A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility

By Mark K. Bauman and Ronald H. Bayor

Winner of the 2023 Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Award

Essays from a prolific career that challenge and overturn traditional narratives of southern Jewish history
 
Mark K. Bauman, one of the foremost scholars of southern Jewish history working today, has spent much of his career, as he puts it, “rewriting southern Jewish history” in ways that its earliest historians could not have envisioned or anticipated, and doing so by specifically  targeting themes and trends that might not have been readily  apparent to those scholars. A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility features essays collected from over a forty-year career, including a never-before-published article.

The prevailing narrative in southern Jewish history tends to emphasize the role of immigrant Jews as merchants in small southern towns and their subsequent struggles and successes in making a place for themselves in the fabric of those communities. Bauman offers assessments that go far beyond these simplified frameworks and draws upon varieties of subject matter, time periods, locations, tools, and perspectives over three decades of writing and scholarship.

A New Vision of Southern Jewish History contains Bauman’s studies of Jewish urbanization, acculturation and migration, intra- and inter-group relations, economics and business, government, civic affairs, transnational diplomacy, social services, and gender—all complicating traditional notions of southern Jewish identity. Drawing on role theory as informed by sociology, psychology, demographics, and the nature and dynamics of leadership, Bauman traverses a broad swath—often urban—of the southern landscape, from Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore through Atlanta, New Orleans, Galveston, and beyond the country to Europe and Israel.

Bauman’s retrospective volume gives readers the opportunity to review a lifetime of work in a single publication as well as peruse newly penned introductions to his essays. The book also features an “Additional Readings” section designed to update the historiography in the essays.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9780817392291

Book preview

A NEW VISION OF SOUTHERN JEWISH HISTORY

JEWS AND JUDAISM: HISTORY AND CULTURE

SERIES EDITORS

Mark K. Bauman

Adam D. Mendelsohn

FOUNDING EDITOR

Leon J. Weinberger

ADVISORY BOARD

Tobias Brinkmann

Ellen Eisenberg

David Feldman

Kirsten Fermaglich

Jeffrey S. Gurock

Nahum Karlinsky

Richard Menkis

Riv-Ellen Prell

Raanan Rein

Jonathan Schorsch

Stephen J. Whitfield

Marcin Wodzinski

A NEW VISION OF SOUTHERN JEWISH HISTORY

STUDIES IN INSTITUTION BUILDING, LEADERSHIP, INTERACTION, AND MOBILITY

Mark K. Bauman

Foreword by Ronald H. Bayor

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2019 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Scala Pro and Scala Sans Pro

Cover image: David Nees

Cover design: David Nees

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bauman, Mark K., 1946– author.

Title: A new vision of southern Jewish history : studies in institution building, leadership, interaction, and mobility / Mark K. Bauman ; foreword by Ronald H. Bayor.

Other titles: Jews and Judaism (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)

Description: Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2019] | Series: Jews and Judaism : history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018044880| ISBN 9780817320188 (cloth) | ISBN 9780817392291 (e book)

Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Southern States—History. | Jews—Georgia—Atlanta—History.

Classification: LCC F220.J5 B38 2019 | DDC 975/.04924—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044880

This collection is dedicated with love to my wife, Sandy, who stood witness to the decades of toil; to Joel and Peter, who grew up with a father immersed in research and writing; and to Austin and Colin, my present and future shining lights.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Ronald H. Bayor

Introduction

I. COMMUNITY AND INSTITUTION BUILDING

1. Variations on the Mortara Case in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

2. Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces Facing the People of Many Communities: Atlanta Jews from the Leo Frank Case to the Great Depression

3. The Emergence of Jewish Social Service Agencies in Atlanta

4. The Transformation of Jewish Social Services in Atlanta, 1928–1948

5. Southern Jewish Women and Their Social Service Organizations

II. LAY LEADERSHIP

6. Factionalism and Ethnic Politics in Atlanta: German Jews from the Civil War through the Progressive Era

7. Victor H. Kriegshaber: Community Builder

8. Role Theory and History: The Illustration of Ethnic Brokerage in the Atlanta Jewish Community in an Era of Transition and Conflict

9. The Youthful Musings of a Jewish Community Activist: Josephine Joel Heyman

III. RABBINICAL LEADERSHIP

10. Demographics, Anti-Rabbanism, and Freedom of Choice: The Origins and Principles of Reform at Baltimore’s Har Sinai Verein

11. The Rabbi as Ethnic Broker: The Case of David Marx Cowritten with Arnold Shankman

12. Harry H. Epstein and the Adaptation of Second-Generation Eastern European Jews in Atlanta

IV. INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP

13. Beyond the Parochial Image of Southern Jewry: Studies in National and International Leadership and Interactive Mechanisms

14. The Blaustein–Ben-Gurion Agreement: A Milestone in Israel-Diaspora Relations

V. HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SYNTHESIS

15. The Southerner as American: Jewish Style

16. The Flowering of Interest in Southern Jewish History and Its Integration into Mainstream History

17. A Multithematic Approach to Southern Jewish History

18. A Century of Southern Jewish Historiography

Notes

Additional Readings

Mark K. Bauman’s Publications on American Jewish History

Index

Acknowledgments

I greatly appreciate the wonderful support and assistance given to me by the editor in chief of the University of Alabama Press, Daniel Waterman, and from Adam D. Mendelsohn, the coeditor of the press series Jews and Judaism: History and Culture. Bryan Edward Stone provided essential technical assistance in transforming pdfs into Word documents and continuous encouragement. Tabitha Palmer, an editorial intern for the press, then undertook the arduous task of making sure the Word documents conformed to the originals. Without their assistances, the articles could not have been reprinted. Penelope Cray, Joanna Jacobs, and Carol Connell provided yeoman service editing the manuscript. Numerous other individuals from the University of Alabama Press staff were also extremely helpful, including assistant to the director Kristen Hop and the cover designer, David Nees. The manuscript also benefited greatly in terms of content and organization from two anonymous peer reviews. Finally, Rabbi Dr. David Geffen has been one of my foremost cheerleaders for forty years. His kvetching year after year to publish this collection of essays prodded me into action. I thank him for his encouragement.

I gratefully acknowledge the following organizations that granted permission to republish my work:

Chapter 1

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Variations on the Mortara Case in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, American Jewish Archives Journal 55 (2003): 43–58.

Chapter 2

The Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center, for Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces Facing the People of Many Communities: Atlanta Jews from the Leo Frank Case to the Great Depression, Atlanta Historical Journal 23 (Summer 1979): 25–54.

