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'Tis the Season (still)
Sukkot is Wrapping Up
| We've had a wonderful Sukkot so far this year in our Sukkah-on-the-Roof. We celebrated with museum members during our Shabbat Sips in the Sukkah, welcomed visitors and neighbors to Lunch & Lounge in our sukkah, and made Louisiana-themed luvavs with local artist Hannah Chalew. At five stories up, we think we have the "tallest" sukkah in town. Big thanks to the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans for supporting our rooftop sukkah this year! | L-R: MSJE membership manager Cindy Smith, Diana and Chip Mann, MSJE curator Michael Jacobs, and Sean Scanlan pose in our rooftop sukkah during our Sips in the Sukkah members' event. This year's sukkah was themed by Hannah Chalew. | |
'Tis the Season (stiiill)
Simchat Torah is Coming
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Simchat Torah celebrates the renewal of the annual Torah reading cycle. Jews are commanded to read the Torah (Five Books of Moses) throughout their lives. On Simchat Torah, congregations around the world ceremoniously read the final verses of the last book of the Torah (Deuteronomy) and the first verses of the first book (Genesis) without pausing to take a breath, symbolizing continuity and the cyclical nature of our lives. It's a joyous holiday, complete with music, dancing, and sweet treats for the children.
(Photo: Congregants of Beth Shalom in Baton Rouge dance with the Torah in 2019)
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Hey Kids... let's have some fun!
Southern Jewish Halloween Costume Ideas
| Yes, yes, we know that Halloween is not a Jewish holiday. But from its Celtic pagan roots to its Christian evolution to its modern-day celebration of plastic pumpkins filled with "fun-sized" candy bars, Halloween has long been embraced by people of all backgrounds. So why not show off your Southern Jewish pride this year with one of these costume ideas (all of which can be found in our exhibits)?! | | |
Wrestler!
An iceberg sank the Titanic, but a Goldberg sank countless opponents in the wrestling ring. Bill Goldberg, born, raised, and bar mitzvahed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, proudly used his last name as his pro-wresting moniker, while he impressively racked up championships and awards and a legion of fans.
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Judge!
No one will object to this costume especially if it is inspired by Notorious RBG. Although Ruth Bader Ginsberg wasn't Southern, this imaginative likeness of her was proudly paraded through the streets of New Orleans by the Jewish Mardi Gras Krewe du Mishigas. (That's doubling the non-Jewish holiday.)
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Cowboy!
Yippee-kai-yay! If the wild west calls out to you, why not dress as Ernst Kohlberg, who opened the first cigar factory in Texas in 1886. Ernst went on to become a city alderman, a hotel owner, founder of El Paso Electric Light Co, and organizer of the city's Mount Sinai Jewish congregation in 1898.
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Anita Goldberg Zucker
A Legacy of Resilience
Thursday, Oct. 8, 6:00 p.m. Central | Virtual
Join us virtually to hear from Anita Goldberg Zucker, daughter of Holocaust survivors Carl and Rose Goldberg, as she shares their remarkable story of surviving the Holocaust. From Ludmir, Poland, and escaping the ghetto there, to being split up – Rose to lead her family through the Polish forest and Carl to join the partisans – to being reunited after the war. They moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1949, where they grew their family and their community. Anita will share their story of resilience and how that resilience shaped their lives and her own on Thursday, October 8, at 6:00 p.m. Central on Zoom.
This program is part of MSJE’s programming series for the special exhibition, Holocaust Survivors in a New Land: The New Americans Social Club of New Orleans, expanding our understanding of the survivors who became New Americans and formed new communities.
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Book Talk with Stuart Green
Co-author of The Rebbe of Baton Rouge
Thursday, October 29, 6:00 p.m. Central
Book-signing to follow
Stuart Green and MSJE executive director Kenneth Hoffman will be in conversation to discuss Stuart’s new book, The Rebbe of Baton Rouge, and Jewish life in that city.
About the Book:
A disgraced professor. A lovesick rabbi. A meddlesome ghost.
The Rebbe of Baton Rouge is funny, absorbing, and twisty. A genre-bending, Yiddish-infused, Southern Lit rom-com that digs deep into the dynamics of this proud but vulnerable community—their rivalries and friendships; pettiness and generosity; faith and skepticism; insecurities and sense of solidarity.
About the Author:
Stuart P. Green is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University, currently a visiting professor at Columbia Law School, and the author of several leading books on the philosophy of criminal law. He co-authored The Rebbe of Baton Rouge with his wife, the writer and painter Jennifer Anne Moses, whose many books include her memoir, Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou. After raising their three children largely in Baton Rouge, Stuart and Jennifer moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where they now live with their two bad dogs.
