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V - GATE CITY AND THE SOUTH’S FIRST JEWISH NEWSPAPER

In Atlanta, Browne’s abilities were quickly acknowledged and appreciated by the general community as well as within the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. He embarked with apparent success on a new enterprise, the South’s first Jewish newspaper, which even today provides the reader with a colorful and telling source for the study of the lives of Southern Jews from1877 to 1881. His close relationship with Wise came to an end, arguably due to competition for newspaper circulation. Browne subsequently lost the paper. A false rumour then smeared his character, leading to the loss of his pulpit and other employment opportunities. The incident marked a distinct turning point in his career as well as another long period of dissension and change for the congregation.

Details of synagogue operation, press coverage, social and family life, development of Reform Judaism in America, and the far reaching effect of petty peeves and bullish pride portray an experience that parallels other Jewish communities and their leaders in nineteenth century America. On July 18, 1877, the Atlanta Constitution announced:

The Jewish Synagogue has just called Dr. E. B. M. Browne, who lectured here last season, and is well remembered by our citizens, to take charge of the church. Dr. Browne is a gentleman of fine culture, of strong vigorous mental constitution, and of blameless character. He will prove to be a proper head of the large and influential Jewish population in this city. He will take charge of the church about the 1st of September. The church building, a handsome and commodious one, will be finished by the time Dr. Browne comes to take charge. As is usual with this thrifty and clear-headed people, the church will be paid for when it is finished.

As we shall see, the closing statement was slightly inaccurate.

Congregation and Community

Browne arrived in Atlanta on the heels of an incident in which the New York banker Joseph Seligman and his family had been refused accommodations at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. This incident was the first widely publicized act of discrimination against Jews at a luxury resort hotel, and marked the rise of what John Higham characterizes as an era of social and intellectual antisemitism. The story filled long front-page columns in the Atlanta Constitution, where a progressive young reporter, Henry W. Grady, soon became editor and partial owner, and by the mid-1880s the foremost spokesman for the New South creed. Grady brought the city forward to what promoters later characterized as “a city too busy to hate.” Whether he and Browne ever met is unknown, but Grady’s beneficial influence was quickly felt especially by the local Jewish community unnerved by the new expression of antisemitism in New York.1

Atlanta’s Jews then numbered 525 within a total population of 35,000. About half of the Jews belonged to the ten-year-old Gemilath Chesed Kehillah Kodesh, or Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, subsequently known as The Temple. This small but highly visible Jewish population drew a disproportionate amount of positive public interest. As the Atlanta Constitution opined in 1870, “Among her most orderly, enterprising and public-spirited citizens, the Israelites of Atlanta may be justly classed. Some of them are ranked among our oldest and most respected business men. In our cosmopolitan city, but little of that general prejudice against Jews is ever demonstrated.”2

In 1875, reporting on the cornerstone laying ceremony for the city’s first synagogue at the corner of Forsyth and Garnett Street, the Atlanta Daily News had proclaimed:

...nothing is so indicative of a city’s prosperity as to see an influx of Jews who come with the intention of living with you, and especially as they buy property and build among you, because they are a thrifty and progressive people who never fail to build up a town they settle in; and again because they make good citizens, pay their obligations promptly, never refuse to pay their taxes and are law-abiding... The solemnity and good order which prevails during the worship in their synagogue is worthy of imitation by many of us Gentile Christians.3

After Browne’s election, work resumed on the synagogue. The community—Jews and gentiles alike—gathered for its dedication on Friday, August 31, 1877. The elegant Moorish- style brick and stone structure boasted doors and bima (pulpit platform) of heavy walnut, jewel-like stained glass windows, plush carpets, and eight chandeliers that were “very handsome and of the latest patent.” Pillars of galvanized iron “in perfect imitation of red marble” upheld its interior arches along the sides of the sanctuary and bore inscriptions from the Psalms in gold leaf. No specified balcony for the women existed because the congregation had already introduced family seating. A gallery was provided for the choir directly above the entrance.4

Newspapers described the dedication as “one of the most impressive scenes that ever occurred in Atlanta.” Due to widespread interest in the building the congregation had sent invitations to some three hundred dignitaries and others who were not members. Fully an hour before festivities were scheduled to begin, a standing room only crowd braved the exhausting heat of the late summer afternoon which, according to reports, had been made tolerable indoors by good ventilation. The ceremony, standard for such occasions, began at 3:45 PM with a fifteen minute musical prelude performed by a string band. At four o’clock the procession began, led by President Levi Cohen, in formal attire, alongside the new rabbi. Browne wore a billowing black academic robe, white stock tie, narrow knee-length tallit (prayer shawl, in this case abbreviated symbolic version) and six-inch high cushion shaped hat, traditional among English rabbis.