Chapter 3

The Georgia Historical Society for The Emergence of Jewish Social Service Agencies in Atlanta, Georgia Historical Quarterly 69 (Winter 1985): 488–508.

Chapter 4

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for The Transformation of Jewish Social Services in Atlanta, 1928–1948, American Jewish Archives Journal 53 (2001): 83–111.

Chapter 5

The American Immigration and Ethnic Historical Society for Southern Jewish Women and Their Social Service Organizations, Journal of American Ethnic History 22 (Spring 2003): 34–78.

Chapter 6

The Georgia Historical Society and the University of Kentucky Press for Factionalism and Ethnic Politics in Atlanta: German Jews from the Civil War through the Progressive Era, Georgia Historical Quarterly 82 (Fall 1998): 533–58; revised in Politics and Religion in the White South, ed. Glenn Feldman, 35–56 (Knoxville: University of Kentucky Press, 2005).

Chapter 7

Johns Hopkins University Press for Victor H. Kriegshaber: Community Builder, Copyright American Jewish Historical Society. This chapter was first published in American Jewish History 79, no. 1 (Autumn 1989): 94–110.

Chapter 8

Johns Hopkins University Press for Role Theory and History: The Illustration of Ethnic Brokerage in the Atlanta Jewish Community in an Era of Transition and Conflict, Copyright @ American Jewish Historical Society. This chapter was first published in American Jewish History 73, no. 1 (1983): 71–95.

Chapter 9

Atlanta History Center for The Youthful Musings of a Jewish Community Activist: Josephine Joel Heyman, Atlanta History 39 (Summer 1995): 46–59.

Chapter 10

This chapter is original to this volume.

Chapter 11

The American Immigration and Ethnic Historical Society for The Rabbi as Ethnic Broker: The Case of David Marx, cowritten with Arnold Shankman, Journal of American Ethnic History 2 (Spring 1983): 51–68.

Chapter 12

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Harry H. Epstein and the Adaptation of Second-Generation East European Jews in Atlanta, American Jewish Archives 42 (Fall/Winter 1990): 133–45.

Chapter 13

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Beyond the Parochial Image of Southern Jewry: Studies in National and International Leadership, in New Essays in American Jewish History to Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the American Jewish Archives Journal and the 10th Anniversary of the American Jewish Archives Under the Direction of Dr. Gary P. Zola, ed. Pamela S. Nadell, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Lance J. Sussman, 137–54 (Cincinnati, OH: Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, 2010).

Chapter 14

The Jewish Museum of Maryland for The Blaustein–Ben-Gurion Agreement: A Milestone in Israel-Diaspora Relations, Genesis (2007–2008): 70–83.

Chapter 15

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for The Southerner as American: Jewish Style (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives Brochures Series [19], 1996).

Chapter 16

The University of Tennessee Press for The Flowering of Interest in Southern Jewish History and its Integration into Mainstream History, Religion in the Contemporary South, ed. Corrie Norman and Don Armentrout, 159–90 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005).

Chapter 17

Columbia University Press for A Multithematic Approach to Southern Jewish History, in The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, ed. Marc Lee Raphael. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press.

Chapter 18

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, for A Century of Southern Jewish Historiography, American Jewish Archives Journal 59 (2007): 3–78.

I have taken the liberty of making some minor editorial changes to the original articles. Since the subjects of these chapters tend to flow from one to another, I ask the reader’s indulgence concerning overlap and repetition.

Foreword

Mark Bauman has been a decades-long influential and revisionist scholar in the field of American and southern Jewish history. His work has been at the center of the historiographical debate regarding whether southern Jewry represented a regionally unique element in American Jewish history. Exceptionalism in American history, in southern history, and in southern Jewish history has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Moreover, Bauman contends that even small-town southern Jews were more cosmopolitan and less isolated culturally than other historians have claimed. And Jews in cities such as Atlanta did not necessarily follow northern brethren but often led the way on controversial subjects.

These issues have remained fundamental ones for historians of the South and of Jewish southerners. Bauman, employing a comparative approach, has written extensively regarding these concerns while pursuing studies of such matters as religion, especially Reform Judaism, ethnicity, gender, social services, civil rights, business, and politics, all in a Jewish context. Readers will benefit from his close examination of pertinent cities and towns, institutions, and individuals, particularly in Atlanta, which has been a focus for his work. Furthermore, Bauman provides cogent arguments for placing southern Jewish history squarely into the larger southern and American historical context. Often seen as a subfield, the history of Jews in the South in fact is of prime importance for understanding the histories of other regions and of the United States.

Bauman’s research, however, has been published in a variety of prestigious scholarly journals and anthologies, which poses a difficult search for historians and the reading public who want to educate themselves on the topics Bauman studies. This collection of his articles and essays fills a vacuum by giving readers the opportunity to review his work in one publication and, as well, to peruse newly penned introductions to his essays. Studying Bauman’s varied approaches to research, using the theories of other disciplines such as sociology, offers the beginning as well as the experienced scholar the wherewithal to expand knowledge in this field. Bauman’s collection also raises questions that will lead to research on new or understudied topics, an important accomplishment within a book that already offers so much.

Ronald H. Bayor

Introduction

The year 2017 marked several important milestones in my life and career. A half-century earlier, I graduated from college. Four decades earlier, I launched my research in southern Jewish history, and two decades earlier, the annual peer-reviewed journal I edit, Southern Jewish History, began publication. Fifteen years earlier, I retired from regular, full-time teaching. This seems like an opportune time to bring together selected essays from my study of the field for a new generation of historians. Hopefully this will also help fulfill a commitment I first made at a conference in 1999 that I would make materials and information on southern Jewish history more readily available to those teaching religion in the South.

Mine has been an unlikely career. My undergraduate and graduate training in religion emphasized Protestant history. My first publications drew on Methodist, Catholic, and fundamentalist-revival history. In 1976, editor Ann Woodall drew me toward research into Atlanta Jewish history. Since then, I have meandered from subject to subject within southern and American Jewish history on a fascinating and rewarding journey. Having lived in Georgia and specifically the Atlanta area since 1972, I am an adopted southerner who blends that identity with my northern upbringing and education. My experiences in both regions inform my analysis.

The selected essays collected in this volume illustrate the varieties of subject matter, periods, locations, tools, and perspectives that I have written about and used over the last four decades. They delve into religion; urbanization; ethnicity and identity; immigration and migration; intra- and intergroup relations; economics and business; government, civic affairs, and diplomacy; social services; and gender. The tools for exploration include historiography, comparative frameworks and discussions concerning acculturation, a transnational lens, role theory as informed by sociology and psychology, demographics, and the nature and dynamics of leadership. The volume’s chapters will travel from Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore through Atlanta, New Orleans, Galveston, and throughout the South, to Europe and Israel.

