Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

The Law of the Land Is the Law \\ 75
southern gentlemen and thereby enable them to obtain complete social and economic
acceptance from their Christian peers. 4
With that end in mind, on a balmy spring day of March 19, 1841, at the consecration
ceremonies of perhaps the most impressive synagogue in America at the
time, Charleston's Beth Elohim, Gustavus Poznanski, the congregation's hazan or
spiritual leader, emotionally expressed the southern Jewry's yearning to be a part
of southern society. In what may have been the first major public expression of
Jewish support for the southern ethos, Poznanski asserted: "This synagogue is our
temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine, and as our fathers
defended with their lives that temple, that city, and that land, so will their sons
defend this temple, this city, and this land." Delivered to an overflow audience of
both Christians and Jews, Poznanski's remarks were addressed to a city where less
than a decade before the Nullification movement had been born. To Poznanski
and his southern Jewish brethren the message was not lost: the South demanded
fealty from its people to the state before nation. To be accepted completely within
southern society the Jews would have to either adapt or be ostracized, which
was the fate of all who opposed slavery and the planter regime. 5
The typical southern Jew tended to eschew rural areas. Most Jews, for a variety
of reasons, felt safer in urban areas, where they could engage in each other's
fellowship and find support within a visible Jewish community. If they desired to
practice their religion actively, they could only do so in an urban area in which
there were other Jews, not in sparsely populated rural areas. Furthermore, most
immigrant Jews arrived in America virtually poverty-stricken, making it highly
unlikely they would achieve aristocratic status in the xenophobic South. Thus, the
average southern Jew was more likely to be a small trader eking out a marginal
existence at an occupation which did not rank well on the social scale of the Old
South. He considered himself fortunate to be able to pay his bills and perhaps
eventually own a small shop, above which a few rooms provided a home to him
and his family. In all likelihood, he lacked enough capital to purchase a slave even
if he could determine a need for one. Yet, to survive in a potentially hostile environment
he could not, or would not, ever become a vocal critic of the institution.
Some southern Jews, though, successfully climbed the socioeconomic ladder
through careers as merchants or professionals. In general, these Jews of the South
did indeed conform to the prevailing pattern of slave ownership, and some of
them grew quite wealthy from the plantation economy. While there were
instances of manumission among the Jews, in principle they were as staunchly
supportive of the "peculiar institution" as were their non-Jewish counterparts.
Wanting to participate as equals in the slave-based southern society, almost all
Jewish residents acclimated themselves to southern values. True, their acceptance
of slavery was hastened by the fear that opposing white southerners would unleash
a firestorm of anti-Semitic prejudice; still, some southern Jews quickly assuaged
any moral compunctions about slave owning. "The institution of slavery as it