“Thick as thieves,” Eva said. Her head was tilted back and she was staring up at the stars.
“Your father and Abe? Yes, they certainly seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I suppose it is.” Goldah watched something out on the water, a bird or a fish. He didn’t know which.
She said, “You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”
“The two of them? Does it matter?”
“No. But it was a good thing you did or didn’t do.”
Goldah saw it again. “You like the Jeslers?”
“Of course.”
“It was very sweet, the ball.” He sounded as if he might be trying to convince himself.
“It truly was.” She turned to him. “Is something the matter?”
He thought a moment, about the way Jesler had talked, the desperation and the gratitude, but for what? Goldah knew he hadn’t done it for Abe or for Pearl. He hadn’t done it even for Eva. He had done it for himself. Calvin was right: That was always the way. And maybe it was time to do something for someone else.
Goldah shook his head. “They’re good people.”
“They are.”
A sprinkling of surf sprayed up onto his legs and he thought of the first time he had seen this beach, how far it had stretched, the ocean endless against it. He wondered now, as perhaps a child would, if even a single drop of water had ever made it all the way across to some distant shore; better yet if it had found its way back.
Eva said, “Was she kind in the letter?”
“She was.”
“It was a decent thing she did. More than decent. I wouldn’t even know the word for it.”
He took in a long breath; he had grown accustomed to the deep heat in his lungs and he thought of Malke, not as she was but as she had been and would be, in another distant land, this one barren and dry. He said, “I wouldn’t have gone.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am.”
“You had me wondering … And if she hadn’t gone?”
“But she did.”
“Yes.”
He thought to look at her but instead stared out at the water. “It was such a simple thing. The self I’d made or the one you made of me. One to survive, the other to live. It took me some time to see the difference.” Only then did he have the courage to turn to her.
She kissed him and waited for him to bring his arms around her. “We should go in.” She was already getting to her feet. “I brought suits, although I think we could chance it in our skivvies.” She glanced quickly around and reached for the zipper on her dress.
“Dipping?” he said.
“Not quite.”
She stood there, quietly watching him, this time content not to find any words. Reaching down, she pulled him up and waited as he removed his shirt and trousers. She then took his hand and together they dove under, sheltered within these shores and certain to find the surface again.
Author’s Note
The story of the Jews in Savannah is, to some degree, the story of Savannah itself. When the port was first founded in 1733, it was seen as a sort of landing spot for English castoffs — what the original charter referred to as “the meanest and most unfortunate of our people.” Not surprisingly, a group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who had fled to London seven years earlier and who were now members of the Sephardic congregation at Bevis Marks Synagogue (still thriving today), were encouraged to set sail.
The idea of Georgia had first been conceived by a former member of Parliament and a prison-reform activist named James Edward Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe saw the New World as a place that could be guided by the most noble of sentiments — non sibi sed aliis (not for self, but for others). The charter thus forbade liquor, large landholdings, and slavery in this new Eden for the “worthy poor.”
It was with considerable hope, then, that the Bevis Marks Jews, along with two German Jewish families, boarded the William and Sarah and arrived in Savannah in July 1733.
Arrived, yes, but landed, no.
The stories that document the first weeks of the Jews in Savannah are many, but they all involve Oglethorpe (welcoming or hesitant), an outbreak of yellow fever (or malaria), and a doctor by the name of Nunez (or Nunes or Nunis, depending on the source). Whatever the exact details, the basics remain: When the city’s only doctor fell victim to the fever, and with the Jews still waiting out in the harbor — urged by some to sail off to wherever wayward Jews were meant to sail — Oglethorpe had no choice but to allow Dr. Nunez to disembark in order to tend to the sick. With Nunez came the remaining forty-one Jews and a Torah that, as it happens, remains the oldest in North America.
Over the next two hundred years, the Jews thrived, fled, and returned. The arrival of the Spanish only a few hundred miles to the south in 1739, during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, had many of the first colonists heading north (to Charleston) for fear of being burned as heretics should the Spaniards take Savannah. Meanwhile, as the city evolved into a great port, the antislavery dream quickly gave way to financial expedience. And the Jewish community changed as well. Reformism replaced Levantine Sephardic practices and, with the influx of Poles, Czechs, and Russians, the classic dividing lines between German Enlightenment and Eastern European Orthodox/Conservative Jewry were drawn. Thus, by 1947 the separate camps were well entrenched.
Interestingly enough, there was one source of agreement between the Reform and Orthodox communities at the time: their attitudes toward the impending State of Israel. Neither wanted it. It was the Conservative Jews alone who embraced Zionism. The Orthodox rejected it on liturgical grounds — the Jewish people had yet to be redeemed — and the Reform didn’t want anything that might undermine their aim at assimilation, since a state for the Jews would only make them stand out. It remains one of the strangest moments of confluence in the American Jewish experience.
Internal struggles aside, the Jewish community as a whole had already become an integral part of Savannah society, situated in the ever-fluid hierarchy of American immigrant culture. They had their own businesses, their own clubs, their own politics — Herman Myers was the first Jewish mayor, elected in 1895 — and their own neighborhoods. And yet they were Southerners through and through. How that impacted their relationship with the African-American community is one of the inspirations for this novel.
Today the internal wounds have healed. The three Jewish communities coexist in ways that most other cities would envy, so much so that the Reform and Conservative congregations share a Hebrew school. And everywhere one looks there are reminders of how vital the Jewish community has been to the city: from the shop names along Broughton Street, to the majestic design of the Congregation Mickve Israel synagogue (consecrated in 1878), even to the student center at one of the leading design universities in the world, Savannah College of Art and Design. The building once housed the Orthodox synagogue. Now, if you visit, take a look at its ceiling. You’ll see one of the most remarkable Stars of David depicted in the stained-glass window — just one more reminder of the enduring legacy of the Jews in Savannah.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Richard Babcock, Susannah Bailin, Yvonne Cárdenas, Judythe Cohen, Marjorie DeWitt, Kathleen DiGrado, Gioia Diliberto, Ariel Felton, Lee Griffith, Nova Jacobs, Morton Janklow, Jeannie Kaminsky, James Lough, Andra Rabb, Jeremy Rabb, Tamar Rabb, Theodore Rabb, Peter Spiegler, Ashley Waldvogel, and the late Ethyl Rosenzweig, Francis Wagger, and Larry Wagger, for all their insights and inspiration.
I would also like to thank the Savannah Jewish Archive and the Georgia Historical Society.
And finally I thank Judith Gurewich for her tenacity, sensitivity, and wit. Her commitment to this book and to the editing process has been nothing less than a marvel.
JONATHAN RABB is an American novelist, essayist, actor, and writer. He is the author of five novels: The Overseer, The Book of Q, and The Berlin Trilogy (Rosa, Shadow and Light, an
d The Second Son), a critically acclaimed series of historical thrillers set in Berlin and Barcelona between the world wars. Rosa won the 2006 Director’s Special Prize at Spain’s Semana Negra festival, and was named one of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2005. Rabb has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and the 92nd Street Y, and is currently a professor in the writing department at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
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