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“Ethos” refers to the complex of beliefs, standards, and ideas that characterize a group As used by laypersons, the concept is actually quite similar to the sociological concept of “culture” but usually also implies an additional “solidity” or “mystique” not implied by the sociologist’s usage of “culture” “Mystique” implies not only that there is a complex of beliefs, standards, and ideas, but that this complex is unfathomable to outsiders and perhaps even to insiders See Howard Zinn,The Southern Mystique (New York. Simon and Schuster, 1964), Tom Mathews and others, “The Southern Mystique,”Newsweek, July 19, 1976, pp 30-33, and Ernest van den Haag,The Jewish Mystique (New York Dell Publishing Co, Inc, 1969)
“Culture” has a number of meanings, but in broad sociological terms refers to “the changing patterns of shared, learned behavior that humans have developed as a result of their group experiences” See David C King and Marvin R Roller,Foundations of Sociology (San Francisco Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974), p 46 Subgroups within cultural group which differ on some traits, and which have an identity as a specific subgroup as well as a part of the larger cultural group, are referred to as “subcultures” In this sense, the southern subculture is a part of a larger American culture, the Jewish subculture part of a larger Jewish culture Whether a group is aculture or a subculture to some extent depends on one’s point of departure One could speak of a southern “culture” and a southern Jewish “subculture,” but that is not the thesis of this paper
There are a number of typologies descnbing these possible interactions See, for example, William M Newman,American Pluralism (New York Harper and Row, 1973)
This point has been made by several writers See Leonard Dinnerstein, “A Note on Southern Attitudes Toward Jews,” Jewish Social Studies 32 (January 1970), pp 43-49, Alfred O Hero, Jr, “Southern Jews, Race Relations, and ForeignPolicy,“ Jewish Social Studies 27(October 1965), and John Shelton Reed, “Needles in Haystacks Studying ‘Rare’ Populations by Secondary Analysis of National Sample Surveys,”Public Opinion Quarterly 39 (Winter 1975-76)
WJ Cash,The Mind of the South (New York AlfredA Knopf, 1941), Lewis M Killian,White Southerners (New York Random House, 1970)
See, for example, Willie Morns,North Toward Home (New York Dell Publishing Co, 1967) andYazoo (New York Ballantine Books, 1971)
William Faulkner’s books are numerous and will not be listed here For Thomas Wolfe, see especiallyYou Can’t Go Home Again andThe Hills Beyond (New York Harper and Brothers, 1941)
William D Workman, Jr.,The Case for the South (New York Devm-Adair Company, 1960), p 2
—, pp 3–4
Lillian Smith,Killers of the Dream (New York WW Norton & Co, 1949), p 79
—, p 70
James McBride Dabbs,Who Speaks for the South? (New York Funk and Wagnalls Company, Inc, 1964), p 85
Smith,Killers of the Dream, p 83
Samuel S Hill, Jr, and others,Religion and the Solid South (Nashville Abingdon Press, 1972), p 25
Wallace M Alston, Jr, and Wayne Flynt, “Religion in the Land of Cotton,” in H Brandt Ayers and Thomas H Naylor (with an introduction by Willie Morris), editors,You Can’t Eat Magnolias (New York McGraw-Hill, 1972), p 102
—, pp 101 and 111
—, p 107
Dabbs,Who Speaks for the South?, p 89
Ibid, p 90
Alston and Flynt, “Religion in the Land of Cotton,” p 107
Ibid, p 104
Robert Sam Anson, “Looking for Jimmy A Journey Through the South, Rising,”New Times, August 6, 1976, p 34 Of the large number of popular-magazine articles on the South since Jimmy Carter’s rise to national prominence, this is one of the best This was a special issue devoted to the south
Morns,North Toward Home, p 21
James W Vander Zanden,Race Relations in Transition (New York Random House, 1965), p 23
Workman,The Case for the South, p 2
Hill,Religion and the Solid South, p 25
Anson, “Looking for Jimmy,” p 21
Thomas D Clark,The Emerging South (New York Oxford University Press, 1961), p 138
Billy Spigner, “Ramblin” Round Clarendon Farewell Betsy, Sorry About That,”Manning Times, Manning, South Carolina, August 15, 1973, pp 1 and 4
Clark,The Emerging South, p 7
Anson, “Looking for Jimmy,” p 25
Workman,The Case for the South, p 10
Cash,The Mind of the South, p 305
Ibid, p 342
Alston and Flynt, “Religion in the Land of Cotton,” p 115
Norman H Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R Petrocik,The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, Mass Harvard University Press, 1976)
For individual examples, see Brooks Hays,A Southern Moderate Speaks (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1959), and Charles Longstreet Weltner,Southerner (Philadelphia J B Lippincott Company, 1966) For a more general discussion see V O Key, Jr,Southern Politics (New York Alfred A Knopf, 1949), and Jack Bass and Walter De VriesThe Transformation of Southern Politics (New York Basic Books, 1976) The latter book notes recent changes, but also indicates strong opposition by most southern white Protestants
