The Mississippi Delta Trip - Part I

 Here are my takeaways from the Jewish History of the Mississippi Delta trip I just participated in: 

(1) People are awful

(2) People are amazingly resilient

(3) People are occasionally awesome

(4) Music is always good

The primary focus of this trip has been the history of Jews in the American South, particularly in the region known as the Mississippi Delta, but we've also touched on African-American history - slavery and the civil rights movement. So we've had ample opportunity to explore people at their worst and best. Plus, American roots music has never been far from our minds as we've traveled from New Orleans through the region known as "the birthplace of the blues", to Memphis.

This was a week-long trip organized by my synagogue and I'm not going to write a blow-by-blow account of every day, but I will document some highlights.

Day 1 (Friday - New Orleans): Our trip started in New Orleans during the second weekend of Jazzfest. The Rolling Stones had just played Jazz fest the night before, and the city was full of energy. Our first official stop was the special (sold out!) Jazzfest Shabbat service held Friday night at Touro Synagogue. We arrived without reservations, but our rabbi exchanged some rabbinic gang signs with Touro's clergy, and somehow they let us in. It was a lot of fun. I'd like to say it was super-amazing, but I've seen enough Jewish-other cultural mashups before (remember, I had hosted a Grateful Dead Passover Seder just a few weeks prior) that it wasn't totally novel. But New Orleans has tons of great musicians, so came as no surprise that the bands were great. A fun way to start off the the trip.

Jazzfest Shabbat Service at Touro Synagogue

Day 2 (Saturday - New Orleans): There's a gag in the movie Airplane where a passenger asks the flight attendant for some light reading material (Airplane was made way back when airlines provided magazines for passengers to read) and the flight attendant responds with "How about this leaflet about famous Jewish sports legends?" I think of that joke whenever I hear the name "Museum of Southern Jewish History" because, really, how much could there be to a museum on this topic? But it turns out there's more than expected. Many Americans (well, at least those of us from the cities of the Northeast) think of the normative Jewish immigrant experience as starting with a densely Jewish ghetto like the Lower East Side of Manhattan (we had a Jewish history professor from Emory University traveling with us, so I can use words like "normative"), but in fact, plenty of Jews, particularly from the early Sephardic and German/Alsatian mid-19th century wave of immigration, went where business opportunities were good, including into the cities and towns of the deep South. Jews in these communities were typically merchants, either itinerant peddlers or shopkeepers. Waves of Jewish immigrants arrived as the South was expanding, and as with many immigrant groups, they were given a typically American "you're not really our kind of people, but you're useful, so come on in!" kind of welcome. Many Jews prospered, some even became wealthy, and in the antebellum era some even raised their social status by becoming enslavers just like their Christian neighbors (yuck). So the Jewish history of the South goes back a ways; many of the congregations visited are over 100 years old. There may never have been a lot of Jews in any of these places, but it seems like every town had a little bit Jewish history, stretching back to the 19th century if not earlier.

Jewish history hiding in plain sight in Mississippi

All that is preface for saying that we started Saturday with a trip to the Museum of Southern Jewish History. I'd been there before, but it was still interesting to visit. Our professor/guide dude also led us on a Jewish history walking tour of the French Quarter, thanks to which I can now say that I tried to go with a rabbi to visit a strip club on Bourbon Street. Actually, we were looking for the former home of Judah Benjamin, U.S. Senator and Confederacy Cabinet officer and found the building occupied by the aforementioned strip club, which, BTW was closed for renovations. There's lots of other Jewish history in New Orleans, if you know where to look. For example, why does the building containing the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street have ornaments with the initials "MB"? Because the 1906 building was built to house the Maison Blanche, a Jewish-owned department store.

The group also met with the leader of Jewish Pride of New Orleans (JPNOLA) to hear about Jewish LGBTQ life in New Orleans (very open and vibrant LGBTQ community, as you might expect). Given that he and friends he had invited to participate were all Tulane or Loyola professors, our conversation also touched on the campus protests going on over the war in Gaza. Our meeting was held at a phenomenal 1840's house on Esplanade Ave. Not the JPNOLA guy's home - he was pet-sitting there for a friend. The visit would have been worth it for the house alone.