Although I had not recognized it until writing these introductions, besides examining the cosmopolitan nature of—and leadership emanating from—southern Jewry, the emphasis of my work has been that the only constant is change. In virtually all my writings, I have explored the nature of change, adaptation to it, and the factors that bear on it. Among these factors are: changing environments and conditions; immigration into the United States and migration within it; social, economic, and educational mobility; dialectic conflict and cooperation within and between groups; and behavior and priorities altered from generation to generation. In terms of adaptation, individuals and institutions travel a spectrum from the maintenance of tradition through acculturation to total assimilation; institutions constantly evolve; and leadership and leadership patterns change. The amorphous concept of multiple identities provides an additional area of continuous change. By tracing change, one recognizes the dynamism of life and history.

In the section introductions, I suggest the potential influence of the historian’s background on his or her interpretation. Several aspects of my background have likely influenced my interpretations and interests.¹ First, I was born in 1946 and raised in the North. Long Island, New York, was far more segregated than what I have experienced living in Georgia for forty-five years. My high school graduating class included only one African American. As I grew up, the Jews I was exposed to referred to African Americans as the shvartzes. The Jews I grew up with were as prejudiced as Jews in the South during the same era. As in the South, our greatest exposure to African Americans was when we interacted with the people who cleaned our homes. As a young child, I called our maid by her first name, Elbie. When my in-laws sold their home in northern New Jersey to an African American family, their neighbors complained that they were contributing to block-busting. Thus, when I study Jewish interaction with African Americans I start with the assumption that racism, segregation, and discrimination were national in scope and that the reaction of average Jews in different sections of the country when confronted with desegregation should be placed in that perspective. Conversely, I have witnessed numerous examples of Jews in the South who have spoken out and acted on behalf of African American civil rights in a variety of situations. In terms of everyday actions, I thus question the trope that Jews in the South remained quiet and acquiescent in contrast to Jews in the North.

Second, although my paternal grandparents were Orthodox and I was raised in a Conservative Jewish and Zionist home, my wife, Sandy, grew up in New York then New Jersey as part of a Classical Reform, non-Zionist family. Her father traces his lineage to immigration from the German states before the Civil War and from England after the war. My father and three of my four grandparents were Eastern European immigrants, and the parents of the fourth emigrated a few years before her birth. To me, then, divisions within Jewry and the proclivity of descendants of Central European immigrants toward rejection of Zionism and Jewish tradition are anything but southern-specific. Furthermore, my great aunt and uncle were socialists intellectually even after they attained middle-class status—again much like Jewish socialists in the South.

For my first teaching position, my family and I moved to Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1975. We saw Klansmen soliciting funds on the roadside, our younger son had a friend whose father was a Klansman, and our children felt conspicuous as the only Jews in their schools. Community meetings including in the schools routinely began with prayers in Jesus’s name, and neighboring counties conducted prayers in the public schools. Having people ring our doorbell to pray and leave Christian literature with us, and being asked by an evangelical neighbor to pray with us to save our souls were normative occurrences. These and other experiences so typical of Jewish life in small towns suggest that Jews were more tolerated than accepted and that they were constantly aware of their marginality.

I spent my entire teaching career until retirement at two-year colleges first near and then in Atlanta. I ultimately taught five courses per semester and typically two classes during the summer. The main institution where I taught never supported—in fact, discouraged—my research. Thus, the general proclivity to do research close at hand was reinforced by financial considerations and time constraints. Much of my research and writing uses Atlanta as the focal point in terms of location. Concentrating on Atlanta Jewry possibly influenced my perceptions of the many Jewish Souths and convinced me that local conditions were as and even more important than the region-wide environment.

One school of historiography often points to the preponderance of small-town life as a distinctive aspect of southern Jewish history. In contrast, my research has concentrated on urban history, and I, along with Leonard Rogoff and others, argue that even the Jews in small towns possessed cosmopolitan, urban perceptions and retained close ties to Jewish communities in the cities.

Another aspect of my background that affects my research is my education. Wilkes College (now University) provided an excellent, broad background in history and the liberal arts (I took courses in sociology, psychology, and cultural anthropology, as well as in literature and art history). The person I consider my major mentor, Dr. Harold Cox, taught American social and intellectual and English history, the fields I followed in graduate school. At Lehigh University (MA, 1967), the University of Chicago (MA, 1971), and Emory University (PhD, 1975), my coursework included social and intellectual history, the South, urban history, African American history, and the history of religion. I wrote research papers on the First and Second Great Awakenings, as well as on the life and thought of Southern Methodist Bishop Warren Akin Candler. My use of social scientific methods and tools and the comparative perspective flow from these and other influences.

As shall be discussed in greater detail in a section introduction, a dramatic change took place in my research into southern Jewry in 1983 when two editors forced me to look beyond the parochialism of regional history. The historiography of the mid-1960s into the 1980s emphasized southern Jewish distinctiveness. The editors asked if what I was writing about really was southern-specific. They suggested that I read works on Jews elsewhere in the United States. The comparative reading dramatically affected my image of southern Jewish history, my future research and interpretations, and the basic questions I have asked. Compounding these changes, I committed myself to the study of southern Jews and Judaism and to making it an acceptable and important subfield of American Jewish history.²

Whereas previously many historians tended to ask what makes southern Jewish history distinctive (especially from New York City), I ask what makes it significant. In doing so, I unconsciously began to rewrite the critical themes in the subfield. I contend that it is impossible to truly understand American Jewish history—or southern history—without understanding and integrating the history of Jews in the South.

