{"id":3817,"date":"2015-05-01T12:54:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T18:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/digitalservices\/?p=3294"},"modified":"2015-05-01T12:54:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T18:54:03","slug":"alabamas-jewish-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/2015\/05\/01\/alabamas-jewish-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama’s Jewish History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you know May is Jewish American Heritage Month<\/a>? You may not: it’s a new commemoration, proclaimed\u00a0by President Bush in 2006.<\/p>\n

Alabama, like much of the South, is not known for having a large Jewish population, yet Jewish Americans have been part of the state’s history from the beginning. According to the\u00a0Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities<\/a><\/em>, Mobile attracted Jewish immigrants in the 1820s, and by the 1840s they flocked to cotton market towns like Montgomery and Selma. Later, in the early 20th century, they settled in\u00a0industrial communities such as Birmingham and Bessemer.<\/p>\n

Like Huntsville and Dothan, Tuscaloosa saw its Jewish population grow\u00a0after the Civil War, as\u00a0the town rebuilt itself. In the late 19th and early 20th century, many Jews in Tuscaloosa were merchants, largely from Hungary or Germany. Businessmen\u00a0Ike\u00a0Friedman and Adolph Holzstein helped establish the\u00a0first congregation\u00a0in Tuscaloosa, Temple Emau-El, in 1903. Prominent Jewish businesses included Bernard Friedman’s Atlanta Store,\u00a0Max\u00a0Pizitz’s Mercantile Company, a clothing store run by Sam Wiesel, a furniture store run by Morris Sokol, and a deli run by the Kartzinel family. By the 1960s and 1970s, though, these businesses\u00a0were declining.<\/p>\n

\"Hillel_Corolla1953\"According to the Encyclopedia<\/em> entry on Tuscaloosa<\/a>, “While the decline of the Jewish merchant class affected many other small Jewish communities, Tuscaloosa has managed to thrive in spite of it due to the presence of the university,” which attracted Jewish faculty and students. UA’s first Hillel House was built in 1934.\u00a0The Rho chapter of sorority\u00a0Sigma Delta Tau<\/a>\u00a0was established in 1935, and fraternity Zeta Beta Tau<\/a> has an even longer history: the Psi chapter was founded at UA in 1916.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0campus Jewish population is smaller now — according to the Bama Hillel website<\/a>,\u00a0“There are over 700 Jewish students at Alabama, and we are growing\u00a0every year!”\u00a0— but it is still active. The Tuscaloosa congregation continues to depend on its ties with the university community, as it meets in a\u00a0new facility on the UA campus, adjacent to the new Bloom Hillel Student Center.<\/p>\n

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Acumen has finding aids for archival collections related to Jews in Alabama:<\/p>\n