Leonard, Dinnerstein, “Introduction,” in Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson, editors,Jews in the South (Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press), P 3
Rudolf Glanz, “The Spread of Jewish Communities Through America Before the Civil War,”Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Sciences 15 (1974), p 38
Alvin Chenkin, “Jewish Population in the United States, 1974,” in Morris Fine and Milton Himmelfarb, editors,American Jewish Yearbook (New York American Jewish Committee, 1976), pp 229–238
Abraham D Lavender,“Disadvantages of Minority Group Membership The Perspective of a ‘Nondeprived’ Minority Group,”Ethnicity 2 (March 1975), pp 99-119
For a bnef discussion of this, see Abraham D Lavender, “The Sephardic Revival in the United States A Case of Ethnic Revival in a Minonty-Witmn-A-Minority,”Journal of Ethnic Studies 3 (Fall 1975), pp 21-31
Scott Cummings and Richard Bnggs, “Catholic and Jewish Immigrants and American Politics An Historical Analysis of the Roots of Urban Liberalism,” paper delivered by the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, September 2, 1976, New York City This paper utilized data from the 1972 election study conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan
Mark R Levy and Michael S Kramer,The Ethnic Factor How America’s Minorities Decide Elections (New York Simon and Schuster, 1973) See pp 95–121, “The Jews Forever Liberal Wherever They Are”
See Lucy S Dawidowicz and Leon S Goldstein, “The American Jewish Liberal Tradition,” in Marshall Sklare, editor,The Jewish Community in America (New York Behrman House, 1974), p 299, and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Intergroup Relations The Changing Situation of American Jewry,“ also inThe Jewish Community, p 334
Benjamin B Ringer, “Jewish-Gentile Relations in Lakeville,” inThe Jewish Community, p 343
Levy and Kramer,The Ethnic Factor, pp 95–121
Gerhard Lenski,The Religious Factor (New York Doubleday and Company, 1961)
Marian K Slater, “My Son the Doctor Aspects of Mobility Among American Jews,”American Sociological Review 34 (June 1969), pp 359–373
Lawrence H Fuchs,The Political Behavior of American Jews (Glencoe, Ill The Free Press, 1956), p 179
Nathan Glazer, “The New Left and the Jews,” in Sklare,The Jewish Community in America, p 307
Marshall Sklare,America’s Jews (New York Random House, 1971), p 87
Charles S Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” in Sklare,The Jewish Community in America, p 140
Fuchs,The Political Behavior of American Jews, p 183
Clyde B McCoy and Jerome A Wolfe, “A Comparison of Jewish and Non-Jewish Addicts in Institutional Treatment Programs,”Jewish Sociology and Social Research 2 (Spring/Summer 1976), pp 10-15, and Joel Fort and Christopher Cory,American Drugstore (Boston Little, Brown and Company, 1975), p. 24
Jon P Alston, “Review of the Polls Attitudes Toward Extramarital and Homosexual Relations,”Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 13 (December 1974), pp 479–481
Sidney Goldstein and Calvin Goldscheider,Jewish Americans (Englewood Cliffs, N J Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1968), pp 101–136
Dabbs,Who Speaks for the South?, p 90
Milton Himmelfarb, “Secular Society? A Jewish Perspective,” in William G McLoughlin and Robert N. Bellah, editors,Religion in America (Boston Beacon Press, 1966), p 283
Although they do not discuss this specific issue, see Charles H Mindel and Robert W Habenstein, editors,Ethnic Families in America (New York Elsevier, 1976), for a general discussion of “ethnic” versus “WASP” values This book covers fifteen ethnic groups, and is one of the best readers available The specific “Jewish-Ethnic-WASP” continuum suggested by this writer (Lavender) is in need of further research
Richard Reeves, “IsJimmyCarter Good for the Jews?,”New York, May 24, 1976, p 12
Note three implications here (1) the Jews of that time are to blame, (2) “Jews” today share that blame; and (3) Jews will not be forgiven for this “blame” until they stop being Jewish Figures are from Charles Y Glock and Rodney Stark,Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago Rand McNally, 1965)
Harry Golden,Travels Through Jewish America (Garden City, N Y Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1973), p 174
—
Bill Walker, as told to Muriel Larson, “Conversion Results from Prayer,”Manning Times, Manning, South Carolina, May 26, 1976, p 8A
Eli N Evans,The Provincials A Personal History of Jews in the South (New York Atheneum, 1973), p 124
Killian,White Southerners, p 80
Tom P Brady,Black Monday (Winona, Mississippi Association of Citizens’ Councils, 1954), p 57
Alfred O. Hero, Jr, “Southern Jews,” in Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson,Jews in the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), pp. 217–250.
