Hanukkah & Jewish Culture

The Jewish presence in northwest Louisiana actually predates the establishment of Shreveport in 1836. From the very beginning, Jews have been part of the city's civic, social, and mercantile life. Pioneer settlers began holding services in private homes in the 1840s, and by 1858 the community was sufficiently large enough to consecrate a Jewish cemetery and the first Jewish benevolent association, a forerunner of today's North Louisiana Jewish Federation. In 1859, the first congregation was founded.

In The Jewish Community of Shreveport the rich history of this influential and vibrant citizenry is chronicled by well-known Louisiana historian Eric J. Brock, archivist of Shreveport's B'nai Zion Temple. Nearly 18 decades of Jewish life in Shreveport are depicted in over 200 vintage images, many of which are previously unpublished. Both of the city's synagogues, B'nai Zion and Agudath Achim, are represented, as are many of the rabbis, business leaders, political leaders (including three mayors), and laypeople from the community's long history.

Authors Emily Ford and Barry Stiefel delve into the Jewish communities settled in New Orleans and along the Mississippi Delta.

The early days of Louisiana settlement brought with them a clandestine group of Jewish pioneers. Isaac Monsanto and other traders spited the rarely enforced Code Noir banning their occupancy, but it wasn't until the Louisiana Purchase that larger numbers colonized the area. Immigrants like the Sartorius brothers and Samuel Zemurray made their way from Central and Eastern Europe to settle the bayou country along the Mississippi. They made their homes in and around New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, establishing congregations like that of Tememe Derech and B'Nai Israel, with the mighty river serving as a mode of transportation and communication, connecting the communities on both sides of the riverbank.

New Orleans is not a typical Southern city. The Jews who have settled in New Orleans from 1757 to the present have had a very different experience than others in the South. New Orleans was a wide-open frontier that attracted gamblers, sailors, con artists, planters, and merchants. Most early Jewish immigrants were bachelors who took Catholic wives, if they married at all. The first congregation, Gates of Mercy, was founded in 1827, and by 1860, four congregations represented Sephardic, French and German, and Polish Jewry. The reform movement, the largest denomination today, took hold after the Civil War with the founding of Temple Sinai. Small as it is in proportion to the population of New Orleans, the Jewish community has made contributions that far exceed their numbers in cultural, educational, and philanthropic gifts to the city.