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Someone also asked if we still refered to the civil war as the war of Northern confliction, but I kicked his arse

Coming from a somewhat Jewish southerner...I have to laugh...

Miss Jennie made fun of me just earlier for bein' a southerner! She don't know nothin' bout me though! blaugh

Our temple has never had fried chicken I don't think...but for the most part, the Jews around here are from up north, they just had to move down here because they work for Wal Mart, are retiring, or a couple of other reasons. Of course, my neck of the woods isn't so southern to begin with.

However...I SAY Y'ALL AND I'M PROUD! xp

I normally get made fun of though. redface

I live in Nashville, which has a pretty old Jewish community. Jews began coming here in the 1840s, and they were mostly Reform German Jews. Our first Temple was built sometime in the 1860s. Some Jews fought here during the Civil War, on both sides. Russian Jews started coming here around the turn of the century and were mostly poor and lived in the ghetto part of town (which is ironically the area I live in now, although it's no longer a slum). They were mostly Orthodox and by the time they arrived, they weren't as assimiliated as the German Jews. We also had a Jewish newspaper that ran from the 20s or 30s to the late 70s.

I wrote an entire research paper on Jewish Nashville in the 40s and 50s. From what I found, Jews are the reason why Nashville grew from such a podunk little town into the city it is today, because they lived downtown after Reconstruction when others were moving out of the central city, and they kept the city alive by establishing businesses there. Several of the buildings downtown (where I live now, LOL) have Jewish names on them, like Cohen and Friedman.

The Ryman auditorium used to have an Orthodox synagogue right next to it. xd I read one rabbi's account of how some tourists who came for the Grand Ol Opry once went next door to the synagogue afterwards, because they could hear the cantor inside, and they wanted to "hear his singing".

Also, I need to contact a genealogist, but I suspect my great-grandmother is Jewish (which would make me ethnically Jewish, since she's my maternal great-grandmother). A friend of mine says that Galveston had a sizeable Jewish community, since there is a port there, and she was born near there in Houston, so it's likely.

Most port cities in the South had Jewish communities, because most Jews didn't migrate far after they arrived here. (That's why New York is so Jewish.) Savannah, Georgia was one of those places, it's actually one of the oldest Jewish communities in the nation -- Sephardi Jews started moving there in the late 17th century.

I'm a Southern Jew, too!
So glad to see the rest 'o y'all singin' yo pride. lol

You wanna talk about living deep in the bible belt, I'm there. sweatdrop
I'm from da bayou!

Chai, y'all!

Yep, I'm Southern and Jewish. There is a VERY SMALL Jewish community in my home state. Unfortunately there is no Chabad house, and there aren't any Orthodox synagogues in the state as far as I could find. I couldn't find a mikvah there either, so during one visit with family, I immersed in a lake. It's nearly impossible to find kosher food. There are, as far as I was able to discover, three synagogues in the whole state, and all of them are quite far away from where my family members live. The nearest, I believe, was about 60 miles, and it's Reform (I'm Orthodox). The nearest Chabad house is over 300 miles away.

Almost every time I go there, someone asks me whether I'm on a diet, because I always bring my own food for a week-long visit. Or someone asks me if I have cancer, because I wear a snood or other hair covering at all times. People are very, very friendly and welcoming, and they figure this makes it okay to ask questions. I don't mind the questions, actually, because I meet some interesting people that way, but sometimes they're awfully personal. A total stranger once asked me whether it was true that Jews have marital relations through a hole in a sheet! (Which... no, we don't, but was that her business?) And people say to me all the time, "Oh, I have a friend who's Jewish and she doesn't do _______." Well, that's nice, ma'am, but Jewish law requires it, so I do it, even if your friend doesn't.

There are so many rumors about the South, most of them involving bigotry or stupidity, but I can tell you after living more than half of my life outside the South that those things are no more a defining characteristic of the South than of anywhere else. Every place has its bigots, its idiots, and its shining examples of true compassion and integrity.

? So what southern states does everybody live in?


And agreed with Yoni, by the way. 3nodding

I'll show my Arkansas pride.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PIG SOOIE!

biggrin Anyone interested in southern college football should know my team!