The head of JPNOLA, his two friends (they're a married couple, hence the matching outfits), and the dog he was pet sitting

Quite the house

Dinner that night was simply spectacular - a feast at Saba, an Israeli restaurant in the Garden District. In a city where it seems every dish contains pork or shellfish (two things I don't eat for religious reasons), it was wonderful to eat in a restaurant where none of that treyf stuff was on the menu. But even people without such dietary constraints found a lot to love on Saba's menu. Over dinner we met with L J Goldstein, founder of the Krewe of Jieux, the first Jewish Mardi Gras Krewe. While influential Jewish merchants were involved in the formation of some of the earliest modern Mardi Gras parades, Jews were historically excluded from participating. While I'm sure Jews had participated on the sly over the years, in the 1990's Goldstein decided to break down that historic barrier by creating an explicitly Jewish "krewe". The krewe defangs anti-Semitic stereotypes by really leaning into them to the point of ridiculousness. While other floats toss beads, the Krewe of Jieuxs tosses gold bagels. While other krewes have a king and queen, his has a King of the Jews and Jewish American Princess. Other krewes have a "Witch Doctor"; the Krewe of Jieuxs instead has a "Rich Doctor". Everyone in the parade wears horns. You get the idea. Goldstein is a character, but he is genuinely motivated to offer unaffiliated Jews a pathway to connecting to Judaism through his event, and he's also pushing back against the ingrained anti-Semitism of traditionally Catholic Louisiana. One example of that historic bias - the laws of slavery in Louisiana were codified in what was called the Code Noir (Black Code), dating to 1685 when Louisiana was still a French colony. The code contains fifty-nine Articles, fifty-eight of which have to do with slavery. But before they get to those fifty-eight, guess what Article I does? I mean, what was so important that they had to put it right up front ahead of the main content? That's right - Article I expels all Jews!

Anyway, check out a New Orleans brass band playing klezmer music at the 2017 Krewe of Jieuxs 2017 parade here, and read more here. 

Nighttime entertainment

Let me interject at this point that I was the youngest congregant in our rather superannuated tour group, and also that I was sharing a room with a guy I really didn't know that well. After dinner while everyone else went home (to bed, no doubt), I went out to see "George Porter, Jr. and a Tribute to New Orleans Funk" at the Joy Theater, just steps from our hotel. Jazzfest weekend you can go out and see late night shows all the way through until the next morning, but out of respect for my room mate Alex I didn't stay out very late. The show I went to was supposed to start at 9, but didn't get underway until 10:30 (unconscionable, IMHO) and I bailed before it got too late.

Day 3 (Sunday - New Orleans):  While on Saturday I just ran down to the local Starbucks for breakfast (the only place open at 6 AM), Sunday I joined the group at a diner next to the hotel. This wasn't an organized group meal - people from the group just kept dribbling in. This caused a great deal of consternation to the hostess, who really wanted to spread people around the different server sections of the restaurant, but people from our group kept ignoring her and joining the existing table. Fortunately I was one of the first in and first out, so I was able to stay clear of the somewhat heated clash between the increasingly pissed off hostess and the cranky old Jews of our group.

Anyway, Sunday morning we visited a few more synagogues, including the thriving Reform Temple Sinai and the decrepit, holding on by a thread Orthodox Anshe Sfard. Our synagogue tour was led by local Jewish historian Irwin Lachoff, who told us the heartbreaking story of how his dad passed away during the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and how not only couldn't he make it there to see his dad (because of travel restrictions), but of the trouble he had even giving him a proper burial because everything was disrupted by the hurricane.

Temple Israel

Temple Anshe Sfard

Southern Jewish Literature*

*I posted this picture on Facebook, to which my friend Jen commented "My friend’s grandma wrote this!"

From lunchtime on we had free time. I sought out a vegan po' boy sandwich at the French Market, where by chance I sat with a couple who it turned out were among the organizing committee for the original Bay Area Grateful Dead Passover Seder - weird coincidence! Then I hoped a bikeshare bike and pedaled over to the Garden District, where I rode through the streets looking at the stunning historic homes. Let me tell you - New Orleans has the worst paved streets. I risked internal organ damage riding a bike there.

Biking the Garden District

Window shopping

After dinner (good Vietnamese chicken phở!) on Magazine St., I hopped back on a bikeshare bike and rode up to mid-City where I caught the Stanton Moore Trio at The Broadside. While the New Orleans Funk show the night before had been just OK, both the brass band which opened and Stanton Moore were phenomenal. Plus, it was Sunday night - a lot of Jazzfest attendees had headed home - and this show was outdoors and so was totally uncrowded and mellow. Plus, the couple I met at the French Market were there (not a surprise - we had discussed our evening plans when we had met earlier), so I had someone to hang out with.

Outdoor stage at The Broadside

That's the end of the New Orleans part of this adventure - Monday morning we hit the road, headed for Mississippi.

Continue to Part II