Customer Reviews

The Jew Store: A Family Memoir

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"For a real bargain, while you're making a living, you should also make a life." That was Aaron Bronson's motto. Well, Russian Jewish immigrant Bronson did both, "in spades," as he would say. His daughter, Stella Suberman, has now written a book, and she's done it "in spades."

This warm memoir of her family's experiences as the first Jews to live in Concordia, Tennessee, is vibrant with wit and cogent with commentary about 1920s life in a small Southern town.

Rather than a pejorative title, Ms. Suberman says "the Jew store" is what people really called such shops, businesses owned by Jews who catered to farmhands, share croppers, and factory hands, offering them inexpensive clothes, piece goods, and linens. "They didn't know about political correctness in those days," she said, "that is just what it was called."

Seeing opportunity in the South, Aaron Bronson, his wife, Reba, and their two children, Joey and Miriam (Stella was not yet born) set out from New York City to open a dry goods store. Upon arriving in Concordia, population 5,381, the family was taken in by voluble, independent Miss Brookie.

Reba, who came with a mood that was "like a thing on her chest," was ill-at-ease, fearing the Ku Klux Klan, and people who believed Jews had horns on their heads. Later, she faced what she considered to be an even greater terror: Joey might not have a bar mitzvah and Miriam might be in love with a Gentile.

On the other hand, Aaron took to the town immediately and opened "Bronson's Low-Priced Store," so identified by gilt lettering on the windows. His elation at having his own business knew no bounds; Reba described him as "Flying with the birdies."

Aaron's shop flourished, as did he, becoming the first to hire a black as a salesperson. In years to come, he would make invaluable contributions to his Depression wracked community.

Detente preceded affection as the townsfolk overcame their initial skepticism of Jewish people and grew to view the Bronson family as neighbors and friends. Miss Brookie gave Miriam piano lessons and attempted to enlist Reba in a battle to do away with child labor in the local shoe factory.

Nonetheless, In 1933 Reba held sway and, although Aaron thought of Concordia as home, he agreed to take their three children and return to New York City, where he would open a garage and each child would eventually marry within the Jewish faith.

Stella Suberman has turned a poignant family remembrance into a rich, sometimes funny, always touching story. In addition, she has shed light on a little known facet of Jewish/American history.

This jewel of a book richly deserves five stars. The author's depiction of a Jewish family living in a small town in Tennessee in the 1920s is beautifully written. Especially impressive is the way the author wrote about anti-semitism without exploiting the issue for dramatic effect. (Compare this memoir, set in the 1920s, with moronic modern flicks like "School Ties" in which students at a boarding school in the 1950s shout at a Jewish student, "We hate you because you're Jewish." Give me a break.)

Just as the author's family's Jewishness is dealt with subtly, so are the townspeople drawn: all of them seem genuine, not stereotyped. So restrained is the author, yet so talented, that a low-key but powerful scene toward the end of the book sneaked up on me: I found that I had tears running down my face as I read. I miss the townspeople and the author's family. I wish I could go back in time and drive to that town and find all of them still there.

This memoir is far superior to the overrated Angela's Ashes; The Jew Store is the book that should have won the Pulitzer Prize.

The life of the Bronson's in a typical 1920's midsouth rural town is not so different than what many baby boomers experienced as Gentiles in middle America in the 1950's. As I read I could hear in my mind's eye the rhetoric of fear, disapproval and sometimes hate that the good Christians of our town reflected in their covert and even overt behaviors regarding Jews, Blacks, Asians and yes, Catholics. It is not to different than what we hear Southern Baptist Ministers saying about Muslims after 9/11. Suberman's character development of the towns people with which he endured is classically detailed. She brought Ms. Brookie to life for me. I was immediately able to identify the Ms. Brookie in our town. Besides great characters the book taught me a great deal about the phenomenom of a [Jewish] Store. My family routinely shopped in them because they had what farm families needed at the price they could afford. I just didn't know that is what they were. Although most have not survived this midwest rural city of 160,000 folks still have a few and I still shop in them because they still have what I want at the best price. towns. Thank you Ms. Superman for a good read, some nostalgia and a new awareness of the ignorance of many who sit in our town's church pews every Sunday.

I read "The Jew Store" after seeing author Stella Suberman on Booktv. I was impressed with her, as she is young looking and quick thinking into her ninth decade.