The event will also be live-streamed on Zoom.
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Did You Miss It?
Nicholas Lemann "Returns" to New Orleans
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MSJE was proud to host Nicholas Lemann, author of the recently-published, "Returning: A Search For Home Across Three Centuries," with Touro Synagogue and Tulane Jewish Studies on September 28. Originally scheduled to take place at the museum, the program was moved to Touro when pre-registrations went through the roof!
Along with Rabbi Katie Bauman, of Touro, our executive director, Kenneth Hoffman, posed questions to Lemann about his family's history in Donaldsonville and New Orleans, his research processes, the evolution in his Jewish practices, and his thoughts on Jewish and Southern identity at this inflection point in our history.
Museum members were treated to a pre-event reception, and Nick gave generously of his time following the program, signing books and greeting friends old and new. If you haven't read the book yet, what are you waiting for?!
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Artifacts of the Month
Sis-Boom-Bah... Go Team!
| | | It's football season again, and across the South fans are pulling school colors out of closets. This month's artifact is one of those pieces: a red cardigan with a large "M" on the front, worn by Robert Louis "Mooch" Marcus, a Jewish cheerleader from Jonestown, Mississippi, who attended Ole Miss from 1944 to 1948. His daughter, Denny Marcus, donated it to the museum along with his yearbooks, a megaphone patch, and a cap he was still wearing decades later. | | |
Mooch came to Oxford by a hard road. Born on January 7, 1926, he was thirteen when he broke his neck and spent a year recovering in Memphis, Tennessee. At seventeen, he enlisted in the Navy and shipped out to the Pacific as a medical corpsman during WWII. His destroyer was hit, and he was sent home to California, injured, to recuperate.
Once recovered, he started at the University of Mississippi, where his yearbooks show him involved in nearly everything on campus.
| | | He was on the dance committee and the intramural council, on the staff of the yearbook and the campus magazine, and in Phi Epsilon Pi, a predominantly Jewish fraternity. Above all, they find him on the sidelines, first as a cheerleader and eventually as head cheerleader, leading the crowd in Hemingway Stadium on fall Saturdays. That sideline work also brought him into the Ole Miss "M" Club, which recognized varsity athletes and, in its own words, promoted school spirit. Its page in the 1948 yearbook lists "Mooch Marcus" among the members, and according to his family, he was the first cheerleader ever admitted. | | | |
The sweater itself offers a second thread of Southern Jewish history. Its label reads Alex Loeb Inc., Athletic Goods, Meridian, Miss., a store Alex Loeb opened in 1887 and one of the Jewish-owned businesses that shaped that city's downtown. Across Mississippi in those years, Jewish merchants were a fixture of Main Street, and clothing was their specialty, so it is fitting that a Jewish cheerleader's sweater came off the rack of a Jewish clothier.
Alongside the sweater came a blue patch shaped like a megaphone, "Rebels" stitched across the top in red script. At its center is Colonel Reb, the mustached, broad-hatted figure who was the Ole Miss mascot for decades. The Colonel appears in the donation a second time, in his best-known form: the widely recognized version debuted in full color on the cover of the 1946-1947 yearbook, one of four volumes Denny gave the museum. Long after Mooch's student days, in 2003, the university removed Colonel Reb as its official mascot, amid concerns about the character's association with the Old South and slavery.
| | | By then Mooch had been gone from Oxford for more than half a century. In 1954, he married Letty Lichtenstein, and the two settled in Birmingham, where he worked at Marcus Wholesale Dry Goods and belonged to Temple Emanu-El. Ole Miss stayed with him, though. His family remembered his colorful wardrobe and his unwavering support for Rebel football, and the blue mesh cap in the donation, with its interlocking "UM" and Colonel Reb, is a piece of both. | Questions about donating an item to MSJE? Find answers here. | | | MSJE is on the Road to Atlanta | |
An evening hosted by Jay Tanenbaum, MSJE chair, Deborah Jacobs, board member, & Kenneth Hoffman, executive director, with special guest Marcie Cohen Ferris (also a board member).
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We'll be in Atlanta on Wednesday, October 14, at The Dupree, greeting old friends, making new ones, and sharing the latest news and initiatives from the museum (including ways to get involved). If you're in the Atlanta area, we'd love to see you!
6:00 p.m.
Cocktails, Noshing, & Conversation
(Kosher style by Added Touch)
6:45 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Presentations and Q&A
| Have Questions? Email kenneth@msje.org | | | |
October Store Special
Jewish Wisdom Ball
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Be the life of your next party with The Jewish Wisdom Ball!
