existence of a lower class and their typically underpaid labor. (Middle-class in this context is not to imply that Jewish first and second-generation immigrants were well-off or comfortable or had it easy. Middle-class in this case should be taken literally as a space in-between the aristocrats and the poor.)
Yet, there is still something to be said about the fact that Jewish businesses in Southern cities and large towns were typically the few who served non-white customers. The symbolic statement made by those Jewish merchants had an impact; white people noticed. However, when profit is in any way involved, such acts become slightly suspicious. Was the motive to tikkun olam— repair the world— or was the motive to make money off of Black people? Maybe it was both. I honestly don’t know the answer, because I’m sure it varied from business to business. This is a clear example of white Jews’ awkward position with regard to anti-racism that we described earlier: not quite allies, but not quite enemies either.
However, none of this is to say that just because America was seen as a land of opportunity doesn’t mean American Jews were met with open arms.
There are a number of really fucked up colloquialisms that pair anti-blackness and antisemitism, like: (I’ve censored some of the language below)
“You look sharp as a Jew salesman at a (n-word) picnic.”
“(N-words) love to ride around like a Jew in a Cadillac.”
“A Jew is just a (n-word) turned inside out.”
Even when arms were open, it was normally disguising antisemitism in its most common form in America: Christian evangelism. Jews in the South are the constant targets of conversion efforts by fundamentalist Christians— both today and from the beginning.
In 1633, John Locke was asked to draft a constitution for the new colony of the Carolinas and, in it, we see evidence of one of the reasons why Christians allow the presence of Jews and other “heathens” nearby.
“Although the constitutions recognized the Church of England as the official faith of the colony, Locke also inserted that 'Jews, Heathens,' and others should have a chance to acquaint themselves with 'the purity of the Christian religion' and 'by good usage and persuasion... be won over to embrace... the truth.’”
But the full explanation of why Jews are kept around is quite complex. We’re the Chosen People, the link to the Patriarchs and early Christianity. But we’re also examples of heathens who don’t follow the cross and who will never see salvation. And we are key to the Second Coming. We can be highly respected to the degree that fundamentalists culturally appropriate rituals or we can be angrily turned upon as recipients of violence, like the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018.
During Eli Evans’ childhood and adolescence in the 1950’s and 1960’s, he often had to cleverly negotiate interactions with Christians to avoid starting a whole argument about how “Jews killed Jesus,” or if Jews have a Jesus equivalent, or getting dragged into a conversion effort. He describes what a University of Alabama coed told him about why gentile girls go out with Jewish boys,
“At some point in their freshman year, the fundamentalist girls used to like to date a Jewish guy because he was sure to ask a lot of questions she couldn’t handle. She was usually at the point where she wanted to rebel anyway, and he was her liberator. And since there was a premium on converting a Hebrew, she could rationalize it as a missionary opportunity.”
If you fall during the balancing act, what happens? If you can’t navigate whiteness well enough, you could lose your business or even your life. On the other hand, is assimilation. And being a diasporic community, assimilation is a constant factor— a fear and a goal at the same time.
"That surely was the other option: to disappear, be swallowed up in the terrain of the Southern mind and soul, to change names and identities, marry their women, and become southern white men, so the next generation would be indistinguishable from the Southerners and no child would suffer the shame of his grandfathers."
Benjamin Kaplan in The Eternal Stranger said that,
“‘… assimilation… is a gradual process because Judaism is multiple in ingredients, and its elements are dropped singly over a time span ranging from years to generations.’ He pointed to a process he called ‘de-Judaization’ in the early settlers— the ‘work rhythm’ of the American week which caused the storeowners to give up on the Sabbath; the impossibility of keeping a strictly kosher home; the social mobility into the high-status class of the community which demanded a high degree of conformity to class standards, which in turn required discarding Judaism.”
The fear of assimilation is losing one’s unique culture and way of life. But the benefits of assimilation are additional layers of protection and a sense of belonging. Which is “right” is always up for debate in the Jewish community all over the world.
"As each wave of immigration relaxed its commitments to Jewish traditions in the face of demands and temptation in the new country, each successive wave viewed its forerunners as lesser men, traitors to their pact with God."
And with that assimilation came benefits: not just acceptance but wealth— good ole’ American wealth, made by stealing and exploiting land through the labor of Black and Brown people. The “German Jews” conformed to aristocratic, white culture in a number of ways. For example,
"The German Jew soon would grasp the Southerner's penchant for genealogy, and fancifully falsify his roots and his pedigree just as the aristocrats had done."
For the white Jews who mimicked the wealthy, aristocratic, white, gentiles around them, they gained access to wealth, which came at a high price in human life. Although these are not the majority of Jews in the South, their legacy stands alongside Jews who empower gentrification and evict Black and Brown residents today— it is the same thread. It is a death business.
The bottom line is that white Jews in America face discrimination and some of the consequences of white supremacy, yet, at the same time, benefit economically from having white skin, which hinges on the exploitation of non-white people. There were plenty of white Jewish individuals who operated semi-integrated businesses, who spent time with Black people in day-to-day life, who fought against slavery, and who eventually marched with Martin Luther King Jr. But, in each example, there are clear boundary lines of the balancing act: those business owners who served Black customers did so at specific times of day, certain days of the week, and perhaps mainly because it was economically good business; those like Mayor “Mutt” Evans who went into the Black precincts and spent time with Black voters, there was a “humanitarian” element, yes, but what politician doesn’t use minority communities for votes? (The Democratic party relies on Black voters to this day, yet rarely offer tangibles); those who fought on the Union side were not always anti-slavery or pro-Black for that matter; and many of those who eventually marched with MLK today think that BLM is “too violent” despite watching the news about Black men and women getting shot and killed by police officers regularly. There’s a line; white Jews will support you unless it’s likely to rile up white gentiles and spur antisemitism and unless it’s bad for business.
But there could be a new future on the horizon. As white, American Jews confront our history and our role in oppression, we discover pathways to build new relationships with the historically oppressed communities around us— relationships that can be liberatory for all. While we practice anti-racism, Black and Brown people can learn about antisemitism to better recognize it and stop it in their own communities. Working together is the only way. And it isn’t until Black women are free, that the rest of us are free too. The solution to antisemitism lies in the solution to racism, to homophobia, to xenophobia, to Islamophobia, to white supremacy, to capitalism, and to climate change. Like those who came before us, it’s about survival, because if we don’t address those problems, then we won’t survive.
It’s all connected.
So when do we really start acting like it?