Customer Reviews

The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South (With Photographs and a New Introduction by the Author)

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To say that you are a southern Jew may sound like a contradiction in terms. After all, Jewish culture and life is demoniated by the historic enclaves of the urban north. Eli Evans' book, The Provencials breaks that stereotype by telling the story of the south's Jewish population whose very presence made an impact on a region that is so misunderstood by its northern cousins. Evans describes for us the challenges and triumphs of growing up Jewish in a southern culture. Like their southern gentile counterparts Jews in the south share a deep rooted southern soul and culture which embeds itself into one's psyche. Although the south harbors within it painful memories for Jews ( Leo Frank lynching of 1915), overall the community managed to survive and thrive. Jewish communities in many instances took on the same cultural charistics of the southern gentile but there was always that sense of being the outsider that made the community a distinct entity. Evans skillfully weaves his own autobiography of growing up Jewish in the Bible Belt with the stories of the regions' people and various events that impacted upon the Jewish community. I throughly enjoyed reading about the peddlers who went throughout the rural south bringing with them not only merchandise but news from the larger communities. The book shows the struggles Jews had in building communities, establishing synagogues, and balancing the racial tensions of the majority culture. This book is a must read for those unfamiliar with the Jewish presence in the south.

"The Provincials" proved to be especially meaningful to me. First, my wife gave it to me for our anniversary; I am researching the Jewish Confederacy, and I had included it on my reading list. Second, we went to Vicksburg, Miss., for our anniversary, and I began reading the book there. I have family roots in Vicksburg, where we met a number of wonderful people at the synagogue who knew my cousin, a World War II veteran who grew up in Vicksburg but now lives in Texas.

My wife and I also toured the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, which is very close to Vicksburg.

Putting everything together, including our visit to the Jewish cemetery in Vicksburg, I feel I now understand "the Southern Jewish experience." Eli Evans tied a lot of loose ends for me and helped put a lot of things in perspective. (I plan to view "Driving Miss Daisy" again,this time with new appreciation and understanding.)

And I might add, I found this book very easy to read. Since I'm generally reading two or three books at the same time (well, you know what I mean), I had planned to spend three weeks reading "The Provincials." I finished it in a week and was sorry when it was over.

I share many of Bonita Davis's good feelings about this book. It is a great collection of stories about Jews throughout the South and throughout much of American history. I particularly enjoyed the insights into the schism between the early-arrived German Jews and the later-arrived Eastern European Jews. In any case, the book is well written, but not as easy to read as his Judah P. Benjamin biography.

This book is primarily focused on the 1950s and small-city Jewry; I grew up in Atlanta during the 1970s, and found most of the book to be about a completely alien world. (One exception: the book's discussion of how important maids were in child-rearing; I grew up at the tail end of the "maid era").

This book is about 2/3 autobiography and 1/3 history. For me personally, most of the autobiographical chapters were not that interesting, perhaps because the author's life and that of his parents and grandparents seems to have been fairly pleasant and uneventful (at least compared to my parents' life).

Nevertheless, I did learn a bit from it about broader trends in Southern Jewry, such as:

1. The constancy of ethnic differences among Jews. As early as 1735, a Christian minister wrote about the differences between Portueguese Jews (who tended to be lax in observance) and relatively strict German Jews. In the 19th century, German Jews who had lived in the South for decades were less observant than East European newcomers. More recently, newcomers from the North have brought a more fervent form of Orthodoxy to Atlanta.

2. The pervasiveness of Christianity even in mid-sized cities such as Durham. For example, Christian hymns were common in public schools, and pupils created nativity scenes and Christmas pageants - and of course there was no Jewish day school alternative in the 1940s and 1950s!

3. The sheer worthlessness of the after-school Hebrew schools common in those days. After a full day of regular classes, students were exhausted- and they didn't have much incentive to get good grades in Hebrew school anyhow.