According to custom, the board of trustees and the building committee immediately followed them, after which two of the oldest men in the congregation carried the Torahs. Then marched fifteen young girls dressed in white, their leader bearing a velvet cushion upon which rested the key to the building.

When all had ascended the bima and the key presented to building committee chairman Joseph T. Eichberg the choir sang an appropriate selection, after which Eichberg handed the key to Cohen. In accepting Cohen reviewed the congregation’s history, including the fact that only fifty-five members could afford to contribute to the building, which left a small debt that would soon be paid. He also thanked the many Christians who had contributed, as well as the ladies of the congregation who by sponsoring a fair had raised $3000 and purchased carpeting for the synagogue.

Following Cohen’s acceptance, Eichberg opened the ark and the organ emitted solemn chords while the elders set the sacred scrolls in their places within the ark. Browne read a relevant portion from Scripture after which the choir sang the hymn “Praise the Lord.” Only then did Browne deliver his dedicatory sermon and begin the regular Friday evening service.5

Browne based his sermon on Genesis 28:17, the passage in which Jacob awakens from his dream and exclaims, “How awe inspiring is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and that is the gate of heaven.” With the stated intention of defining modern Judaism and how it differs from Christianity, Browne developed a theme that he had used years before, in Quincy, Illinois, emphasizing the importance that Reform placed on rationality and ecumenism. He argued that all religions have three stages: the mythical or legendary, which reflects people’s initial attempts to understand creation and is conscientiously followed by future generations; the theological, beginning with the establishment of a group as spiritual guide to think and pray for others; and the third—which he did not name—when individual reason motivates people to think for themselves. According to the Reform rabbi, this final stage differentiates Judaism from Christianity by the tenet that reason is the only mediator between God and man universally. “The sooner a religion discards the belief in a mediating prophet,” he said:

the sooner it abandons the idea of its own superiority above its neighbours in its own conception, and in the eyes of God, the nearer we are to truth; the less we maintain that our church is the only “house of God,” the more it will become the dwelling of our Lord. Judaism, I mean pure Judaism, the Judaism of Deuteronomy, is an exception to the rule of passing these stages. We have no theological system. True, we had for the time being priests and prophets, but they were the teachers of our people and nothing else.6

In a lengthy, lyrical metaphor about nature, Browne spoke of watching “the wild play of the billows breaking their fury against the rocky cliff,” and asked rhetorically if it were nothing more than “the sport of chance.” He followed with another question, tracing billows to tide, tide to storms, storms to the rotation of the earth and influences of the moon, then to the planets, comets and fixed stars, finally declaring that all “are only so many steps in the ladder which will bring you, by virtue of those angelic messengers of reason, in communion with God... returning again to you in the very same steps, bringing along the godly blessings of satisfaction to the inquiring soul....”

Browne concluded with a return to his text, recalling the rabbinic tradition that every good deed became an angel and declaring that Jacob’s angels on the ladder were his own good deeds ascending to heaven and returning to him. Everyone has such a ladder near at hand, Browne said, admonishing his listeners to look for them in Nature, “the great and only ‘house of God.’” Since the entire universe was a house built by God, he maintained, it was impossible for humans to build one, but only to build gates to heaven in which they could erect ladders for the angels of good deeds to ascend. “Happy then that you have not called this the church of God,” he told his listeners, “but the congregation of the Sons of Benevolence. It is only one of the gates to heaven.”7

In his reference to the Judaism of Deuteronomy, typical of Reform belief, Browne indicated his rejection of laws later added by rabbinic tradition. As the synagogue’s design and the ceremonies surrounding its dedication were deliberately planned to reflect the melding of Jewish distinctiveness with American custom and environment, so did the rabbis gear their sermons to express unique aspects of Judaism while addressing the commonalty of Judaism with Christianity. All of it was a conscious effort to make their upwardly mobile congregants feel good about themselves and gain ever greater acceptance within society.

