Portrait of a Vanishing World:
Only 300 Jews Left in Land of the Blues
By Heather Hales
World War II caused a scattering of Jews unequaled since the Diaspora. While many Jews opted for the anonymity of such immigrant-crowded metropolitan areas as New York or Chicago to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, some 1,500 settled instead in rural Mississippi. These "Delta" Jews lived in what was a virtual haven, preciously isolated from the anti-Semitism that their counterparts in the north suffered.
"Delta Jews," a one-hour documentary that airs on local PBS stations this September, deals with five generations of people in the deep South. Narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of the Ballyhoo), the film suggests that many Jews tried to ignore the Civil Rights argument as "not their fight" and, perhaps frightened into inactivity, they looked the other way when blacks were attacked, suppressing fears that they, too, would experience prejudice.
As "Delta Jews" painfully reveals, many southern Jews publicly, albeit begrudgingly, supported the White Citizen's Council, what some refer to as "the businessman's Ku Klux Klan." In the film, Rabbi Moses Landau, who led several generations through these difficult times, unashamedly explains that he encouraged his congregation to "go along with" the pro-segregation majority because he felt obligated to "take care of his own people first."
Yet, as this documentary reveals, Delta Jews were not immune to the turbulence of the Civil Rights era, which rocked their secure foothold. The Delta was undeniably one of the fiercest battlegrounds for desegregation. Ironically, Jews who tiptoed across this delicate historic tightrope are shown to have felt a greater alignment with their southern Christian neighbors than with other Jews in North America. As opposed to African Americans, Jews were "white enough" to immerse themselves in the American post-war melting pot, but since they weren't accepted as "really" white, they could never blend in completely. In short, they felt conflicted in their identities as decorous Southerners versus activist Jews.
"It's all very complicated," explains Jewish filmmaker Mike DeWitt, speaking during a recent phone interview from his home in New York. "There are many factors -- fear, self-preservation, denial -- that influence people. There is no simple way to explain what people did and why, and that is why the film doesn't really offer any pat explanations," adds the writer/producer/director, who is now working on an HBO series on American history and whose work on "Race to the Moon: The Tragedy of Apollo One" was nominated for an Emmy.
As for "Delta Jews," DeWitt was instrumental in getting the film funding and sponsorship from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, the Missippi Humanities Council and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
While working on this documentary, DeWitt discovered that an average of one lynching occurred every month in Mississippi at the turn of the century -- for four decades straight. "That is hard to fathom," DeWitt concedes. "This was around the time when most of the first Jews were coming to the Delta. So even though not one of the victims, as far as I know, was Jewish, that had to send a strong message about what kind of place they had come to."
And the Jews who moved there adopted a complex survival strategy. "Many of these people grew up believing both in the idea of equality -- and the idea of segregation. This seems strange to us, but we have to understand [these] people based on the times they lived in."
"Delta Jews" also chronicles the preservation of a cultural heritage. Many Southern Jews went to great extremes to follow at least some of their beloved traditions. "In a place where pork, barbecued shrimp and crawfish are considered staples -- where even vegetables like collard greens are cooked in pork -- you were definitely setting yourself apart (and, I imagine, frequently going hungry) if you were at all strict about what you ate," DeWitt explains.
Inevitably, Jews in the Delta region, in an effort to blend into the South, became more Reform. The shifts from Orthodox to Reform are perhaps merely a testament to the success of the community’s assimilation: a pro-active evolution.
"The young families that remain in the Delta have grown up going to Jewish summer camps and going to college with Jews from different places, and [they] have started wanting some more traditional activities and rituals," DeWitt explains. "Until recently, kids did not have bar mitzvahs. It just wasn't done. In some ways, the community is even more traditional now."
"Delta Jews" also shows that young Jewish adults – like young people from other religious and ethnic backgrounds -- leave the area eager to pursue greater educational, occupational and social opportunities. In many ways, this film is a bittersweet eulogy to the vanishing of a uniquely cohesive Jewish community.
In addition, this documentary spotlights the burden felt by the 300 who remain knowing that their community’s Jewish heritage could end with their family. "They understand their responsibility and they rise to the occasion," DeWitt explains. "It’s nothing particularly grand -- just keeping their synagogue open,…making their presence known. They have passed along a strong sense of Jewish identity and responsibility to their children who -- though they will probably leave the Delta -- will carry it with them to Atlanta or Austin or Los Angeles or wherever they go."
DeWitt, who found that working on the film made him "feel more connected" to Judaism and to other Jews, acknowledges that he is merely a chronicler. "This film…is not a call to action to save something. [Rather] it [documents] for posterity a way of life that thrived during a fascinating period of time under a unique set of circumstances that presented complex moral choices to those who lived it."
Heather Hale is a freelance writer who contributes to The Orange County
Register, The Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Tribune, Kansai Time Out
(Japan) and HollywoodLitSales.com. Her script, "Quadroon Ball," set to star
Vanessa L. Williams, will air on Lifetime this fall. Heather also wrote
several episodes for the Emmy-winning PBS telecourse, "Personal Finance."
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