Historians of Freedom Summer (1964) have noted that a significant number of the participating volunteers were Jewish. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the liberal leanings of the Jewish community and a historical, though sometimes troubled affinity between Blacks and Jews. I’m guessing many of those young Jews were not regular synagogue attenders. They may even have been surprised to discover on their arrival that there was a synagogue in Jackson that served a Jewish community that had existed since the Civil War.
When Rosellen and I arrived in Jackson in January 1965, we were also surprised by the presence of the Beth Israel Synagogue, even though my mentor Tom Pettigrew who taught a ground-breaking race relations course at Harvard had stories about Jews in his home state of Virginia going back to Civil Wars days. Sometimes, they were firmly rooted on the “wrong” side of the conflict. As Tom told it, someone stopped in the Richmond town office searching for a Mr. Schwartzchild. “Oh,” the clerk said, “you must mean Colonel Schwartzchild.”
We learned from Jewish colleagues who had experience in the state that Beth Israel was not a welcoming place for people like us, whom the racist newspapers in the state capital referred to as “outside agitators.” Mississippi was still a dangerously violent place in 1965. The local congregants, who were still going to be there long after we had returned to wherever we had come from, were fearful of calling attention to themselves by consorting with anyone associated with civil rights. We were disdainful of what we saw as the cowardice of the local Jewish community, unwilling to stand with the Black community and its supporters as Jewish values clearly dictated. We were naively idealistic about the real dangers of life in a brutally violent society.
As a result, during our life-changing three years in Mississippi, we never set foot in the Jackson synagogue. Every spring we drove to New Orleans to buy our Passover provisions. We were never invited to a Seder or even a Shabbat dinner. It was as if the synagogue five or six miles down the road didn’t exist.
As it turned out, the local caution was for naught. In 1967 the synagogue was heavily damaged in a bombing. The next morning three local Klansmen were arrested in connection with the attack on the Temple but were almost immediately released. As was typical in cases of violence against Black people, no one was ever charged, tried or convicted for the bombing. The speed of the arrest was surely the result of the extensive infiltration of the Klan by the FBI, but in the atmosphere of the times, none of what was known would have been sufficient to win a case in court.
Two months later, the home of Perry Nussbaum, the long-time rabbi of Beth Israel was also bombed and here’s where things get complicated. To the displeasure of many of his congregants, Rabbi Nussbaum was known as a supporter of integration. He was himself an outsider, a Canadian no less. He brought to the congregation values more liberal than those that prevailed in Jackson. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Mississippi in 1961, they were savagely beaten and arrested. Rabbi Nussbaum travelled north to the notorious Parchman Penitentiary to minister to the demonstrators, some of whom were Jewish. He was also known to welcome local Black pastors to the synagogue for meetings and events. So, it was Nussbaum who was the lightning rod that drew down the wrath of the Klan on his congregation.
Fast forward to 2014. We returned to Jackson for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the 1964 Freedom Summer. Although we were not among that summer’s volunteers, we were there briefly to interview for the job at Tougaloo College which we began the following winter. When we arrived in Jackson the 3 Civil Rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were missing and presumed murdered. The tension was palpable; their bodies were not found until several weeks later.
We were interested to see that the 2014 commemoration included a memorial service at the synagogue for the three murdered civil rights workers, two of whom were Jewish. So, 47 years after we left Mississippi, we finally breached the walls of the temple. It was a very different city and state than the one we had left. We sat down with the congregants for a simple dinner. Then everyone present received a yahrzeit candle – small glass containing a wax candle and displaying pictures of the three martyrs on the outside. (We still have ours and if my tech savvy were what it should be, I would include a picture of it here.) We all went outside, lit our candles, formed a ring around the building and heard remarks honoring the volunteers of that fateful summer. Cutting through the many layers of irony surrounding the event, I found the ceremony, set in this formerly unwelcoming place, quite moving.
Of course, all these memories resurfaced when the news of the most recent attack on the synagogue emerged. A 19-year-old suspect set fire to the library which contained several torah scrolls because of the building’s “Jewish ties.” The main sanctuary suffered smoke damage but remains structurally sound.
The 1967 bombing was perceived as a by-product of Mississippi’s racism, but the latest incident is similar to antisemitic acts in many other parts of the country that have occurred since. We can no longer dismiss it as “just Mississippi.” Antisemitic acts, like the Tree of Life murders in Pittsburgh, have become normalized in the atmosphere of the last decade. Although the recent attack may return us in our mind’s eye to the Mississippi of 1964, it’s clear that we now all own the racism and antisemitism of our time. It’s always been there, contained by the propriety of our leadership, but now the genie is out of the bottle. It won’t be easy to coax it back in.
Postscript: A spirited small organization called the Institute for Southern Jewish Life (ISJL) was also housed in the temple and suffered losses in the fire. ISJL preserves the history of the many Jewish communities, small and large, scattered across the south, some of which date back to the Revolutionary War. It provides Jewish education for even the tiniest of communities and also sends volunteers to literacy programs in underserved communities. It’s worthy of support.
PPS: This entry is #300 in my six-and-a-half-year weekly exploration of what’s floating around in my brain space. I hope you’ve found at least a few of them entertaining and/or enlightening.
