Eli Evans and the Jews of the South (24 cents)

Author Eli Evans spoke on the Jews of the South at the DC JCC last night, as part of the Nextbook series, and I have to say I was disappointed. Evans has written a number of books abouth Jews in southern communities, as well as a biography of Judah Benjamin, the first Jewish U.S. Senator and the Confederacy's Secretary of State. He does a lot of lecturing around the country. I had great hopes.

But his talk was primarily anecdotal, stories about his grandfather, his father, his brother, and people he has met along the way, and while they were sometimes amusing and moderately interesting, I don't think that they imparted much in the way of new knowledge. And when speaking of broader trends in today's south and with regard to its Jewish community, he was, I thought, fairly hackneyed, and did not demonstrate any significant depth in his thinking.

Not that the evening was a waste; it was just disappointing.

He did bring out some points which resonated, however. He has not lived in the south since he left Yale Law School 42 years ago, although he has devoted much of that time to his subject, and is obviously an expert in this field. When his son was born in New York City, he carried a bag of North Carolina soil into the delivery room, so his son would not be all Yankee. In fact, his son chose to go to UNC, leading his wife (she from Alabama; he from North Carolina) to suggest that the bag must have worked. Evans says that, wherever he lives or goes, he always carries his southern upbringing with him, and he believes that to be unique.

I am not sure how unique that is. As a native of St. Louis, who has lived in Washington DC for over 35 years, I still consider myself a St. Louisan, and consider that my world view was set by my upbringing in the St. Louis Jewish community. This is no different from the way Evans appears to feel. St. Louis is, to some people, the South, and to others, an eastern outpost in the midwest, and to still others, the heartland of the country. I don't know what it is, but it has (or had) its own distinctive personality and social structure. I consider my daughters, who were born in and still live in Washington, D.C., to be from St. Louis, too. And, I was very surprised once, when I said this out loud, that one of them looked at my like I was crazy, and said to me "what did you say?" But I know the truth, even if she did not recognize it.

One of my favorite author (most of the time) is Calvin Trillin, who writes in the New Yorker and is a product of the Kansas City Jewish community. In his "Letters from my Father" (I think that is the name), an extraordinary book, I thought, he tells of raising his daughters in Greenwich Village, but wanting them to in fact be as if they were raised in Kansas City. They too thought he was a little nuts, but I know exactly what he means.