The congregation was not disappointed. The following day, the Atlanta Constitution reported the sermon as “a profound and admirable discourse, full of original ideas and characterized by a broad liberality which Christian churches would do well to imitate.” Such use of hyperbole by reviewers was standard in the newspapers of that era. So was the effort on the part of rabbis to preach ecumenism. This required keeping a delicate balance between one’s own belief and accepting the validity of others.8

Browne may well have equated the gates of heaven with the Gate City of the South, for Atlanta, impressed from the start by his oratorical skill and long list of academic degrees, quickly opened its arms to him and his family. He followed three other rabbis who briefly served the Atlanta congregation, each sharing some of his attributes. They typified the range of backgrounds and experience that rabbis then brought to the American hinterland.

David Burgheim, who came to Atlanta as its first rabbi in 1869, was like Browne in that he was a scholar, linguist, and avid student of early Christianity. He opened a secular school, the English German Academy, which historians believed to have been the immediate predecessor of the Atlanta Public Schools. During this period before the wide-scale advent of public education, many rabbis organized English-German-Hebrew academies—a reflection of the tripartite identity of their community—to supplement their pulpit incomes.

Burghein came to Atlanta from Nashville, and returned there after one year leaving Benjamin Aaron Bonnheim, whom he had hired to run his school, to serve as rabbi. Bonnheim remained for two more years, after which he moved to various cities, including Baltimore where he served as superintendent and resident physician at the Hebrew Hospital and Asylum. Like Browne, he had studied medicine and received his degree after coming to America.

Atlanta’s next rabbi was Lithuanian-born Henry Gersoni, a linguist, orator, author, and at times the editor of a newspaper. He allegedly converted to Catholicism in Europe but recanted after coming to America. Later denounced by Wise for his “venomous sarcasm” and opposition to the UAHC, Gersoni was best remembered in Atlanta for his admirable social qualities and cantorial skills. He too, like his predecessors, departed after two years.9

Although lack of funds had been a primary factor in Gersoni’s departure, Browne was not discouraged by the meagre offer of $1500 a year as compared to the $2500 that he had earned elsewhere. He and Sophie liked the South, she had close relatives in Atlanta, and the young couple longed for a permanent home. They settled first in temporary quarters at 46 East Hunter Street, uncomfortably close to the noise and soot of the railroad terminal, but satisfactory for the time being. After only three months, they announced their intention to remain in Atlanta and began planning a house of their own at 182 Forsyth Street, a lot next to the Temple which the congregation had purchased for a parsonage. It was a comfortable distance from the railroad and on the “Haas block,” so-called because several branches of that prominent family built their homes there. Among them were Sophie’s cousins, newlyweds Aaron and Frances (Fannie) Rich Haas.10

The Haas family was well established in Atlanta, Jacob having been the city’s first Jewish resident when he arrived in1844. His brother Herman came later with his wife and children, one of whom was Aaron. Their story bespeaks the comfortable position that Jews enjoyed in the general community, one that easily transferred to the Brownes.

Aaron Haas, long one of Atlanta’s most respected citizens, had emigrated from Europe as a child with his mother, sister of Sophie’s father, Moses Weil. They lived with the Weils in Evansville for two years while Aaron’s father, Herman, who had preceded them to America in order to earn money to bring them over, continued peddling until he could afford to take them south to Atlanta where his brother Jacob had arranged a partnership for him in a dry goods store. Soon Herman moved his family to Newnan, Georgia, some forty miles south, where he opened a wholesale grocery business. He later returned to Atlanta, went to Philadelphia to be within a larger Jewish community, and returned again to Atlanta after the Civil War. His son Aaron remained in Atlanta and gained fame as a twice captured war hero who ran the Union blockade to sell Southern cotton, the Confederates’ only source of income.

Aaron subsequently served as an alderman and in 1875 as the city’s first mayor pro tempore. He taught Sunday school in his bachelor quarters—a single room above his office—was among the founders of the congregation in 1867, and represented it at the UAHC convention in Philadelphia the summer of 1877. That same summer he married Fannie Rich, sister of the men whose dry goods business became Rich’s, the South’s largest department store. He currently headed the Gate City Lodge of B’nai B’rith, into which he promptly enrolled his cousin, the new rabbi.11

Browne, permanently settled, serving a young, vibrant and growing congregation, seemingly had all factors in place to make his impact on American Judaism. One of his first actions at the Temple was to reorganize its religious school, dividing it into four classes that met both on Saturdays and Sundays. The faculty consisted of himself, two other men and three women, one of whom was Sophie, fulfilling a role often expected of the rabbi’s wife. Of their thirty-eight students, fourteen were in high school. A large proportion of these were girls, which surprised Browne because it was unusual in those days for girls to continue their education to that level. He publicly commended the congregation for this commitment to learning.