This is not a difficult position to support. The first identifiable Jew in the British mainland colonies lived in Roanoke—not New Amsterdam. Charleston and Savannah housed two of the first six (if one includes Lancaster, Pennsylvania) British mainland colonial Jewish congregations. Individuals originally from Charleston (who were living temporarily in Philadelphia) exerted substantial influence over the liturgy and structure of the Philadelphia congregation. Although the exchange of letters between President George Washington and the Newport congregation, with Washington affirming religious freedom and the separation of church and state, is well-known, Savannah’s KK Mickve Israel contacted Washington first, and its letter served as Newport’s model. By the 1820s, four out of the six Jewish congregations in the United States were in the South. The first Reform congregation began in Charleston, and from 1800 to 1830, it boasted the largest Jewish community in the United States. The Reform leaders compiled the first Reform prayer book. Baltimore’s Har Sinai was the country’s first permanent Reform congregation. The next Reform congregation, the New York group that originally dubbed itself Cultus Verein and then shortly afterward renamed their organization Temple Emanu-El, followed Har Sinai’s example. Jews from Charleston and Baltimore spread across the country, creating congregations in Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, California, Washington, and Oregon. The first two Jewish US senators, the first Jewish lieutenant governor, the first Jew to hold a cabinet position (albeit in the Confederate government), the first American female Jewish poet, the first major male and female American Jewish philanthropists, and the first ordained rabbi and American-born ordained rabbi to hold pulpits in the country were all in the South. Jews from the South were deeply involved in protests against the Mortara incident and every other national and international event drawing American Jewish participation. They helped found and led the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis was partly modeled on their rabbinical association. During the late nineteenth century, the head of the B’nai B’rith—a key leader influencing national policy—hailed from Galveston. When the American Jewish Committee became a more representative body, its presidents were from Baltimore, Maryland and Fitzgerald, Georgia. They and the first female leader (also from Baltimore) of a major national Jewish organization influenced national and international policies. Jews from the South attended and hosted conventions of the major national organizations and served among their leadership.

I have been asked why is it important to study the South if I emphasize similarities between southern Jewish history and the history of Jews elsewhere in similar local environments. I respond that by recognizing that so much of southern Jewish history—again for similar environments—mirrored and even led national patterns, historians can identify national themes and how the Jewish background and experience transcended sectional influences.³

Even a cursory list such as the one mentioned two paragraphs prior opens a question yet to be answered: why did so few Jews contribute so much? There are ironies, not to admit inconsistencies, in this question and my analysis. I argue against southern Jewish distinctiveness and against a unified southern Jewish history, and yet simultaneously I argue for the importance of the actions of Jews in and of the South to American Jewish history. Claiming recognition of southern Jewish history alongside that of Philadelphia and New York juxtaposes a region with two cities.

The chapters in this collection and my other publications emphasize a dynamic southern Jewish history that has led and informed numerous aspects of American Jewish history. Institution building and leadership, tremendous mobility in all its manifestations, deep involvement in regional, national, and international affairs, and a cosmopolitan ethos and activities mark that history in stark contrast to the prevailing imagery of the typical southerner. My writings have identified numerous examples of differences within and across regions. Yet the similarities, in my judgment, far outweigh those differences. By employing a comparative perspective, I use Jewish community development, the actions of individuals, and the transformation of organizations as important models and exemplars of national trends.

A century ago historians claimed objectivity and aspired to what they called scientific history. Yet authors’ backgrounds and experiences cannot be discounted. How can a historian balance the goal of objectivity with the counteracting pull of subjectivity? Besides allowing the evidence to guide you down paths you did not expect or even desire from a value-judgment perspective, it is imperative that you remain cognizant of influences on you and your interpretations and do your best to avoid bias. This also holds true with the writings of other historians. As I have remarked numerous times to researchers and especially graduate students, while conducting research, begin by ignoring the interpretations of other historians (including mine) and let the evidence lead you to your own conclusions. Then return to the historiography to determine where your findings agree and/or disagree with those of others.

Hopefully readers will come away from reading this volume with greater understanding concerning the possibilities and significance of southern Jewish history; tools to integrate it into southern, American, American Jewish, and transnational history and religious studies; debates and arguments to confront; and ideas for future research.⁴ As I frequently remark, after so many years I remain amazed at how little I know and how much remains to be learned. I wish readers well on, and look forward to, their future journeys of discovery.

I

Community and Institution Building

This part concentrates on how national and international events affected—and were affected by—Jews and Jewish institutions in the South as reflected in Jewish communal institution building and development. The pieces herein address the issue of the cosmopolitan nature of the southern Jewish experience and provide examples of Jews who did not remain silent on controversial topics even in the face of discrimination. The conclusions drawn stand in sharp contrast to the distinctiveness school of southern Jewish historiography. Whether the issues revolved around local or international anti-Semitism, the evolution in the roles of women, or local, national, and international aid, the history of the Jews and Judaism in the South, this section implies, should be viewed as essential for the study of southern, American, and Jewish history.

The first chapter, Variations on the Mortara Case in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, discusses a previously unknown incident in New Orleans. I first came across a mention of Alice Levy while researching southern Jewish women as a director’s fellow at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. The letters and documents from the New Orleans Jewish Widows and Orphans Home opened new connections between events in Europe and New Orleans. Jews in the South again appeared as cosmopolitan—in leadership positions and totally aware and deeply involved in national and international events. The movement of people, ideas, and institutions belied political boundaries. Jews in the South did speak out on controversial issues and did bear the brunt of prejudice.

Far from being parochial, members of the city’s Jewish community were extremely conscious of an incident that took place in Italy that generated international protests. They established parallels with that event to achieve a very different local outcome. This is one of many chapters in this volume that demonstrate how the study of southern Jewish history can offer new insights into national Jewish history.

The Mortara case, at least since the work of Bertram W. Korn, has been viewed as a key incident of anti-Semitism that resulted in disjointed international responses. One of several incidents in which Jews in the United States lobbied the White House in an attempt to influence foreign policy, the case revealed divisions and other pressing issues within the country that resulted in the failure to move President James Buchanan to action.

Nonetheless, the incidents in New Orleans and Italy sparked the creation of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Modeled after London’s Board of Deputies, it has been depicted as one of many examples of Jewish division. As Jonathan D. Sarna indicates, most Reform congregations in the North refused to join, as did many Orthodox synagogues, and its member congregations constituted less than one-fifth of the total in the country.¹

Taking into consideration Protestant history, I viewed the board somewhat differently. The major Protestant denominations—Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian—had split along sectional lines between the 1830s and 1840s. Although Jews disagreed about slavery, sectionalism, and the Civil War, they unified rather than dividing as a religious group, however incomplete that unification may have been. The Methodist church did not reunify until 1940, and Baptists remain divided today. The Civil War and Reconstruction failed to split Jews along religious lines, and this failure partly influenced the different impacts of those events. Rabbis moved between pulpits across the regions regardless of their positions on secular issues.² Regional religious bodies became the basis for the Central Conference of American Rabbis.³ In marked contrast with the general history of the South during the postbellum era, Jewish businesspeople quickly reestablished credit and partnerships across sections, facilitating economic success.

