The Jewish Traveler:  New Orleans
By: Renata Polt

Hadassah Magazine – March 2002

As elsewhere in the South, slavery was once common in the Crescent City, but modern Jews have led the fight against racism.

“Friday Night Live” jazz services. A congregation going to watch a Mardi Gras parade after Shabbat service. A crawfish boil at a bar mitzvah party.

·         New Orleans—“The Big Easy,” “The Crescent City”—does things its own way,so it’s not surprising that the city’s Jews should have their own interpretations of Judaism.

·         As L.J. Goldstein, captain of New Orleans’ first Jewish Mardi Gras “krewe”—a group that organizes Mardi Gras parades and balls—says, “You can bend the rules without breaking them.”

History
New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718, but the first documented Jew to settle there was apparently Netherlands-born Isaac Rodrigues Monsanto, who arrived in 1757 or 1758. Monsanto traded goods ranging from handkerchiefs and livestock to sugar and slaves; he was soon followed by family members and other Jews.

The Spanish acquired the Louisiana colony in the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, but it wasn’t until 1769 that they expelled all Jews and foreign Protestants. New Orleans had essentially no Jews until after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase ceded the territory to the United States.

The first to have lived in the city after 1800 was Judah Touro, son of Isaac Touro, rabbi of Newport, Rhode Island’s Congregation Yeshuat Israel. A shy man seemingly uninterested in Judaism throughout most of his life, Judah Touro was eventually persuaded to buy an old Episcopalian church, convert it into a synagogue and donate it to congregation Nefutzoth Yehudah (Dispersed of Judah). It eventually merged with the city’s first synagogue, Sha’arai-Chasset (Gates of Mercy) to form Touro Synagogue, today one of the city’s leading Reform congregations. In his will, Touro left huge sums to charities including the Touro Infirmary, which still serves as a hospital today.

During the antebellum period many Jews were elected to high state office, but they took little interest in Judaism and the intermarriage rate was high. Judah Benjamin, the most prominent nineteenth-century American Jew, was a member of the United States Senate and upon the secession of the Southern states, became attorney general of the Confederate government. But he played little part in the Jewish community.

The nineteenth century saw a great influx of immigrants, including Jews, many from Germany and Alsace. The Civil War, floods, yellow fever and economic recessions took their toll.

Community
“This is not New York or Chicago, where Judaism falls out of the sky into your arms. You have to make an effort,” says Rabbi David Goldstein of Touro Synagogue, one of the city’s largest—there are three Reform, one Conservative and two Orthodox. Today in this chiefly Catholic city there are some 13,000 to 14,000 Jews in a total population of about one million. Nevertheless, there has never been much perceptible anti-Semitism.

The community is predominantly Reform, many fourth and fifth generation. The rate of intermarriage is high—about 50 percent to 60 percent—but there’s quite a high degree of affiliation among the intermarried.

About half of New Orleans Jews live in the city, the other half in suburban Metairie, with a small number now moving to Mandeville on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, about 30 miles from downtown. Tulane University, in the middle of the city, has a 30-percent Jewish student body; a Jewish president, Scott Cowen; and a Jewish provost, Lester Lefton. Its Jewish studies program offers 10 courses and an undergraduate major, with plans to expand. In November 2001, 53 adult education classes were listed at a variety of synagogues, private homes and the Jewish Community Center (5342 St. Charles Avenue; 504-897-0143).

The city is renowned for its cemeteries, or cities of the dead, of which there are 42; of these, nine are Jewish. What distinguishes New Orleans cemeteries is that in-ground burial is impossible: New Orleans is actually below sea level, and corpses buried in the ground soon float up.

Jewish law, however, requires in-ground burial. New Orleans Jews solved that problem by erecting “copings”—one- or two-foot-high frames filled with soil, so that technically the bodies are buried in the earth. Hebrew Rest Cemetery is the largest and has some of the most impressive tombs and obelisks (2100 Pelopidas Street; contact Herbert Barton, 288-7972).

The city’s population is 70-percent African American; as elsewhere in the South, slavery was once common—“Every person in Louisiana who could afford slaves owned them,” according to Bertram Wallace Korn’s The Early Jews of New Orleans.

Since then, modern Jews have led the fight against racism. Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation, opened its doors in 1949 to an address by the United Nations’ Ralph Bunche. Today, Touro Synagogue has an ongoing relationship with the black Israelite Baptist Church, with the rabbi speaking at the church and the minister speaking at the synagogue. Every sisterhood has representatives in the New Orleans Jewish Coalition for Literacy, which sends tutors into the public schools.

Once upon a time, the krewes were exclusive, and blacks, women and Jews were not permitted to participate in the Mardi Gras parades. By the 1970’s or 80’s, however, the city ruled that while it regularly footed the bill for the post-celebration cleanup, it would not do so for any krewe that discriminated.