As he had done in Evansville, Browne encouraged the formation of a “Young Israel’s Literary Association.” He also conducted a private, afternoon Hebrew school for boys at the synagogue, which the board had suggested as a means of supplementing his salary. He abandoned it after one year because of difficulty collecting tuition, after which the congregation continued it under board direction, supported by special dues.12

When Browne arrived the congregation had already initiated the ceremony of confirmation for girls and boys together at age fourteen, a custom early adopted by Reform as a recognition of gender equality in affirming Judaism when adolescents come of age. It still retained bar mitzvah for boys, as did most Reform congregations at that time, but also like the majority of others, discontinued the ceremony in the 1890s due to the influence of rabbis trained in radical Reform. The Temple reinstated bar mitzvah and added bat mitzvah for girls in 1973. As the Atlanta Constitution explained:

The Israelites of Atlanta, have never divided upon the question of orthodoxy and reformation. They are extremists on neither side. While many of the prayers and customs, if not applicable to the present age and the present conditions of the descendants of Jacob, are omitted... , they do not go as far in ignoring ancient traditional usages as do the extreme reformers in many other places.... 13

This statement expressed Browne’s beliefs. He led the congregation into mild reforms but rejected the more radical ones that were later instituted by his successor, David Marx. In Atlanta, as in most other cities, the changes developed gradually, instituted according to the wishes of the congregation’s leaders-- rabbi, president or both. Such positions and the opinions of those who held them in most communities underwent frequent reversals until the 1890s when rabbis trained in Reform at the Hebrew Union College became available. By 1877, the Temple had already enhanced its services with organ music and a mixed choir (a submission to modern tastes long permitted in many European synagogues) but tabled a motion that allowed men to remove their hats during religious services. Like most of his congregants, Browne abandoned the prohibition against riding on the Sabbath, but he strongly opposed holding services on Sunday, a practice being touted by some Reform congregations, to be discussed in the following chapter. As the Atlanta Constitution in effect stated and Reform advocated, he approved those rituals that seemed meaningful, but abandoned the “external [i.e., halachic] additions” to the Decalogue “suited to the dark ages in which the law-giver lived, but... outlived by growing civilization....”14

If the trustees ever discussed ideology at their meetings, they failed to record it. Reflecting the limitation of their interest, minutes indicate that they dealt only with practical issues such as assignment of pews, assessment of dues, decorum during the worship service, and regulation of duties for synagogue functionaries. For example, they voted to enforce a rule requiring the choir to have “at least two rehearsals a month.” Another ruling required the rabbi to ask permission before leaving the city for any purpose, regardless of how long he would be away, whether for two days to dedicate a synagogue in a nearby town or for a two-month vacation in Europe. This pattern obtained in other congregations as well. It identified a tension that existed in most congregations over competition for control, and reflected the degree of subjugation imposed on their rabbis. The absence of theological discussion probably also indicated a desire to keep debate on this highly controversial subject at a minimum by avoiding it whenever possible and declining to record it when it occurred.15

Atlanta’s Temple was one of eight congregations in Georgia serving a total of 309 families in Athens, Augusta, Savannah, Albany, Columbus, Rome, and Macon. Whereas the historic Savannah congregation, third in the nation, had been founded in 1733, almost simultaneously with the colony of Georgia itself, those of Augusta, Macon and Columbus had also preceded Atlanta, having been established in the 1850s, prior to the Civil War. Rome, Albany and Athens followed much later, in the 1870s. All suffered at times from economic recession—hence fluctuations in dues-paying membership—and all endured periods without a rabbi.16

Although affiliated with Wise’s UAHC at its inception, typical of many congregations, the Temple waffled in and out of membership until the 1890s. This was possibly due to economic factors in the same fashion that individual members sometimes dropped off the congregation’s list temporarily during business hardships. It could also have been caused by dissension when control passed from more traditional leadership to more Reform, or vice versa. Because Browne had not yet been installed as the Temple’s rabbi when the UAHC convened in 1877, the congregation sent Haas as its delegate to that convention. Browne participated at the meeting nonetheless as a delegate representing Congregation Ohaveh Sholem of Summit, Mississippi. He served on several committees and delivered the closing prayer, and in the next two years attended the UAHC conventions representing Atlanta. For reasons unknown, the Temple refused a request from the Athens congregation for him to represent them also, and—possibly due to financial considerations—directed him not to invite the UAHC to meet in Atlanta the following year.17

