In 1669, the Car­oli­na colony issued the Fun­da­men­tal Con­sti­tu­tions of Car­oli­na, which offered free­dom of wor­ship to ​“Jews, hea­thens, and oth­er dis­senters,” ush­er­ing in an era that would see Jews set­tle in cities and towns through­out what would become the Con­fed­er­ate States. The Jew­ish South tells their sto­ries, and those of their descen­dants and core­li­gion­ists who fol­lowed, pro­vid­ing the first nar­ra­tive his­to­ry of south­ern Jews.

Draw­ing on a wealth of orig­i­nal archival find­ings span­ning three cen­turies, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the com­pli­cat­ed deci­sions that south­ern Jews made – as indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties – to fit into a soci­ety built on Native land and enslaved labor and to main­tain forms of Jew­ish dif­fer­ence, often through reli­gious inno­va­tion and adap­ta­tion. She paints a rich­ly tex­tured and some­times trou­bling por­trait of the peri­od, explor­ing how south­ern Jews have been tar­gets of anti­semitism and vio­lence but also com­plic­it in racial injus­tice. Rabin con­sid­ers Jew­ish immi­gra­tion and insti­tu­tion build­ing, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Civ­il War, the 1915 lynch­ing of Leo Frank, and Jew­ish sup­port for and resis­tance to the mod­ern fight for Black civ­il rights. She exam­ines shift­ing under­stand­ings of Jew­ish­ness, high­light­ing both the real­i­ty of reli­gious diver­si­ty and the ongo­ing role of Chris­tian­i­ty in defin­ing the region.

Recov­er­ing a neglect­ed facet of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence, The Jew­ish South enables read­ers to see the South through the eyes of peo­ple with a dis­tinc­tive reli­gious her­itage and a south­ern his­to­ry old­er than the Unit­ed States itself.