Yeah, I get what you're saying, Hil and you make a great point, however, given they're trying to reach mainstream girls across the U.S., they were probably trying for the largest possible frame of reference rather than something more limited. (Meaning it's far easier to find references to the immigrant Jews in NY in the early 20th century than almost anything else and it sounds as if they stayed away from most of the stereotypes.)

For me, I would have loved to have seen a 1950s Jewish girl growing up on a resort in the Catskills. Imagine the characters she would have encountered there-- all the Borscht Belt comedians that came through.

Or like you said, a Jewish kid in the south-- the congregation that Lewis' family belonged to in Pensacola was one of the oldest in the South, having been established in the 1880s, I believe.

And I remember that anecdote in Jewish Cooking in America-- I love her cookbooks for that reason.

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Hil, have you read Maan Meyers? The earliest (chronological) of their historical mysteries feature Sephardi in New Amsterdam.

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What I'd love to see would be a story about a Jewish kid in the south or midwest in the 1870s or earlier

Not Jewish, so not as versed in its history in America, and being from NY, I was a bit shocked to learn the rest of the country had so little Jewish communities.

That said, I learned of the Gothic Synagogue in Savannah [link] The story told to me is, the original plans for the synagogue were lost, and the congregation borrowed plans from a church that was recently built 6 blocks away. So on the same square, you had 2 very similar buildings (not mentioned on their history page).

The other Jewish in the south story was recently learned. When we were doing the play on the Book of Genesis, I was quite surprised to learn there was a large Jewish population here in Dallas. Apparently migrated from Houston, for the longest time, they ran pawn shops, general stores, etc. Apparently the pawns shops flourished as a form of banking for the railroad workers. Then, after WWII, another wave came here, survivng the holocaust. [link]

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Gothic Synagogue

Woah.

I'm probably not the person to know, but I thought that synagogues were supposed to be modest. And without stained glass art.

Cool.

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Hil, have you read Maan Meyers? The earliest (chronological) of their historical mysteries feature Sephardi in New Amsterdam.

Haven't read those, but they sound interesting. Thanks!

Another way that Jews ended up in Texas was through the Galveston plan. In the early 1900s, some groups that helped Jewish immigrants settle in the US decided that Jews were getting too crowded in NYC, and should be spread out around the country more. Part of the plan to accomplish this was offering incentives to NYC Jews to move out to the midwest. Another part was to stop so many Jews from coming in to NYC in the first place, and they started a campaign to convince Jews in Europe that they should immigrate to Galveston rather than NY. About 10,000 Jews came through Galveston. (My great-grandfather was one of them. And he got on a train to NY pretty much as soon as he got off the boat. We're not quite sure why he went to Galveston in the first place, or why he only stayed there a few weeks.)

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I designed a production of The Immigrant a year or two ago which is about a Jew who come in through the Galveston plan and settles in rural texas, brings his wife over, and stats anew as the only Jew in a small texas town.

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I thought the time and place that American Girl chose for Josefina, the Hispanic doll, was really interesting. She's in New Mexico in 1824, when it was still part of Mexico. I thought that was a nice counterpoint to the Hispanic=immigrant idea -- showing that Spanish-speaking people have been living there longer than English-speaking people have. (I knew someone whose family had been living in New Mexico for generations, since well before it was part of the US, and would get really annoyed at people who'd assume that she must be first- or second-generation American.)

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I actually like the American Girl dolls, despite the hype and the hefty purchase price. They tend to do a pretty good job of painting a wide swath of American life. I also agree with Barb about the logic behind choosing that time period. For me there's also the amusement that it's basically a doll version of my grandmother, except that she emigrated to Chicago.

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I've been somewhat disappointed in a lot of the stuff that's happened with American Girl since they got bought out by Mattel, but I still do like the dolls and stories and general idea. And I do really like that there is finally a Jewish American Girl doll; my complaints about the choice of time and place are more nit-picking than anything else, really. I guess that, after they picked such an un-stereotypical time and place for Josefina, I was disappointed that they went with such an obvious time and place for Rebecca.

(Also, it's kind of making me remember one of my college friends from North Dakota, who was really surprised when I showed her that Jewish Cooking in America cookbook and she saw that it included a bunch of recipes from Jewish people living in the Dakotas in the late 1800s, because she'd figured that all the Jews there were recent implants from New York, or maybe Chicago or Minneapolis, but had no idea that there were Jews who'd been there for generations.)

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My mom decide where she wants to go for her birthday dinner. It looks good, but I so don't understand this menu. [link] They've got Chinese food, and Italian food, and hummus, and several Louisiana-style things like remoulade and gumbo, and stuff like pot roast and shepherd's pie. And ostrich.

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