New Orleans shines a light on the family histories of Southern Jews

New museum features large Jewish communities in New Orleans and Atlanta alongside smaller places in Arkansas which had several Jewish mayors

JANIS RABIN’S FAMILY emigrated from Poland, eventually settling in Bogalusa, Louisiana. For years, she and her relatives had kept memories and stories of their family’s Jewish experience to themselves, or shared them casually with friends.

So when Rabin entered this city’s Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience the day it opened to the public, she was moved by seeing her family’s history represented more formally.

“I look at the museum and it is such a beautiful representation of what it means to have your roots, your identity validated,” she said.

Like Rabin, many of the visitors on the museum’s opening day May 27 were Southern Jews themselves, eager to find evidence of their family lore or share artifacts with an unusual collection designed to bring relics of Southern Jewish life out of the region’s closets and attics.

Unlike Jews in the North, who largely congregated in urban centres, Jews who settled in the South spread out across the region’s small towns and cities.

The museum features large Jewish communities in New Orleans and Atlanta alongside lesser-known, but equally vibrant, places like Dumas, Arkansas, which had several Jewish mayors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It also highlights the fact that Southern Jews often found careers as traveling salesmen, moving from one town to another.

FULL STORY A new museum in New Orleans puts the family histories of Southern Jews on display (JTA)

Photo: An exhibit at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans (Courtesy of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience)