Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Asheville's Jewish Community: Living in Many Worlds
Session Abstract or Summary
Asheville’s Jewish Community: Living in Many Worlds will explore the role that Jews have played in Asheville’s growth from an Appalachian mountain hamlet to a New South mill and market town and then to a cosmopolitan Sunbelt city.
As a largely non-agrarian people, whose ethnicity and religion differed from their neighbors, Jews present a counter-narrative to the stereotype of a provincial Appalachia populated by Anglo-Scottish settlers who practiced evangelical Christianity. The extent to which Jews acculturated to Appalachia, and the extent to which Jews transformed the community, provide provocative subjects for discussion on regional values.
Jews--as a global, immigrant people--connected Asheville to larger marketplaces and cultural frameworks. As Deborah Weiner writes in Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History (2006), regional Jewish narratives “unsettle commonly held views of both Appalachia and the American-Jewish experience.” Our discussion will add an urban dimension to Weiner’s pioneering study of small towns and rural communities.
Asheville’s urban developments are being replicated in other Appalachian cities that have evolved from regional commercial hubs into medical, academic, high-tech, and retirement centers. Jewish communities in diverse cities like Birmingham, Greenville, and Knoxville are thriving while economically stressed Charleston declines, and small-town congregations struggle to survive.
Asheville’s Jewish Community: Living in Many Worlds will consist of a moderated panel that will explore questions of regionalism and globalism from three perspectives: economics, civic culture, and religious community. The discussion will be supplemented by display panels on The Family Store: A History of Jewish Businesses in Downtown Asheville, 1880-1990.
Presentation #1 Title
Jews in the Mind of Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
“Jews in the Mind of Appalachia” explores Jews as a religious group, the poles of anti- and philo-Semitism. Jews were welcomed and appreciated as People of the Book as well as targeted for prejudice. Jewish immigrants quickly acculturated into the fabric of their communities. Zebulon Vance was a national advocate for Jews while Thomas Wolfe gave voice to the prejudice that he heard in the streets. The local response to the fascist William Dudley Pelley and anti-immigrant U.S. Senator Robert Reynolds also reflect community values.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Leonard Rogoff has lectured and published extensively on the Jewish South. He is past president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and current president of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina. He holds a doctorate in literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and North Carolina Central. He is the author of Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (2001); Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina (2010), and Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South (2017), winner of the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction.
Presentation #2 Title
Peddlers, Storekeepers, Industrialists
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
“Peddlers, Storekeepers, Industrialists” will explore how impoverished immigrants arrived to provide commercial services to an emerging city. With the arrival of the railroad and industrialization, newly arrived Jewish artisans and merchants opened downtown stores while investors built paper and textile mills. More recently, as Asheville has grown exponentially as a tourist and retirement center, Jews have made an outsized contribution to the city’s growth as a diverse, cosmopolitan community.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Sharon Fahrer co-founded History@Hand, creating a book and an exhibit, The Family Store a History of Jewish Businesses in Downtown Asheville from 1880-1990. She researched and created history panels installed along the French Broad River, in historic Montford, on the UNC-Asheville campus, and in downtown museums, galleries,and theaters. She co-authored The Man Who Lived on Main Street and wrote A Home in Shalomville. the History of Asheville's Jewish Community, awarded the 2016 Bob Terrill Prize. She founded the Jewish Museum without Walls and the Montford Music and Arts Festival.
Presentation #3 Title
Moderator
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
The moderator's responsibility will be to draw together the multiple strands of the Jewish experience in Appalachian Asheville--cultural, economic, and religious--and to place that experience in the context of the larger history. Some issues to consider will challenge stereotypes. Jews are a mobile and cosmopolitan element in a society largely considered provincial and isolated. They brought commerce and industry to a region that is typified by an agrarian and mining economy. Public attitudes toward the Jews' religious difference will also tell us much about Appalachian Christianity.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Dr. Jay Jacoby holds a B.A. from Cincinnati, Teaching Certification from Temple, M.A. from Villanova, and Ph. D. from Pittsburgh. After teaching at an inner-city high school in Philadelphia, he joined the faculty of UNC-Charlotte where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Writing, Immigrant literature, Jewish American literature, and Literary Responses to the Holocaust and chaired both English and Visual Arts departments. Jay has lectured and published widely in American literature, Jewish folklore and children’s literature, and the teaching of English. He relocated to Asheville in 2001 and taught five years as an Adjunct Professor of English at UNC-Asheville. Jay currently teaches at Osher Life-long Learning Institute’s College for Seniors and leads a monthly book group at Malaprop’s Book Store.
Presentation #4 Title
Repairing the World
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
“Repairing the World” will discuss the Jewish role in social history broadly conceived, including politics, education, race relations, and philanthropy. Through their stores, Jews integrated into their communities, building personal relations with their customers and employees that contributed to local colors. Jews often contested community norms in their relations with the black community. Jewish philanthropies included extending credit to the poor or shodding shoeless children as well as donating mountains to conservancies. Jews also participated in educational enterprises, notably at Black Mountain College. Three Jews, two of whom were women, have served as Asheville mayors (including the incumbent).
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Jan Schochet documented four generations of her family’s local mercantile history as well as those of 454 other Asheville Jewish owned stores in “The Family Store: A History of the Jewish Businesses of Downtown Asheville, 1880-1990." Panels from this public history exhibit, which she co-produced with Sharon Fahrer, were displayed in commercial building windows across downtown Asheville in 2005, 2006 and 2015. Jan holds a B.A. in American Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and a M.A. in Folklore, with a concentration on the South, from the Cooperstown Graduate Programs. She splits her time between Asheville and Chapel Hill.
Jews in the Mind of Appalachia
“Jews in the Mind of Appalachia” explores Jews as a religious group, the poles of anti- and philo-Semitism. Jews were welcomed and appreciated as People of the Book as well as targeted for prejudice. Jewish immigrants quickly acculturated into the fabric of their communities. Zebulon Vance was a national advocate for Jews while Thomas Wolfe gave voice to the prejudice that he heard in the streets. The local response to the fascist William Dudley Pelley and anti-immigrant U.S. Senator Robert Reynolds also reflect community values.