American Jewish unity even in times of crisis has been largely unattainable. Yet, the first Jewish organization to achieve at least a modicum of cooperation, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, grew out of the lack of a unified response to the Mortara case. As this chapter indicates, southern Jews were deeply involved in this organization, as they have been in virtually all national Jewish organizations since then.

Other chapters in this collection treat the influence of Jews in the South on foreign and domestic policies facing the United States, but far more remains to be done in these areas.

The second chapter in this part, Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces Facing the People of Many Communities: Atlanta Jews from the Leo Frank Case to the Great Depression, concentrates on the local level to analyze the behaviors of different Jewish subcommunities. This chapter marks my first entrance into the field of southern Jewish history and began my immersion in Atlanta Jewish history. Although I was unaware at the time because I had not yet begun to read about similar Jewish communities, the picture I depicted was largely a prototype widely applicable across the United States. This is a story of the interaction among diverse Jewish subgroups confronting issues that unified and divided them. It took place during a critical transition era. Eastern Europeans and Sephardim formed independent institutions, while those of Central European origin dominated community leadership (Eastern European Jews are often referred to as Russian Jews because they comprised the majority of this group. The terms will be used interchangeably throughout this book). Conflict seemed almost omnipresent. The closing of America’s Open Door Policy to immigrants had not yet exerted its full impact. Levels of acculturation varied even within the divided Eastern European subcommunity.⁴

Although the Leo Frank incident was unprecedented in American Jewish history, virtually every other pattern disclosed in this chapter reflects what occurred in similar cities throughout the country. As negative as the Frank case was, it demonstrates the impact of events in the South on American Jewish history.

Regardless of numerous differences, Jews were drawn together by a (somewhat) shared religious and ethnic identity. Secular society exerted enormous pressure on this tendency. Non-Jews viewed Jews as a group defined variously as a religion, ethnicity, and race. If one Jewish subcommunity was steeped in poverty and/or crime or failed to Americanize, then anti-Semitism could and did rise against all Jews. Thus, by proclivity and the desire to avert hostility, Jews of Central European origin assisted (and attempted to control) Jews from Eastern Europe and the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Because of the often-patronizing nature of the assistance, differences of culture and socioeconomic position, and the desire to create their own institutions, the newcomers naturally clashed with the earlier immigrants. As was the case with the Mortara incident and Board of Delegates of American Israelites, factors within and outside the Jewish community created a tug-of-war between the forces for unity and division.

The next two chapters in this section flow naturally from the first two. During the early 1980s Max C. Mike Gettinger, then executive director of the Atlanta Jewish Federation, asked me to serve on a committee including Solomon Sutker that Gettinger would chair to write the history of the federation. Sutker, who had written an outstanding sociology dissertation, never completed any work, and the endeavor failed to reach fruition, although Gettinger later wrote a memoir covering his years as director.⁵ Nonetheless, my research was ultimately published.

Steven Hertzberg’s Strangers Within the Gate City provided an outstanding beginning to the study of Atlanta Jewry but ended in 1915 with the Leo Frank lynching.⁶ My first chapter built on Hertzberg’s findings and brought them forward to 1928, the eve of the Great Depression. Much had been written on Jewish social organizations on the national organizational level as well as some excellent city histories including those of Portland, Oregon, and Columbus, Ohio, and case studies of Philadelphia and Kansas City.

The Emergence of Jewish Social Service Agencies in Atlanta and The Transformation of Jewish Social Services in Atlanta, 1928–1948, as the titles indicate, discuss the creation and transformation of Jewish social service organizations in Atlanta. The three decades plus of institutional building witnessed major changes within the Jewish community in terms of acculturation, socioeconomic mobility, leadership structure, priorities, and community maturation. National and international events informed local actions, and the divisions described in my first chapter on Atlanta Jewry eroded over time. The Jewish world of 1948 was decisively different from what that world had been in 1915.

Employing the comparative literature, I found that Atlanta’s experiences both followed and led national trends. The original federation was designed by Reform leaders of Central European descent to unify disparate organizations and make fund-raising and giving more scientific, essentially, to control charity organizations being run by women and by Orthodox Jews of Eastern European and Mediterranean origin. Nonetheless, the federation generally brought these varied constituencies and their leaders together more than did any other organization. Following national trends in social work, the federation also moved toward professionalization. The professional and lay leaders of the federation gradually supplanted the rabbis as key community voices, although Rabbi David Marx of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation (The Temple) served as one of the two major architects of the federation. Charitable giving offered a way to express one’s Jewish ethnic identity, especially for some whose religious identity and observance of tradition had declined.

The chapter on Atlanta from 1928 to 1948 was a logical continuation of my work on Atlanta’s Jewish social service agencies. It clearly depicts institutional and leadership change, virtually paralleling the changes explained in the chapter on Rabbi Harry Epstein in part 3. Here and in the other chapters in this section, change—one of the overarching themes of this volume—is also demonstrated through alterations in priorities and identities. These changes speak to the dynamism of southern and American Jewish history.

America’s open door to immigration closed. Some of the Eastern European immigrants and many of their children climbed the social and economic ladder. Old intragroup divisions over place of immigrant origin, class, Zionism, and even gender dramatically lessened over the course of these two decades. During the 1930s, the decline of economic need among Jews and Adolf Hitler’s persecution of Jews in Germany precipitated the dramatic transformation of Jewish social services and leadership locally, nationally, and ultimately internationally.⁷ The Holocaust and the creation of Israel, coupled with divided American Jewish responses to each, resulted in numerous additional changes. From 1944 to 1948, Atlanta and American Jewry entered what may be characterized as the new modern phase. Systems, procedures, and new institution structures were put into place that guided organization and reorganization into the twenty-first century. The decades after 1948 witnessed the growing acceptance of American Jews and Judaism in American society. With hindsight, the anti-Semitism of the 1920s and 1930s and the Holocaust acted as catalysts of a more positive future within the Jewish community and between Jews and secular society. Again, as was typical, Atlanta’s Jews and Judaism followed, led, and exemplified national trends.

Southern Jewish Women and Their Social Service Organizations shifts the previous discussion toward Jewish women’s organizations and women’s evolving roles.

As I began studying the history of Jewish social service organizations in Atlanta, the pivotal role played by women loomed large. Yet I did not pursue the topic until 1999 when the American Jewish Archives graciously and generously provided a Starkoff Fellowship. The result is one of the few chapters in southern Jewish history to cover a theme across the region.

