Because we could: The history of Jews in Birmingham

First of a new series of posts about the history of Jewish Birmingham

By Zachary Dembo

Most Jewish communities in the United States share a number of customs, traditions, and experiences. While Birmingham is no exception to this, I have noticed one unique experience that seems to be more or less ubiquitous to Jews of our community. I am referring to the startled “There are Jews in Birmingham, Alabama?!” statement often followed with an “Oy — but why?!” 

I get this every time I tell someone where I’m from. 

It’s not hard to understand why people are surprised. With the exception of Atlanta, the vast majority of Jews in America live in coastal cities. In fact, if you look at our census region (east south central), it contains the smallest Jewish population in the United States. As a transplant into this community myself, I have spent the last few years trying to answer “But why?!” 

This is the first installment of a series of blog posts at bhamjcc.org that will attempt to convey what I have learned and that hopefully will shed some light on the history of the special community we have here in the Heart of Dixie. 

So why did Jews travel to the Yellowhammer State and why did they stay? The answer is in pursuit of economic gain, but also because we could.¹ A large portion of the Jewish community of Birmingham’s story is born from Jews’ ability to traverse America without legal restrictions.⁴ Considering how under-appreciated this fact is and, frankly, how astonishing freedom of movement was to newly arrived Jewish immigrants, let’s start there.

A hard life

What most Jews and the secular community alike know is that life in Europe was hard for Jews. In the German states, as well as the Russian and Hapsburg empires, Jews were singled out and subjected to legal restrictions, special “Jew taxes,” and other requirements that were so extreme that many found it impossible to live there. These nations controlled even basic aspects of life like what vocation we could have, where we could live, and even when and if we could marry.³ In tsarist Russia, the cantonist system forced us to give away our 12-year-olds (but usually much younger boys) for what was often a lifetime of horror and antisemitic abuse in military service to the tzar.²

What’s less commonly discussed is that these laws also profoundly restricted our movement and enabled the state to know where we were and what we were doing at all times. A Jewish individual would be registered as a person of the Jewish race with the state, the local council or prince, and then finally the state-supported religious body. Permission slips, documents of intent, passports, body taxes (Leibzoll), and often bribes were needed to travel even short distances, move to another town, or emigrate to another country.³ To put this in perspective, it would be like needing all of those aforementioned documents to travel from Irondale or Mountain Brook to the LJCC to avoid being thrown in prison. 

An astounding right

Then, having arrived in America, those Jews able to do so marveled at “the most obvious and yet profound of their many newfound rights: mobility.” This astounding right was due to the even more remarkable fact that, according to federal law, American Jews were not racially classified as “Jews” as they were in Europe, but as white. In fact, from the earliest days of our republic Jewish differences were seen as religious, as opposed to in Europe where one’s Jewishness was considered intrinsic and immutable.³ For one of the first times in modern history — and from this nation’s inception — male Jews were counted among the privileged racial class.⁴ The Privileges and Immunities Clause guaranteed male Jews the ability to travel from Baltimore to Birmingham, for example, without harassment from a “policeman or gendarme or soldier in uniform.”³

However, federal law did not always dictate local perceptions, so while Jews’ official  racial classification would grant them freedom of movement, freedom of movement would likewise be necessary to escape antisemitism that stemmed from local perceptions of their race.³

In our next installment we will examine the journeys that newly immigrated as well as established Jews would have taken to get to Birmingham around the time of its founding.

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About the author

Zachary Dembo is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Southern Jewish history nerd from Baltimore, Maryland — the Birthplace of the Star-Spangled-Banner. He has been a visitor to Birmingham since 2008 and a resident since 2019. 

Notes  

1. Elovitz, Mark H. A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie. University of Alabama Press, 27 Mar. 2003
2. Howe, Irving, and Kenneth Libo. World of Our Fathers: [the Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made]. New York, Ny, New York Univ. Press, 2005.
3. Rabin, Shari. Jews on the Frontier. NYU Press, 12 Dec. 2017. 
4. Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. 2nd ed., Yale University Press, 2019.