While it is not known if these denials were caused by personal pique or other issues, it is certain that the Jewish communities of Georgia bonded for charitable purposes and that the Atlanta congregation proudly permitted its eloquent rabbi to lecture publicly for worthy causes. As he had done in Evansville for the first Hebrew Orphan’s Home, built by B’nai B’rith in Cleveland, he now lectured to benefit another that the order was in the process of building in Atlanta. One of the first in the nation, the Atlanta Home served indigent or abandoned children throughout the Southeast for almost half a century, closing only when foster care supplanted the use of such institutions. Although B’nai B’rith recognized as early as 1903 that placement in private homes was preferable to group care and took steps to implement the change at that time, it continued to support existing facilities as long as they were needed.18

Browne’s interests and those of his congregation were not limited to Jewish causes. He toured the South in 1878 to raise money for sufferers in one of America’s devastating yellow fever epidemics which was especially virulent along the Mississippi valley, from Memphis to New Orleans. The disease took more than 4,000 lives in the Crescent City alone.

On another tour that year, Browne lectured to benefit sufferers of the potato famine in Ireland. Some twenty years after the most devastating famine struck there in the 1850s, the Irish were again starving due to drought combined with unfavorable trade policies imposed by Great Britain. Browne raised money in the American South to help them, waiving his customary fee of $150 when lecturing for benefits, so all of the proceeds could be sent to the designated charity. Although tickets cost only twenty-five cents and were free for the clergy, these events usually netted significant amounts. Beneficiaries thanked him in various ways, one of which was an attempt on the part of B’nai B’rith members in Navasota, Texas, to name their lodge in his honour. This did not come about because of B’nai B’rith’s standing regulation forbidding its lodges to be named for living members of the order.19

With his abundance of energy, Browne managed these travels and more without neglecting participation in local affairs. Temple members had long been prominently involved in Atlanta’s cultural growth. Some helped establish the Young Men’s Library Association, forerunner of the Atlanta Public Library. David Mayer, a founder of the public school system in 1869 and member of its Board until his death in 1890, made certain that Jewish children were excused on the High Holy Days, a privilege that did not yet apply in many American cities, including New York. Browne, too, took an active interest in the public schools and shortly after his arrival was appointed one of the city’s six examiners for high schools.20

Georgia Governor Alfred Colquitt quickly recognized the rabbi’s potential, especially his intellectual credentials having served as professor of medical jurisprudence and diseases of the mind at the Evansville Medical College. With that in mind, Colquitt appointed him the state’s sole delegate for a “World Congress of Social Science,” scheduled to convene the following summer in Stockholm. Noting the intensified worldwide concern with temperance, the conference president invited Browne to lecture on “Jews, Temperance and Crime, or How the Chosen People Keep Sober and Out of Mischief.” Browne planned to leave for Sweden on July 29, and stop off on the way in Paris to attend a meeting of the Jewish Ecumenical Council convened there by the Alliance Israelite Universelle.21

As it happened, Browne did not make it to either conference. In June, 1878, Sophie gave birth to their second child, a boy, whom they named Jesse Logan in honor of a family friend, Congressman John A. Logan, Republican of Illinois, who advocated public education. Sophie developed severe postpartum depression, causing her husband to cancel his summer travel. Whatever disappointment he felt in missing the trip was amply overcome by the joy of beholding his newborn son. Upon Sophie’s recovery, even after suffering two illnesses himself including a winter bout with typhoid fever that almost killed him, Browne appeared to be happily settled and functioning at top speed.

Apparently the congregation appreciated his services, especially in regard to his community outreach. Responding to “many inquiries of Christians as to whether they can attend....” he publicized the fact that he conducted services and delivered his sermons in English. The Daily Constitution reported in1878 that his Rosh Hashanah Eve service was well attended “not only by members of the Jewish church, but also by a number of Christian friends,” and that his sermon was “very appropriate... a very able one.”

This truly bespoke success in Atlanta. Southern Jews, perhaps even more than their mid-western counterparts, valued above all else their rabbis’ talents as ambassadors to the gentiles. In this respect Browne evoked the pride they felt in the city-wide recognition and achievements of lay leaders like David Mayer and Aaron Haas, ethnic brokers who preceded him, and later spokesmen such as Joseph Hirsch and Victor Kreigshaber. This was a role that the rabbi enjoyed, and one for which he was well prepared.22

The Jewish South

Unfortunately, Browne’s aptitude for diplomacy did not extend to relationships with the leaders of Reform Judaism. His affiliation with Wise began to split shortly after he arrived in Atlanta when the younger rabbi began weekly publication of the Jewish South, the first newspaper ever addressed specifically to Southern Jewry.

