Description
Book SynopsisDaughters of Israel, Daughters of the South: Southern Jewish Women and Identity in the Antebellum and Civil War South examines southern Jewish womanhood during the Antebellum and Civil War Eras. This study finds that in the Protestant South southern Jewish women created and maintained unique American Jewish identities through their efforts in education, writing, religious observance, paid and unpaid labour, and relationships with whites and African-American slaves This book examines how these women creatively fought proselytisation, challenged anti- Semitism, maintained a distinctive southern Judaism, promoted their own status and legitimacy as southerners, and worked diligently as Confederate ambassadors.
Trade Review“. . . Stollman’s impressive command of the existing primary sources and secondary literature. . . offer[s] an intriguing addition to the historiography of the (upper-class) Jewish American experience before 1865. Stollman clearly shows that Judaism remained a part of her subjects’ private—and sometimes public—lives in the antebellum South.” -- Anders Bo Rasmussen, University of Southern Denmark * American Studies, Vol. 53, no. 2 *
“Stollman has written what may be the first monograph exclusively focused on Jewish women in the antebellum South. Arguing that Jewish women in this region encountered particular pressures, including a powerful undercurrent of anti-Semitism that she contends other historians have underplayed, Stollman focuses on their efforts to defend and advance their identities as Jews and as Southerners. The author challenges what she describes as the regnant declension narrative that emphasizes religious and cultural assimilation among Southern Jewish women. . . . two chapters in particular present fresh perspectives: one on the relationship between Jewish women and slaves, and another on their voluntarism during the Civil War.” -- A. Mendelsohn, College of Charleston * CHOICE (November 2013) *
