That Pride of Race and Character

Zusatztext

<p>It<br>has ever been the boast of the Jewish people, that they support their own poor,<br>declared Kentucky attorney Benjamin Franklin Jonas in 1856. Their reasons are<br>partly founded in religious necessity, and partly in that pride of race and<br>character which has supported them through so many ages of trial and<br>vicissitude. In That Pride of Race and<br>Character, Caroline E. Light examines the American Jewish tradition of<br>benevolence and charity and explores its southern roots.<br><br>Light provides a critical analysis of<br>benevolence as it was inflected by regional ideals of race and gender, showing<br>how a southern Jewish benevolent empire emerged in response to the combined<br>pressures of post-Civil War devastation and the simultaneous influx of eastern<br>European immigration. In an effort to combat the voices of anti-Semitism and<br>nativism, established Jewish leaders developed a sophisticated and cutting-edge<br>network of charities in the South to ensure that Jews took care of those<br>considered their own while also proving themselves to be exemplary white<br>citizens. Drawing from confidential case files and institutional records from<br>various southern Jewish charities, the book relates how southern Jewish leaders<br>and their immigrant clients negotiated the complexities of fitting in in a<br>place and time of significant socio-political turbulence. Ultimately, the<br>southern Jewish call to benevolence bore the particular imprint of the regions<br>racial mores and left behind a rich legacy.</p>

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