By 1999, Jewish women’s history had emerged as a respected field of inquiry, and several historians had documented the roles of Jewish women in relation to philanthropic and social service organizations. From a regional perspective, William Toll had written an excellent article on Jewish women in the West and the South, and Beth S. Wenger provided two articles on the National Council of Jewish Women’s Atlanta section (NCJW) based on her outstanding honors thesis. These publications, a few city and state Jewish histories, and several works on secular and Protestant women offered a fine comparative framework.⁸

Jonathan D. Sarna has discussed a mirrored universe of clubs established by American Jews of Central European origin who, by the last decades of the nineteenth century, were no longer accepted into Gentile society. Yet several mirrored universes existed. Jews of Eastern European origin created Progressive Clubs paralleling the Standard clubs of their Central European brethren. Sephardim and Eastern Europeans founded congregations and other institutions mirroring those of the earlier immigrants. Jewish women wove a network of organizations paralleling men’s charitable enterprises that provided them with experiences that gradually bent gender barriers. These women and their organizations formed state, regional, national, and international networks—part and parcel of their cosmopolitanism.

As a result of gender norms, Jewish women found themselves in the same position in terms of institution building. Conditions in the United States greatly influenced what transpired. In nineteenth-century America, Jewish men concentrated on rising economically to a degree that they were unable to accomplish in Europe. Religious affairs for men became secondary concerns, and women partly filled the vacuum. Consequently, women gradually assumed roles in the Jewish community hitherto unimaginable. This followed a gradual process largely mediated through the evolution of Jewish women’s service organizations. In still another mirrored universe, Jewish women’s evolving organizations and roles illustrated both similarities with and differences from those of non-Jewish women.

With a few exceptions, I found that southern Jewish women followed national trends but that the picture drawn in the historical literature was not as nuanced as the southern examples demonstrated. For example, the ladies Hebrew benevolent societies participated in some secular lobbying efforts typically associated with the NCJW, and some of the NCJW sections continued to serve as temple auxiliaries longer than previously believed. A few benevolent societies functioned at least into the last decades of the twentieth century, far beyond expectations of their demise or suggestions that they became obsolete with the creation of temple sisterhoods and NCJW sections.

The evidence also disclosed that southern Jewish women lobbied for and even led the movement for the passage of the women’s suffrage amendment. Like women throughout the country, they pressed for legislation to protect the rights of women and children and for international peace between the world wars. They did not eschew controversy or blindly accept conservative southern mores, in contrast to much of the historical literature.

These women used their experiences within women’s organizations and especially their fund-raising acumen to influence and occasionally determine synagogue policies, and these factors, in turn, gradually opened doors to synagogue board membership. Volunteer efforts ultimately paved the way for professional employment and the burgeoning of women’s roles as congregation and federation presidents, synagogue administrators, and directors of local and regional chapters of national Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee during the last decades of the twentieth century.

As the national historiography correctly indicates, nineteenth-century Jewish women, like their Catholic and African American counterparts, did not participate in the temperance movement, nor did Jewish and Catholic women participate in missionary societies geared toward converting others to Protestantism. Both temperance and proselytizing activities provided white Protestant women with extensive organizational and lobbying experiences.

Nonetheless, their parallel activities for other religious and secular causes offered a similar background that served many of them well as they or their descendants later became involved in the women’s and African American struggles for equal rights. The networks and movement of people and ideas across regional boundaries that the organizational activities provided, the impact of national and international events on their activities and identities, and the ways in which the experiences of southern Jewish women reflected and affected national experiences parallel the experiences of southern Jewish men and testify to the importance of southern Jewish history to the national history.

1

Variations on the Mortara Case in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

During the mid-nineteenth century, three major international incidents galvanized American Jewry and pushed it toward unified action. In 1840, with the instigation of the French consul, Jews in Damascus were charged with murdering a Capuchin monk and his servant to use their blood for making Passover matzah. A number of Jews were jailed, some of whom underwent torture and died. Jews, recognizing an identity that transcended national boundaries, protested in many American cities as well as in Great Britain and France. President Martin Van Buren expressed his disgust at this anti-Semitic blood libel through foreign policy channels. In the second incident, the Senate ratified a trade treaty with Switzerland although the Swiss cantons denied Jews basic rights and denied visas to Jewish American citizens. A delegation of Jews requested that James Buchanan revise the treaty, but to little avail.¹

The most important event for American Jewry occurred in Bologna in 1858. On the basis of canon law established by Pope Benedict XIV a century earlier, the Italian police took six-year-old Edgardo Mortara from his parents. They did so based on the testimony of a family servant, Anna Morisi, who claimed that she had baptized the Jewish boy to save his soul when she feared that he, while still an infant, was about to die from an illness. Despite international protest, the kidnapped child received a Catholic education and became a priest. Again, the Buchanan administration refused to intervene when lobbied by American Jews.

Given the prevalent friction over distinctions based on national origin and religious practices, prior attempts at unity instigated especially by Isaac Leeser had failed.² Now cognizant that similar incidents were bound to occur and that a unified response would be most effective, representatives of various congregations established the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Persecution accomplished what American freedom and voluntarism had discouraged. The Board of Delegates, representing lay leadership rather than rabbinical authority, attempted to encourage unity by recommending educational improvements, collecting demographic data concerning American Jewry, and making more rational the provision of charity. It also collected funds and attempted to influence public opinion.³

In his study of the Mortara incident, the late Bertram W. Korn indicates that although the American Jewish response to the incident reflected a lack of unity and the inexperienced fumbling which characterized most Jewish leaders, it also indicated the willingness of American Jews to voice their opinions, the association of American Jews with Jews in need overseas, and the belief of American Jewry that it had the equality and liberty to protest, petition the government, and appeal to fellow Americans for aid.⁴ Thus, the Mortara case illustrated both the strengths and weaknesses of mid-century Jewry in the United States.

Korn places the incident squarely within the political and sectional debates of the era and explains how various interest groups used it to their advantage and reacted to it within these frameworks. In so doing, he emphasizes the impact of slavery and sectionalism on southern Jewish reactions. In essence, Jews in the South were less willing to protest openly and expressed greater agreement with Buchanan’s equivocal position than did Jews elsewhere.

In Charleston, South Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, for example, the Jewish communities did not report their protest activities in local newspapers,⁵ and they tended to support Buchanan’s position of limited national power and states’ rights. Like Buchanan, southern Jews supported the Democratic Party and were reluctant to have the American government criticize a foreign country’s position on the civil rights of its citizens when they, and the United States, were vulnerable to a similar rebuff over the issue of slavery.