4. How radical classical Reform was in its heyday, and how long ago that heyday ended; in the early 20th century, The Temple (Atlanta's leading Reform congregation) abolished the lighting of Sabbath candles, taught no Hebrew in its schools, and refused to use wine in wedding ceremonies. However, the Reform movement's swing towards tradition began as early as the mid-20th century; as classical Reform rabbis retired, they were replaced by a new generation oriented towards Zionism and a partial return to tradition.

5. The scope of the Jewish exodus from small and mid-sized cities to large, growing cities. On the one hand, Atlanta's community grew so massively that its oldest Reform synagogue grew from only 400 members in 1946 to well over 1000 today- despite the fact that it was the only Reform synagogue in town in those days, while today it has ample competition from smaller suburban congregations. On the other hand, small-town Jewish communities have declined, and the pattern in mid-sized cities has been mixed: a few have grown (especially in booming Florida) but mid-South cities such as Birmingham, Little Rock, Savannah, Memphis and Chattanooga actually lost Jews between the 1930s and the 1990s.

The Provincials is a history of Jews in the South. It is the story of outsiders who came into a xenophobic society and, through hard work and assimilation, became accepted and valued members of Southern society. When Evans sticks to this topic, The Provincials is a well written, solid piece of history and sociology. Unfortunately, he does waver from his major theme quite a bit, focusing too much on his personal family history. He also spends a huge amount of time talking about Atlanta, a city which many of us in the south consider to be an anomaly in that it has lost much of its flavor as a southern city. I'm not sure how he can justify so much space for Atlanta and barely mention Miami. Much of the unrelated material appears late in the book, which makes me think that it was an afterthought to an earlier draft or edition of the book. Even with these negative facets, the book is a fascinating read about a minority within a majority.

For anyone who grew up in the South, especially if they were middle class Jewish this is a very accurate picture of their youth. It's an informative very easy read...and the new introduction in this addition adds to the story.

I am a Jew living in a college town in Mississippi for the past 5 years. I was born & raised in the North. I think Evans should rename his book "Fiddler on the Roof in the South". His book is a very nostalgic look back at Jewish history - as it was in the past here. It's very much: the southern Jews were all so happy, they all fit in and were accepted, etc. He does cite a few instances where they had problems - but these usually involved us 'Yankee Jews', like the instances when a few (Yankee)Rabbis in the South fought for civil rights.
Evans should realize that times have REALLY CHANGED HERE! The evangelical Christians in my town (which is most people here) harrass me like crazy - 'I am praying for you!' 'Have you read the words of Jesus, who was a Jew like you?' 'When will you come to my Church'. Blah, blah, blah. Thank God for the minority of Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and a few others who live here. They are the only ones to accept me for the way I am, and the way I will stay - a Jew.
I want all who are reading this to realize that I am only speaking for my experience. Jews who reside in cities in the South have told me that they have had far better experiences, and that they cannot relate to what I am saying.
But I do want to ask Evans a few questions:
1) If things are so great for the Jews in the South: Why have you lived in New York for decades now???
2) Why don't you at least write either a new Forward to the book, a magazine article, etc., contrasting some of the ways in which the lives of Jews in the South have changed over time (for some of us at least), primarily due to the rise of the evangelical Christians?
I read Evans' books before I moved here, and nothing much he describes in his books is my life here. For a Jew who really cares about her/his religion living here is depressing; it is practically Jew-less; and, at best, the majority of a certain denomination of Christians here ignore me. (By the way, I am planning to move to a city!)
By the way, don't bother writing to me to tell me that I am "wrong", or to invite me to things like the Bible Study at your Church. Believe me, with all the praying for me that is going on in this town, and all the myriad attempts to convert me, if it hasn't happened by now, as they say in these parts, it just ain't gonna happen!

I was very interested in reading this book due to it's title, but as the saying goes, "never judge a book by it's "title"". I found the author to be arrogant, bregadocious and totally prejudiced against anything not of the "democratic" persuasion. In addition I dont think he stayed on the subject matter, but rather used this book to expound his biased views.