  Her story relates an unusual childhood, growing up in a small Tennessee town in the 20s and 30s where her immigrant parents ran a dry-goods business that catered to the lower income residents. They were the only Jewish residents, occupying a unique niche in the life of the area. Her sunny-natured, optimistic father flourished there, becoming southern in speech and outlook. The adjustment was harder for her sensitive, traditional mother. For Stella and her older sister and brother, there was no question of adjustment, as life in Tennessee was the only life they knew, and they were generally accepted and able to take root.

Suberman is a wonderful writer, as one might expect for a "retired editor" of many years experience. Her style is vividly descriptive, with a perfect balance of the characters' inward and outward lives. "The Jew Store" is a joy to read. Suberman's book deserves the highest recommendation and will appeal to readers of all ages.

I don't usually take book recommendations, even from friends, so I want to thank Phil for "foisting" this book on me -- I am very glad I took his word for it this time. This book really took me by surprise; as both history and memoir, this is definitely NOT my usual "type."

Reading almost like a novel for all its southern warmth and charm, this memoir evokes a vivid time and place that will never exist again. Through her delightful and unforgettable characters, Suberman tells the story of a family who never quite finds a home -- until, too late, they realize Concordia -- the pseudonymous town in which her family lived -- had perhaps been home all along.

This is a book about Jews in small towns, but it is also a book about strangers of all kinds, and towns of all kinds. Its lessons are never trite or cheap; in fact, the lessons here, if there are any, are bittersweet with right and wrong choices of all kinds.

This is the story of a family that could be any family, and about the kind of success that goes beyond the material -- that forges a lasting legacy for generations to come. Worthwhile reading for anyone who's ever wondered about the other side of history; the stories that don't always get told...

Until this book I did not know much of my family history.My mother always spoke fondly of the town and although the only Jewish family in Union City never felt unwelcome. She felt proud.She is now 85 but five or six years ago on a trip from N.Y. to Ca. visited Union City. I think she would agree with the comments of reviewer Joseph Hunter Harpole Sr. and was probably the Jewish teenager who attended those church services.She still attends a service now and then although it is now hard for her to get around.She is proud of her Tennessee heritage and I am proud of my Aunt Stella for shining a light on the period, our family, and all the God fearing, good thinking people in Union City, Tennessee.

Someone once said that acceptance and assimilation in America has done more to destroy the Jewish way of life than all the antisemites since the beginning of time. "The Jew Store" is evidence that there is some truth to that. Born myself to a Russian Jewish immigrant father; and a first generation Jewish mother in post World War II Bronx, I recognized each person in her story as archetypes. Suberman's family is very familiar to me, down to their choice of language, attitudes, and alternately suffocating/ indifferent family ties. Suberman appears to fault her mother Reba for wanting her children to retain Jewish cultural and religious traditions. She is portrayed unfairly as a nervous, sometimes shrewish woman who drove her son away from home just so he could be bar mitvah, and who drove the entire family from an otherwise blissful life in Concordia just to prevent Miriam from marrying a non-Jew. Father Aaron, on the other hand, who was ready to assimilate completely for an easier American way of life for his children, is the hero of her piece. "The Jew Store," is an important tale of genuine family and community values, against a backdrop of the type of situational American values depicted so well by Mark Twain. The character that is most pivotal and interesting, Miss Brookie, is the least explored, probably because she was long dead when Suberman started to write and she had no heirs. What made her open her home and heart so wide to this family? I still want to know!

Imagine being raised in rural Tennessee in the 1920s, the child of a Jewish storekeeper. Imagine this child, quiet and observant, watching, always watching and listening. She listens to family stories well enough to begin her tale prior to her own birth. It's a different tale of anti-Semitism, one that only someone who lived it on intimate terms would be in a position to tell.
Engaging writing and a believable narrator contribute to the book's value.

This is a charming memoir, not a great literary history, so you will like this book a lot if you approach it with that in mind. It sheds a more personal light on the immigrant experience than many scholarly works on the same subject, especially that of the Russian Jewish peddler trying to make it in the south as a shop-owner. The tension between Jewish families' desires to fit in and the prerequisites of assimilation, versus this family's desire to maintain a Jewish identity but not at the cost of alienation, keeps the pages moving. The generational conflicts of the Roaring Twenties, the Klan, the economic collapse of the Great Depression all give the reader a slice of small-town America in an era that doesn't get much attention any more. I found it delightful.

I read this book awhile back, but after seeing "warmed over memoir," I was moved to write. I loved this book, and it has stayed with me. I accepted that it is, as the full title states, a "family memoir," and so I understood that much of the narrative comes from family lore. This book is artfully and subtly written, resulting in a fascinating story and an intriguing, honest picture of that time and that place. It is the kind of book once lets go of reluctantly. It certainly gets five stars from me.