Shari Rabin — formerly at College of Charleston; current associate professor of Jewish studies, religion, and history at Oberlin College and chair of the Jewish studies program — returns to Charleston with her new book, The Jewish South: An American History.

Drawing on a wealth of original archival findings spanning three centuries, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the complicated decisions that southern Jews made—as individuals, families, and communities—to fit into a society built on Native land and enslaved labor and to maintain forms of Jewish difference, often through religious innovation and adaptation. She paints a richly textured and sometimes troubling portrait of the period, exploring how southern Jews have been targets of antisemitism and violence but also complicit in racial injustice. Rabin considers Jewish immigration and institution building, participation in the Civil War, the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, and Jewish support for and resistance to the modern fight for Black civil rights. She examines shifting understandings of Jewishness, highlighting both the reality of religious diversity and the ongoing role of Christianity in defining the region. Recovering a neglected facet of the American experience, The Jewish South enables readers to see the South through the eyes of people with a distinctive religious heritage and a southern history older than the United States itself.