At the 1859 annual banquet of the Jewish Widows and Orphans Homes of New Orleans, Korn explains, four speakers, including D. C. Labatt, Henry M. Hyams, and Benjamin F. Jonas, praised the positions of Buchanan and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. Rabbi James K. Gutheim chaired the meeting. These men were among the most politically connected and influential Jews in the community. All were also future supporters of the Confederacy.

Gutheim became an ardent Confederate and fled New Orleans during the war to avoid giving an oath of loyalty to the Union. A successful attorney and plantation owner like his cousin Judah P. Benjamin, whom he accompanied from Charleston to New Orleans in 1828, Hyams served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana during the Civil War, the first Jew elected to such a position. The owner of dozens of slaves, he had actively opposed abolitionist agitation beginning in the 1830s. Hyams and Benjamin Jonas were law partners. Jonas’s family illustrated the vicissitudes of geography, the divisions wrought by the war, and the countervailing unifying influence of blood and religious identity. Those of his brothers who were raised in Kentucky served in the Confederacy and those raised in Illinois did their part for the Union. His father, Abraham Jonas, was an attorney, a Kentucky and Illinois legislator, the postmaster of Quincy, and a friend and political supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Jonas helped found the Illinois Republican Party, and Benjamin Jonas became a legislative leader of the Louisiana Redemption movement and the first observant Jewish US senator. While Benjamin participated in the protest over Mortara in Louisiana, Abraham urged Senator Lyman Trumbull to introduce a Mortara resolution in the Senate, according to Korn, as a political ploy to help the Republican Party in 1860.⁶

Korn recognized that the Mortara baptism and kidnapping were not isolated events. In 1826, for example, a young Jewish woman was forced into a convent, and during the 1840s a Jewish child was separated, as the Catholic Church described it, from his parents. Both incidents occurred in Italy but did not result in protest, because Italian Jews had not been free to protest prior to the unification of that country. In St. Louis, Missouri, Captain Paulson Dietrich, a Jew, was baptized without his consent as he lay dying in the Sisters of Charity Infirmary. A fellow Jewish patient reported the incident to the president of the local congregation, who intervened. The priest in charge of the infirmary refused to discuss the situation or to allow visitors to see Dietrich, and appeals to Archbishop Kendrick were denied. The church buried the young man in a Catholic cemetery, although official action resulted in his disinterment and reburial in a Jewish cemetery.⁷

Korn did not realize that a similar incident to the Mortara case had taken place in New Orleans almost simultaneously and that this incident and its outcome reflected the positions taken by southern leaders to the more publicized international event. This case related to a young Jewish girl who was orphaned; it involved the French government, did not require national or international protest, and had a decidedly different outcome.

Context

The New Orleans Association for the Relief of Jewish Widows and Orphans was the key agency involved in this incident, and its leaders were those who framed the community response to the Mortara case. In 1854 twenty-one gentlemen created this organization, the first Jewish orphanage in the country, under the leadership of Gershom Kursheedt.⁸ Obtaining a state charter the next year, the men referred to themselves as Israelites. Following the flowery language of the era, the preamble of the society’s constitution waxed poetic: Within the compass of humanity there is nothing which touches more powerfully the heart of the true Philanthropist, than the destitute, forlorn condition of the poor widow and orphan Bereft of their natural Protector, exposed to the merciless sufferings of a selfish World—the one, with the fine Sensibilities of her Sex, cramped in her executions to secure a maintenance—the other, with powers and capacities yet undeveloped, tossed about by the fierce waves of privation and hunger, and unguided impulse, they represent the Strongest claims to the Sympathies of the good and benevolent.⁹

Although this statement reflected the nineteenth-century perceptions of the roles of men and women in society in a condescending fashion, in reality, the frequent yellow fever epidemics and particularly those of 1847 and 1853 in the Mississippi area created the demand for assistance. The preamble characterized the provision of such assistance as a Jewish religious responsibility. It noted that the Jewish population of New Orleans was increasing dramatically, that many of the newcomers died while they became acclimated, and that the current Jewish charities could not meet demands.¹⁰

According to the bylaws, a matron directly responsible to the male board shall be charged with the domestic economy of the Home and regarded as head of the household. The men held the power but recognized the woman’s role over daily governance. The committee on applications for relief gave the board reports documenting the merits of every applicant after due and careful investigation, as well as the character of employment best adopted to each applicant.¹¹ These and other policies were in keeping with the nineteenth-century view of charity. Recipients, in this case the inmates, had to demonstrate their worthiness and were subject to intense control.

Individuals from throughout the South joined the association, and contributions were received from as far away as Philadelphia. As in the Mortara case, the provision of assistance to fellow Jews overcame all other divisions. Nonetheless, subscriptions to a building fund were insufficient, and loans and a subsidy from the Louisiana legislature had to be solicited. The donation from the legislature, requested by David C. Labatt, one of the speakers Korn identified, was particularly welcomed in that it represented the honor and esteem in which Jews were held by the Christian community of Louisiana. It also reflected the willingness of the New Orleans leadership to solicit state government aid and to become visible even when such visibility might be negatively construed.¹²

By April 1856, the association had erected a Home for the unfortunate of our race. The following year a primary school and domestic economy program were added, and President M. M. Simpson reported that beneath this roof may be found the aged friendless spinster . . . whose sole aim in life is to go hence in peace . . . the aged matron with widowed heart still clinging to the past. Yet all was not well. Simpson continued: Perhaps in this particular [general discipline], more than all other, combined, has the forebearance and sagacity of the Board been tested. To overcome the problem, industrial pursuits were to be expanded. From profitable employment among the Adults, it is confidently hoped, the seeds of cheerfulness will spring; it will relieve a sense of dependence too keenly alive, and render all more subservient to the rules and regulations.¹³

The Case of Alice Levy

Five months after Edgardo Mortara was abducted, Joseph Simon, chair of the application committee, applied for Alice Levy’s acceptance into the Home. A resolution passed unanimously accepting the child in obedience to the dying injunction of the Mother and to inform Mr. and Mrs. Capdeville that the Home was prepared to receive [the] child at once. M. M. Simpson presided, Gutheim served as secretary, and Labatt participated as a board member. The decision was made December 26, 1858, a date important because of its relation to the Mortara protests. President Solomon Cohen of Savannah’s Mickve Israel wrote to Buchanan on November 17, urging the president to exert moral influence on the papacy. On the following day, delegates of twelve New York synagogues met to plan concerted actions. Representatives of New Orleans’s congregations did the same on December 12, with Gutheim as chair, and passed resolutions condemning papal policy and agreeing to work with other American synagogues if a convention were called for such a purpose. Shaarai Shomayim of Mobile acted similarly on December 19. The next day, representatives of five Philadelphia congregations appealed to Cass.¹⁴ Thus, the Levy case unfolded at the same time that Jews in New Orleans and throughout the country were enmeshed in lobbying on behalf of Mortara.