Anonymous, “A Jewish View on Segregation, published by the Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, Greenwood, Mississippi, undated, p. 9
Allen Krause, “Rabins and Negro Rights in the South, 1954–1967, ” in Dinnerstein and Palsson, editors,Jews in the South, p. 363.
Hays,A Southern Moderate Speaks, p 3
C. Vann Woodward, “W.J Cash Reconsidered,”New York Review of Books. December 4. 1969, p. 28
Bass and De Vries,The Transformation of Southern Politics
Morris,Yazoo, p 148
Evans,The Provincials, p x
This statement refers to beliefs regarding Judaism In actual practice, the southern Jew has been influenced by the southern emphasis on religion For example, “Southern Jews have been more inclined than Northern ones to be affiliated with and active in synagogues, as part of the general Southern involvement in organized religion the rabbi has been a more central figure in most Southern Jewish communities than in most Reform groups in the North.” See Hero, “Southern Jews, inJews in the South, p 246
For example, see Benjamin Kaplan,The Eternal Strong er A Study of Jewish Life in the Small Community (New York Bookman Associates, 1957)
Hero, “Southern Jews, Race Relations, and Foreign Policy,” p 230
Theodore Lowi, “Southern Jews The Two Communities,” in Dinnerstein and Palsson, editors,Jews in the South, p 277
Dabbs,Who Speaks for the South?, p x
Nathan Perimutter, “Bombing in Miami Anti-Semitism and the Segregationists,”Commentary 25 (June 1958), pp 498–503
Vander Zanden,Race Relations in Transition, p 13
For example, see Robert Sam Anson, “Looking for Jimmy,”New Times, August 6, 1976, pp 18–66; Tom Mathews and others, “The Southern Mystique,” pp 30-33, Susan Fraker and others, “Carter and the Blacks,” p 29, and Joseph B Cumming, Jr, “Plains Tries to Adjust,” p. 32, all inNewsweek, July 19, 1976, Richard Reeves, “Is Jimmy Carter Good for the Jews,”New York, May 24, 1976, pp 10 and 12, and Johnny Greene, “The Dixie Smile,” Warper’s, September 1976, pp 14, 18-19
Haynes, Johnson, “South Now Ideological Heart of GOP,”Washington Post, August 18, 1976, p A8
In discussing the relative nonactivism by southern Jews on behalf of southern Black civil rights, it is necessary for perspective to note that southern Jews have often not stood up for their own civil rights out of their fear As Hero as noted,” Jews in some communities have been willing to declare themselves against irresponsible views only when under direct attack themselves—they have bees afraid even to criticize overt anti-Semitism by racists” “Southern Jews,” p 248
Most of the cocern expressed so far has been with the southern influence on Jews, other than with Jewish influence on the South This is to be expected, considering the comparative size and influence of each There are indications of Jewish influence on the South. As Evans and others have shown, one of the strongest characteristics of the southern Jew has been his cosmopolitanism—his contacts with individuals and media from outside the region. As Hero notes, “The presence of a few Jewish families has helped to limit the natural provincialism and ignorance of ideas from outside of many southern towns and to make life more tolerable for the few Gentiles of similarly board horizons” “Southern Jews,” p.249; also see p.220 for a discussion of “ The Most Cosmopolitan Southern Ethnic Group.” This role of “mediator with the outside world and distributors of culture from the outside world” is a role the Jewish community has often played in history—sometimes to its
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, 1977
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Lavender, A.D. Shalom y’ all: Accent on Southern jewry. Cont Jewry 3, 39–53 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02968034
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02968034