Our fascination with Southern Jewish culture has led us to a most disturbing, little-known event in American history:
In December of 1862, in the height of the Civil War, Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, commanding all Jews to be expelled from the Southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, giving some long term residents just 24 hours notice.
Grant wrongly believed that Jews were controlling the black market in cotton, and while certain traders may have engaged in questionable business practices during the war, this blanket prejudice caused the American Jewish community to scream with indignation.
After staging protests in Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis, Jewish merchants took their grievance all the way to Washington, where President Abraham Lincoln immediately revoked the order on January 3, 1863, two days after the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.
Lincoln, who “drew no distinction between Jew and Gentile” and would allow “no American to be wronged because of his religious affiliation” told Grant that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.”
Now, we never heard a peep about this incident in public school history classes (what else aren’t they teaching us?) nor in Hebrew school. Sure, American Jews forgave Grant wholeheartedly (he garnered the Jewish vote to win the presidency in 1868) but to dismiss these blatant anti-Semetic history to the point of “lost” seems quite uncharacteristic of us. Even the Southern Jews we know, who grew up whistling Dixie and sported Confederate flag license plates, have never about General Order No. 11. You’d think Southerners, some of whom still bear enough of a grudge against Grant to refer to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression” in certain circles, would be delighted to point out this blight on an otherwise stellar military political career.
Guess it proves that history is written by the winners.
Check out more at Jewish Virtual Library.

We must admit that at first we found Poland’s new fascination with Jews creepy and uncomfortably ironic. Our bubbie might have an aneurysm—kinehora!— if she knew they’re dancing in the Krakow streets to klezmer these days, as she was driven from that country as a child just before Hitler moved in.
Her parents, our great-grandparents, settled in New York and here we are all the way across America, trying to imagine the terror and anger of being lucky enough to escape while the rest of the family perished.
It’s not a story that we like to drag out for company, but it inevitably informs a certain part of our personal Jewish identity.
We visited Poland in our post-college youth, where we toured Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, an experience so full of horrid impressions that we will spare you of them. But suffice it to say that when we read about a “Jewish Culture Festival” in a country that once was home to 3 million Jews and now has a population about the size of our two-stoplight California town, we shudder a little. As recently as 1992, Polish opinion was still fantastically anti-Semetic in spite of the fact that with a mere 10,000 left in Poland, nobody had ever met one.
Lately the Poles have become interested in what they believe to be a “dead” culture, because even though there are plenty of us thriving around the world, there will never again be the particular richness of Jewish Poland in the Renaissance and Baroque periods of history.
After reading Jeff Jacoby’s article, we sense that there is a sincere curiosity behind “the warm feeling” (as one woman calls it) of knowing more about their country’s lost history. And somebody is doing an excellent job of marketing Jewish history to Poland.
We’re imagining every single one of Krakow’s 200 Jews churning out press releases, printing glossy programs and scheduling tours of the restored Jewish quarter to produce the very professional, highly attended The Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, which just passed its fifteenth year. Instead on concentrating on the tragedy of the Holocaust, it offers Yiddish-singing workshops, klezmer jams and introductions to the “weird and wonderful world of Jewish cuisine.” The final event is a late-night dance jam that takes over Szeroka (“wide”) Street and looks like Jewlapalooza with that crazy inflated menorah.
They make think we’re dead, but at least they know we like to party.
Photos c/o http://krakow.zaprasza.net/fkz/koncert1999.html, there’s plenty more.

AP reports: Gov. Rick Perry has apologized for inviting a messianic Jewish leader to represent the Jewish faith at a bill signing where the man delivered a prayer in the name of Jesus.
Full story.
We don’t know which it more disturbing—the fact that a messianic meshuggeneh was mistaken for a true Jew or that the state of Texas now limits a woman’s right to choose (a distinctively right-wing Christian agenda.)
No matter what everyone’s personal opinion is, the Jews have enough tsuris without getting into that kind of legislation. Right???
Photo c/o UTA Magazine.