Visitors who want information about local Hadassah events and activities should contact Margery Glazer at the New Orleans chapter, 504-393-7640; e-mail: marge@glazers.net.

Sights
Most Jewish sights are located either in the six-by-twelve-block French Quarter or along St. Charles Avenue, which is served by a 24-hour streetcar, the last remaining in the city (although some of the old lines, including the famed Desire line, are being rebuilt).

In the French Quarter—or the Quarter, as it’s known locally—a walk along Royal Street takes you by antiques stores with names like Hurwitz-Mintz (568-9555) and Rothschild’s (523-5816). The Martin Lawrence Gallery (800-675-3932) has Marc Chagall etchings and lithographs, as well as works by Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring and others. Elliott Galleries (523-3554) represents such Jewish artists as Nissan Engel, David Schneuer and Theo Tobiasse.

The Historic New Orleans Collection (523-4662) is a private research archive with several items of Jewish interest. The dignified Miltenberger Houses were built in the 1830’s by a Jewish widow; today trendy boutiques occupy the ground floor.

Off Royal, the Federal-style Hermann-Grima House (820 St. Louis Street; 525-5661), with its courtyard, slave quarters and functional outdoor kitchen, was one of the city’s largest and finest. Built in 1831 by shipping merchant Samuel J. Hermann, the restored house and garden illustrate the life of a prosperous family of the time. Two more sights are located near Jackson Square, the heart of the Quarter. The Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré (616 St. Peter Street; 522-9958), the country’s oldest continually running community theater, was founded and run by Zillah Meyer and Rhea Goldberg Deutsch. The Louisiana State Museum (751 Chartres Street; 800-568-6968) consists of the Cabildo and the Presbytère flanking St. Louis Cathedral. The Cabildo’s lovely old rooms house exhibits on Louisiana history, including one on Jewish life. On the second floor is an exhibit on Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who became the first great American-born composer and pianist. Descended from a long line of rabbis, he was raised a Catholic.

The St. Charles Avenue streetcar goes by several more Jewish sites, including Tulane University, Temple Sinai, Touro Synagogue and the Milton H. Latter Memorial Library.

Tulane’s campus (6823 St. Charles Avenue; 865-5000), with its immense oak and magnolia trees, is home to the Southern Jewish Historical Society (housed in the Howard Tilton Memorial Library, Audubon Place and Freret Street; 865-5605) and the magnificent president’s mansion (St.Charles and Audubon Place), former home of immigrant Samuel Zemurray.

Temple Sinai (6227 St. Charles; 861-3693) was founded in 1870, with the present Byzantine-style building dedicated in 1927. The main sanctuary has Tiffany chandeliers and German stained-glass windows. The synagogue owns nine Torah scrolls, four of which are from the Central museum of the Defunct Jewish Race that Hitler planned to establish in Prague. One, damaged on Kristallnacht, has never been repaired—deliberately. The temple’s art collection contains works by Chaim Gross, Chagall and Louise Nevelson, among others.

The Congregation Beth Israel (7000 Canal Boulevard; 283-4366), established in 1904 and the largest Orthodox congregation in the South, has twice-daily minyanim. In what used to be the Jewish area is the Orthodox Congregation Anshe Sfard (2230 Carondelet Street; 522-4714). Built on the model of the Polish and Russian shtetl shul, it is the only synagogue within walking distance of the Convention Center, the third busiest in the country.

A few blocks away, the Milton H. Latter Memorial Library occupies a beautiful old house built by merchant Marks Isaacs. Closer to town is Touro Synagogue (4238 St. Charles; 895-4843) founded in 1828. Its sanctuary holds the original Ark, made of cedars of Lebanon and a gift of Judah Touro, which has accompanied the congregation to each of its three buildings. A chapel with exquisite stained-glass windows by Ida Kohlmeyer—based on the prophet Micah, vivid colors against a clear background—was added in 1999.

General Sights
Sights and sounds are what New Orleans is all about, and you don’t have to go far to find either: The Quarter’s picturesque balconies are festooned with plants and flowers. Jazz is on every street corner as well as in the clubs along Bourbon Street. Louis Armstrong, for whom a city park is named, worked for a Jewish family; the Karnofskys gave him money to buy his first cornet.

A 15-minute taxi ride away is Longue Vue House and Gardens (7 Bamboo Road; 448-5488), an eight-acre historic estate completed in 1942 by Edgar and Edith Stern. The Sterns (she was the daughter of Sears, Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald) were major contributors to education and the arts. The house, one of the first in the city to have central air-conditioning, is maintained in its original state, with hand-done plaster and woodwork. Edith’s collection of Woolworth statuettes (price tags still attached) is scattered about. Edith also collected art, and some of her prizes, by Picasso, Barbara Hepworth and Yaacov Agam, are on display in the sun porch.

