Description:
In Homelands, Leonard Rogoff presents a richly textured history of Jewish life in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, tracing how immigrant Jews navigated the cultural tensions between Southern tradition and Jewish heritage. Through oral histories, archival research, and cultural analysis, Rogoff reveals how these communities balanced assimilation with distinctiveness, contributing to the civic and economic life of the region while preserving their religious and ethnic identities. This compelling study offers a nuanced portrait of identity formation, community resilience, and the evolving meaning of "home" in the American South.
Review Quotes: "Homelands is the best monograph published thus far detailing the life cycle of small southern Jewish communities. Separating myth from reality, the book does a marvelous job intertwining changes in community identity and demographics and providing insights into contemporary concerns for group continuity. This is a model community study."
--Mark K. Bauman, editor of Southern Jewish History