Simon officially delivered Alice Levy to the Home on January 2, 1859, two days before Buchanan wrote his first and only direct response to the Mortara case. The monthly board minutes indicate that Mrs. Capdeville had acted a very kind and charitable part towards said orphan and that a motion was passed to thank her for the kind care she has bestowed on the said child, activated by motives of true charity and benevolence. The Capdevilles were invited to the society’s next anniversary celebration . . . as a slight token of our esteem. This was the meeting to which Korn referred, at which society officers paid tribute to President Buchanan. The association also allocated twenty-five dollars to be paid to Mrs. Francois, the guardian nurse of the orphan child Alice.¹⁵

Thus far, Alice Levy’s situation could only be viewed as unusual in the recognition given to the Capdevilles and the seemingly positive contribution to the nurse. Yet later in the same minutes the following appears: The President [M. M. Simpson] states that the French Consul Count de Mèjan had officially enquired concerning the orphan Alice Mortara Levy, at the instance of the French government. On motion it was resolved that the Secy. furnish him with a statement of the case.

Although a copy of Simpson’s letter could not be located, the consul’s response and subsequent correspondence explicate the incident:

Consulate of France at New Orleans

New Orleans, March 16, 1859

Mr. President,

His Excellency, the minister of Foreign Affairs of His Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon, has done me the honor of writing me, under the date of the 9th February last, for the purpose of calling my attention to the facts concerning a young orphan girl, Alice Levy, daughter of French parents, who had been delivered to a charitable woman of New Orleans, for the object of being raised in the Catholic religion, contrary to the last disposition of her mother, who had expressed the desire that her child be raised in the bosom of the Jewish religion, which was that of her parents. Attached to this communication were several papers, and among others, a letter of the grand-mother of this young girl, Madame Widow Meyer Lichtenberg, nee Levy, who stated, that the delivery of said child had been refused by the Jewish Society of New Orleans, because it had already been baptized.¹⁶

His Excellency, the Count Walewsky,¹⁷ has given me the order to use my influence and, if necessary, take legal steps, in order to realize the wishes of the deceased Mrs. Levy.

According to the information which I have gathered, this intervention has become unnecessary, since the said child has been, after some prudent considerations (après quelques discrétions), entrusted to the good care of the Jewish Society.

This information, however, can not fully satisfy me. I therefore believe that I cannot do better than to address myself to you, Sir, as the president of the association and of the Jewish Asylum, and to beg of you to let me know the result of the intervention, in order that I may act accordingly, and transmit an answer to His Excellency, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Please accept, Mr. President, the assurance of my high consideration. The Consul of France

(Sig.) Cte [Count] Mèjan

Mr. Simpson

President of the Society for the care of Israelite widows and orphans of New Orleans¹⁸

Although the attachments including the grandmother’s letter could not be located, Simpson’s response followed directly in the minutes of March 15, 1859:

New Orleans March 19th, 1859

Cte [Count] Mèjan

Consul of France at New Orleans Respected Sir,

In compliance with your request, on behalf of your government, I have the honor to communicate to you the desired information, regarding the orphan child, Alice Levy.

Mrs. Levy, the mother of said child, died in the early part of September last. During her sickness she was attended by Israelites and on her demise she was buried with the Jewish rites in a Jewish cemetery. Prior to her death she expressed a desire to have orphan child Alice, then about 16 mos. old, placed in the Jewish Widows and Orphans’ Home. The nurse having charge of said child pleaded, that she was much attached to it and asked permission, to keep it about a week longer, when she would deliver it to the custody of the Home. She, however, did not keep her promise, and her residence being unknown, some time elapsed, before the where about of the child could be discovered.

It then appeared, that the nurse had meanwhile applied to Mrs. Capdeville and represented to this Lady, that the said orphan had been abandoned and was without protection. Mrs. Capdeville thereupon made suitable provision for the maintenance of the child and had it baptized in the Catholic religion.

It is conceded, that this estimable Lady acted from purely charitable motives and, what appeared to her, a sense of duty. For, altho’ she refused to give up the child, when first demanded by the chairman of our Com[mitt]ee. 0n Application and Relief—yet when called upon by the undersigned, to surrender said orphan to its legitimate guardian, she complied with the demand and regretted the circumstances that had placed her in so unpleasant an attitude.

The said orphan has been an inmate of our Institution since the 28th of December last. In common with other Jewish orphans, it will enjoy the benefits of our Asylum, and special care will be taken to raise it in the religious faith of its parents.

The accompanying copy of the Constitution and By-Laws governing the Home will afford an adequate idea of the character and objects of our Institution.

In communicating the details of this affair permit me to add, that it is a source of peculiar gratification to the Israelites of this country, to witness, at this juncture, the prompt intervention of your Government in a case so similar to that of the Italian child Mortara, for whose parents there seems to be no prospect of relief. It is an earnest of that firm and enlightened policy, which has won for his majesty, the Emperor of France, the respect and admiration of the whole world. It presents the magnificent spectacle of an enlightened government of a powerful nation listening to the plaints of one of its humblest citizens and stepping forward to vindicate the sacred right; to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience. And I am fully persuaded, that this act will elicit from all Israelites, the most fervent prayers after the welfare of France and her august Ruler, and the kindest regards for your self.

Please accept, Sir, the expression of my high consideration and esteem, in subscribing myself,

Your obedt. servant

(Sig) M. M. Simpson

The Levy and Mortara Cases Come Together

The France of Napoleon III was clearly not identical to the Papal States under Pius IX. Both the government and the people of France had protested vociferously even before Americans became aware of and involved in the Mortara case. Korn suggests that the Mortara incident weakened the alliance between the papacy and Empire, although Napoleon was not yet prepared to withdraw his troops and thereby break completely with the pope. As in America, French Jewry unified through the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the only permanent result of the incident in Europe. Paradoxically, when Mortara feared that Italian unification and control of the Papal States would result in his return to his parents, he fled to France to be able to practice his Catholic faith freely.¹⁹

The Widows and Orphans Home Board did circulate information about the Levy incident nationally. The February 1858 issue of Isaac Leeser’s Occident and American Jewish Advocate included a report on the January 9, 1858, anniversary dinner meeting of