Shalom, ya'll

Unfortunately, the photos and video will have to come later. I'm having problems with them, and we're on such a tight schedule that I don't have time to mess with them.

The greeting above was given to us by the president of the congregation of the Jewish Reform Temple in Greenville, Mississippi. He actually refers to the building as a "church."

There have been Jews in the Delta since the 1820's, but most didn't come until after the civil war. One small town had both an Orthodox and a Conservative congregation. We watched a documentary and some local Jews claimed they had never experienced anti-Semitism and they consider themselves Southern first, and Jewish second-- although most of them appear to want, to the point of insisting, that their children marry other Jews.

The Dutch dinner. The congregation in Greenville has a big fundraising dinner every year. It's so big that member of local churches have to help them put in on. The special food is ordered from Chicago and, from all the newspapers accounts, it appears to be a well-loved ritual in this small town that was once known as "The Queen of the Delta." Of course, the menu is actually German, the meat ordered from a German butcher, because "Deutsch" was heard as Dutch, and besides, everybody hated the Germans, anyway. I don't know how many of the happy diners know the truth about the origins of their fool

Although all of the Jews I heard speak downplayed any antisemitism as much as possible (and I heard resentment expressed towards the Jewish young people who came down from up north to help with the civil rights movement), I have to wonder. Two temples were bombed in Mississippi during those violent times, one of them in Jackson. How could that not have frightened them. It sounds too much to me like the Jews who stayed too late in Germany, believing that their assimilation would save them. I don't have the right to judge, I know that. They were in a precarious situation. And, in the end, it turned out all right for them. This time, at least.

The Jews are finally leaving the Delta, as the children go off to colleges and become professionals and then move to urban areas. The congregations grow smaller each year.