Having observed how his mentor used the American Israelite and Die Deborah to propagate his ideas and influence, Browne perceived the possibility of doing likewise, focusing on Jewish interests throughout the South. The need arose, he believed, because most Jewish journals other than Wise’s were “chiefly local in circulation and tendency,” therefore little known beyond their respective areas. Wise’s American Israelite, the only paper serving Jews in the middle states, “endeavoured to cover too large a territory, which naturally placed affairs nearer home ahead of those from the far South....” Believing that “the interests of Southern Judaism and the dignity of the South call loudly for a mouth piece worthy to represent them,” on October 14, 1877, barely two months after arriving in Atlanta, Browne produced his first issue of the Jewish South.23

Initial publishers of the paper were the brothers J. R. and W. B. Seals, Christians who said that they were alerted to the need, “by many of our Hebrew friends,” and would have undertaken the publication two years earlier had they found a competent editor. They assumed full responsibility for business matters, with Browne as editor-in-chief, leaving all else to him as as he wished. He wanted no part in financial affairs, even advising subscribers to send payments directly to the publishers rather than to him. His reporters were Henry Powers of Nashville and Elias Haimon of Atlanta, proprietor of the Southern Agricultural Works. He was able to recruit Charles Wessolowsky, a former state senator from Albany, Georgia, as assistant editor.24

Browne envisioned the Jewish South as an instrument by which “to drain the swamp of ignorance in which breed the diseases of hatred and bigotry,” promoting education and brotherhood among Jews while providing information about them for non-Jews. Believing that Jews and Christians, especially in the South, would welcome the chance to learn more about each other at an affordable price, he proclaimed across the newspaper’s masthead, “The Largest and Cheapest Jewish Journal in the World,” set the subscription rate at $2.00 a year (rather than the $4 or $5 charged by Wise and publishers of other Jewish weeklies), and specifically invited Christians to subscribe, gearing much of his copy to their interests. He promised Jewish readers that the paper would remain independent, uninvolved in “the combative liturgical and theological arguments” of American Jewry.25

Ads cost $1.50 an inch for a single entry and $30 for the year. Christians as well as Jews from as far away as New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, bought them to tout area hotels, railroads, plantations in Florida (from $2,500 to $15,000,) Jewish books, tea, toupees, pianos, scuppernong wine, the study of French dentistry, and a brownstone in Manhattan. The Southern Educational Institute for Boys advertised Judaic studies as well as preparation for college at a bargain rate of $400 compared to the $1000 charged by northern schools. Notices of marriages, births, betrothals, deaths, welfare needs such as a job for a young Jewish girl with “a good Jewish family,” were published free of charge as were those of congregations seeking rabbis or rabbis seeking congregations. As other rabbi-publishers did, Browne promoted his own lectures, Sabbath services and books. Advertisements for his 420 page translation of The Book Jashar appeared regularly, with a gradual reduction in price from $5 per copy, to “buy four copies and get one free,” and finally to $2.50 each.26

The Jewish South covered essentially the same subjects as other Jewish weeklies, but in a format that suggests a more popular appeal. Because, like others, Browne sought to educate both Jewishly and secularly, he also published literary offerings—serialized novels, familiar quotations by such authors as Jonathon Swift and Washington Irving, poetry (often contributed by readers) as well as an introduction to the Hebrew language with translations of Hebrew poetry, including some by Judah Halevy. He featured a chess column, a “Boys and Girls” department, and to attract those inclined toward material pursuits rather than intellectual ones, a section entitled “All About Diamonds.” Under the title “All Sorts” he published literary trivia, theatre commentary, occasional humor such as “A few words to the ladies from a rooster-pecked wife,” and fashion notes to keep readers in the rural South au courant with life in the more sophisticated world of big cities. When he and Sophie celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary, he joked about it in “All Sorts,” referring to their marriage as “the Seven Years’ War.”27

As Wise did, Browne published outstanding sermons by other rabbis. The Jewish South differed, however, in that it occasionally carried sermons of Christian ministers. In later issues Browne published a series entitled “Our Christian Brethren—what they are saying and doing for their religion—Know thy neighbours as thyself,” informing readers about different Protestant denominations. However, not all Jewish readers appreciated this degree of attention to Christian beliefs and interests, as one indicated in a long, scathing criticism. With antisemitism on the rise, rabbis were challenged to maintain a delicate balance between ecumenical outreach and Jewish cohesion.28