Farther in town, in City Park, is the New Orleans Museum of Art (Collins Diboll Circle; 488-2631), endowed in 1910 by sugar broker and philanthropist Isaac Delgado. Among its major donors have been P.R. (“Sunny”) Norman and Frederick R. Weisman. The museum’s permanent collection includes works by Lee Krasner, Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Jacques Lipchitz. 

Sydney and Walda Besthoff, owners of the K&B drugstore chain, have collected sculpture that they recently donated to the New Orleans Museum of Art, including George Segal’s realistic 3 People on 4 Park Benches, Henry Moore’s sensuous Reclining Mother and Child and Lipchitz’s Sacrifice III. The monumental works will be housed in a garden scheduled for a 2003 opening.

Personalities
Lillian Hellman was a prominent twentieth-century novelist, playwright and social critic. Kitty Carlisle became a well-known television personality and panelist on To Tell the Truth. Leonard Slatkin conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic.

Rosalie Cohen, at 91 the grande dame of the New Orleans Jewish community, was a three-time president of Hadassah during the 1930’s and 40’s. Roger Kamenetz, award-winning author of The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah (both from HarperSanFrancisco), lives in New Orleans.

Books and Movies
The major history of New Orleans Jews to the 1840’s is Bertram Wallace Korn’s The Early Jews of New Orleans (American Jewish Historical Society). Belva Plain’s Crescent City (Delacorte) is a Gone With the Wind-style novel about a Jewish family in the antebellum period.

Other New Orleans novels are William Faulkner’s Pylon (Knopf) and Mosquitoes (Liveright), and novels by Shirley Ann Grau and Ellen Gilchrist. And, of course, there’s that play by Tennessee Williams known simply as Streetcar. Some New Orleans movies are A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Easy Rider (1969), Pretty Baby (1978) and The Big Easy (1996).

Music
No visit to New Orleans can exclude jazz, which is all around you all the time: impromptu groups playing on Quarter street corners (gratuities gladly accepted), Bourbon Street bars blasting it out the doors. There’s the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park (916 North Peters; 589-4841), which offers tours, lectures and, of course, concerts; the Louis Armstrong Park just outside the Quarter on North Rampart Street, with a statue of Satchmo himself; and a Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts.

In Congo Square within the park, slaves and freed slaves gathered during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to practice their rituals and play their music, the forerunner of jazz.

A couple of places where you can hear traditional New Orleans jazz live are Preservation Hall, founded by the Jewish Allan Jaffee (726 St. Peter Street; 522-2841) and Palm Court Jazz Café (1204 Decatur Street; 525-0200), where last winter one of the original Ink Spots was singing like it was 1945.

The Richelieu Room at Arnauds Restaurant (813 Bienville; 523-2847) features 40’s-style jazz. The New Orleans Klezmer Allstars (412-26l-1399) and the Panorama Jazz Band (899-4146) both blend klezmer with New Orleans.

Recommendations
The newest kosher restaurant is Creole Kosher Kitchen (115 Chartres Street; 529-4120), combining Creole cuisine with dishes from the owner’s Persian homeland. The Casablanca (3030 Severn Avenue, Metairie; 888-2209) specializes in Moroccan and Middle Eastern food. And Kosher Cajun Deli (3519 Severn, Metairie; 888-2010) offers a restaurant, grocery and catering service.

Some hotels will kasher their kitchens on request for groups and conventions. Among these is the Monteleone (523-3341), an elegant 1886 grand hotel in the Quarter, and the brand-new Hotel Monaco (561-0010), which features lively décor and a convenient location. If you choose to stay in the Quarter, in a hotel or one of the many bed-and-breakfasts, make sure your room faces a courtyard or a quiet street. Avoid anything on or near Bourbon Street, which never sleeps.

For hotel and other accommodations, the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (566-5011; www.neworleanscvb.com) will be delighted to send you brochures and maps. For B&B referrals try Bed and Breakfast Access (834-7726; www.bnbaccess.com) or Bed and Breakfast Reservation Service (488-4640; www.historicallodging.com).

Jewish tours are led by Cesil Levin (821-0701) by prior arrangement, but tour guests must provide their own transportation.

Shops selling Judaica include Dashka Roth Contemporary Jewelry & Judaica (332 Chartres Street; 523-0805); Ooh La La! (524 St. Peter Street; 522-7554); and on Royal Street, Naghi’s (586-8373) and M.S. Rau Antiques (523-5660).

The Jewish News publishes an annual Guide to New Orleans (e-mail: jewishnews@jewishnola.com).

 

Compliments of:

New Orleans Hillel

912 Broadway; New Orleans, LA  70118

(504) 866-7060

www.neworleanshillel.org