The Jewish Wisdom Ball® is a fun Jewish take on the classic Magic 8 Ball®. Ask the ball a yes-or-no question, shake it, and flip it over to reveal one of 20 hilarious answers, steeped in the wisdom and humor of our heritage.
Answers include:
- So now you need my help?
- Feh
- Better you shouldn’t ask
- Why not?
- You call that a question?
- You should be so lucky!
- You even need to ask?
- You could do worse
The Jewish Wisdom Ball is a perfect party game for all your Jewish gatherings.
| Use the code SHMOOZE10 to 10% off the Jewish Wisdom Ball all October. | | |
The Museum Store is dedicated by Harold Wainer in memory of
George & Helen Wainer and Harriet Wainer Kugler.
| | This Month in Southern Jewish History | | |
LOUISIANA: October 1, 1958
Ground is broken for the building of the Kaplan Memorial Hospital, a 30-bed public facility in Kaplan, a town started by Polish Jewish immigrant Abrom Kaplan in 1902. The town's mayor served as master of ceremonies. Kaplan, who died in 1944, had developed land, established local banks and credit unions, and financed the excavation of irrigation canals. Most significantly, he developed a flood control method to keep salt water out of the bayous, allowing the rice-growing industry to thrive across southwestern Louisiana.
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NORTH CAROLINA: October 2, 1981
Harry Golden dies at his home in Charlotte. Golden published and penned the contents of The Carolina Israelite newspaper from 1942-1968, and counted among his subscribers Harry Truman, William Faulkner, and his good friend Carl Sandburg. Golden was a prolific writer of often-satirical social commentary, publishing books of his essays, including "Only In America" and "For 2¢ Plain." He once wrote, “The Southern Jew of the city lives in constant fear of someone’s passing an anti-Semitic remark ‘to his face.’”
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GEORGIA: October 12, 1958
The Temple in Atlanta is bombed. Someone placed enough dynamite against the building to cause 100,000-200,000 worth of damage. As the explosion occurred at 3:30am, no one was injured. A number of white supremacists were arrested, one was tried, but none was convicted. Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was a supporter of civil rights for African Americans, often drawing the ire of and threats from militant segregationists. The following day, Atlanta mayor William Hartsfield (pictured) condemned the bombing while visiting the site.
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TEXAS: October 23, 1976
On Episode 5 of the second season of Saturday Night Live, Kinky Friedman performs as the musical guest. Friedman, who grew up in Kerrville where his parents ran a Jewish summer camp, sang the song Dear Abby by John Prine. Steve Martin was the show's host. Friedman made a career as a musician, social commentator, writer, and political campaigner. His band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys made fun of western stereotypes with satirical songs.
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MISSISSIPPI: October 27, 1936
The Clarksdale Press Register's society page includes mentions of both Jewish and Syrian Ladies Club meetings. These types of notices are found in newspapers throughout the Mississippi Delta, revealing a diversity in the population that comes as a surprise to many. While predominantly a region of cotton farming, the Delta long attracted a diverse group of immigrants, each of whom added their unique skills, contributions, and cultures to an already unique part of the South. General stores, restaurants, and groceries were often owned by immigrants or their progeny.
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SOUTH CAROLINA: October 30, 1917
New York City names the Riverton St. Bathhouse for Dr. Simon Baruch, who spent years advocating for public health and the building of baths and pools for the city's poor. A native of Camden, SC, Baruch had been a surgeon for the Confederacy and later relocated to New York, becoming a renowned public health expert.
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LOUISIANA: October 31, 1948
The Milton H. Latter Memorial Library is officially dedicated. Earlier that year, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Latter had purchased the St. Charles Avenue mansion with the intention of donating it to the city for use as a library. They named it after their son, Milton, who, as a first lieutenant, was killed on Okinawa on April 27, 1945. As part of the New Orleans Public Library system, the Latter Library serves as a reminder of the Southern Jewish contribution to the city and to our nation.
| | Shalom. Make yourself at home.℠ | | ☞ Know someone who likes to shmooze and would like to receive The Southern Shmooze? Share this sign-up link with them: msje.org/contact/. And they can enjoy past issues of our newsletter here: https://www.msje.org/blog. | | |
Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience
818 Howard Avenue | New Orleans, LA 70113
msje.org | 504-384-2480
| | Banner images (l-r): Members of Congregation Beth Israel in Clarksdale, MS, c.1920. Collection of Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience; Blue Star campers, North Carolina, 2016. Courtesy of Blue Star Camps. | | | | |
