ABOUT THE CENTER
The College of Charleston’s Center for Southern Jewish Culture seeks to broaden public knowledge and inspire conversations about the southern Jewish experience.
Generously funded by the Pearlstine/Lipov family in 2014, it brings together the resources of the College’s Jewish Studies Program, Addlestone Library’s Jewish Heritage Collection, and The Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina.
The College of Charleston’s Center for Southern Jewish Culture hosts a wide array of speakers, films, and other events.
Our Charleston Research Fellowship Program supports works of scholarship, public history, and artistic production.
We partner with other organizations to help the public discover the rich history and culture of the Jewish South.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Join us over Sunday brunch for a conversation about Dr. Shari Rabin’s forthcoming The Jewish South: An American History (Princeton University Press, 2025). Dr. Rabin’s book is the first narrative survey of southern Jewish history. Exploring dynamics of race and religion, it features a wide range of Jewish southerners whose stories complicate popular understandings of their region. In this presentation, Rabin, who taught southern Jewish history at the College of Charleston from 2015-2019, will discuss the process of writing this book and share some of the most intriguing finds from her research.
This hybrid event will take place in the Jewish Studies Center, Arnold Hall (Room 100) and via Zoom. Brunch will be served beginning at 9:00 AM.
This talk will share new research on the migration of Jews from Kaluszyn to Paris, in the early twentieth century and their wartime experiences. A branch of Kimble’s own family made this migration and in-depth research allows her to contextualize stories of community solidarity during the Nazi occupation, and bittersweet memorial during the Liberation and postwar period. Join us for a reflection on being Jewish in Paris between 1920 and 1950. This hybrid event will take place in the Jewish Studies Center, Arnold Hall (Room 100) and via Zoom. Brunch will be served beginning at 9:00 AM.
In this talk Dr. Samuel Gruber presents an overview of the role of women in Jewish worship space but especially focuses on the types of physical spaces allowed to women in American synagogue architecture from the 18th century until today. Dr. Gruber will present historical material, some of which derives from the William Rosenthal Collection at the College of Charleston, and much of which comes from his own continuing investigation of synagogue buildings throughout the world.
NEWS AND NOTES
Farah Art Griffin: Holocaust of Our Beloved
I am immensely grateful to have received the Charleston Research Fellowship from the Pearlstine/Lipov Center [...]
Ben Bascom: Researching the life and writings of Charlotte Myers (1802–1891)
I recently visited the College of Charleston’s special collections through a generous fellowship from the [...]
Synagogues of the South
Six years in the making, Synagogues of the South: Architecture and Jewish Identity is now [...]
Mapping Jewish Charleston 2020
The 2020 page of Mapping Jewish Charleston brings the story of Jewish life in the [...]