This past weekend’s massacre in Bondi Beach in Australia and the Oct. 2 attack outside a synagogue in Manchester, England — on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year — were a chilling reminder of how vulnerable Jewish communities remain worldwide.
It also brought to mind something closer to home: Georgia’s long, layered history of Jewish life, where moments of prejudice were real, but so too were traditions of civic belonging.
That history deserves remembering, as Americans wrestle with questions about polarization and how history is told.
In October 1862, during the Civil War, a grand jury in Talbot County issued a sweeping denunciation of Jews, accusing them of profiteering during wartime scarcity.
Jewish citizens of Columbus responded in The Columbus Enquirer with a remarkable public protest. They condemned the “slanderous and sweeping denunciations” and quoted the Gospel of Matthew back to the jurors: “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
They reminded readers that Jews had volunteered at the war’s outset; from Columbus alone, more than 40 Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 50, out of a total population of 68, had enlisted before conscription was passed. “In every regiment of the Confederate army,” the statement declared, “the Jews are more or less represented, and every battle field will bear testimony that their life-blood has been freely shed for their country’s cause.”
Despite purges, there was also interfaith cooperation
Credit: Rachel Philipson
Credit: Rachel Philipson
It was an unabashed and public defense of loyalty, echoing what Jews in the Union would soon do in December 1862 when Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued his infamous Order No. 11 expelling Jews from parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi.
North and South alike, Jews were made scapegoats — and in both places, they answered by reminding readers of their sacrifices and presence.
But these stories of exclusion do not present a complete picture of Georgia’s story. For generations both before and after the Civil War, Georgia’s Jewish communities left records of belonging. Synagogue dedications often served as particularly public expressions of what interfaith belonging could look like, with neighbors gathering across lines of difference to celebrate.
In Savannah in 1820, the Masonic Grand Lodge of Georgia laid the cornerstone for a new synagogue, Mickve Israel, and Jacob de la Motta delivered the dedication sermon. In 1841, when a new synagogue was dedicated, reports noted the sanctuary filled with “all classes” of the city. The pattern extended beyond Savannah
In cities across the state, synagogue dedications were civic occasions. In 1901 in Macon, an estimated 2,000 people witnessed a cornerstone laying, at least half of them non-Jewish. While the synagogue was under construction, its members met in the First Baptist Church, whose pastor addressed the crowd.
Farther south, in 1890, when Beth Tefilloh was dedicated in Brunswick, it was reported that both Jews and Gentiles attended. The congregation’s president expressed gratitude for “the aid so cheerfully rendered by the members of all the congregations in this city, as well as by citizens generally, without regard to church connections.”
That spirit reached smaller towns as well. In 1916, when Bainbridge’s Beth-El synagogue was dedicated, “the edifice was filled to its capacity and many were turned away.” Non-Jews had contributed to the building fund and joined in the ceremony. In 1921, Atlanta’s Orthodox Ahavath Achim Synagogue opened its new home on Washington Street with Gov. Thomas Hardwick and Mayor James Key among the speakers — reports described Ahavath Achim as the largest Orthodox synagogue in the South.
Traditions must be renewed in every generation
Even in the Depression years, that interfaith generosity endured. When Rome’s Rodeph Sholom dedicated its first synagogue in 1938, Catholics and Protestants had helped finance the building, and the pastor of the First Baptist Church spoke.
And in Atlanta, where the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation — today often known as The Temple — dedicated its Peachtree Street home in 1931, Christian clergy from five denominations took part in a “Good Will Service” broadcast on WSB radio. Above the entrance, still visible today, the builders inscribed a verse from Isaiah: “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Georgia’s Jewish past, then, offers two inheritances. One was witnessed in Talbot County: suspicion, slander and scapegoating. The other, seen from Brunswick to Rome, was of synagogues embraced as civic spaces, celebrated across lines of faith.
Traditions are never guaranteed; they must be chosen anew in each generation. History shows how quickly welcome can erode when fear or silence takes hold.
The tragedies at Bondi Beach and Manchester underscore how fragile belonging can be. But Georgia’s past shows something else, too: that pluralism can be chosen, defended and renewed. That choice is as urgent now as it was then.
Austin R. Albanese is a historian and writer whose work explores overlooked stories of civic and interfaith collaboration in American Jewish history.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
