April 10, 2021 • 29 mins
This 2017 episode covers Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, a vocal activist who spoke out for civil rights despite the danger in doing so. White supremacists bombed The Temple in Atlanta in a direct reaction to Rothschild's work for equality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. This week on the show, I talked to
Jeremy Katz about his new book, The Jewish Community of Atlanta,
as well as the work that he does at the
Bremen Museum and how that museum is preserving past present
and what they hope will be future of the Jewish
community in Atlanta for everyone. And in our discussion, we
also talked about our previous episode on the Hebrew Benevolent
(00:23):
Temple bombing, and we're replaying that as a Saturday Classic today.
This episode originally came out February Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
(00:46):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Tracy B. Wilson, and uh for our listeners. Like I know,
sometimes when I'm listening to podcasts, I'm just letting them
flow and I don't always look at what's coming next,
like when I'm driving around. But if you are a
person that looks at your podcast selection and you pick
one or you just see it come up and you
like to read what's coming up, if you saw the
(01:08):
title for today's episode, you might be braced for a
really horrific or upsetting story. I, in fact, was braced
for such a thing when you told me what you
were researching this week. Uh. I give you relief because
the bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation temple in Atlanta
in the late nineteen fifties was a unique moment in
the civil rights movement. And while there are some elements
(01:30):
of the temple's free bombing history and some UH ideologies
that are troubling and horrific, I will give you a
spoiler and say that overall, this is really a very
very hopeful story. Yeah, there is. There is definitely a bombing.
There is also racism and anti semitism, But the story
(01:53):
is not the parade of tragedy you may be expecting
based on title. Correct. So it may if you were
worried or scared that this is when you just were
not ready for today. Uh, it is probably not going
to be as upsetting as you think, although of course
there is some upsetting rhetoric being discussed on the part
of people that would bomb a thing. UH. So we're
(02:15):
going to hop right into it. While Atlanta has had
a Jewish population since the city was founded, at the
end of eighteen forty seven, Jews were really a small
minority of the city's people. In eighteen fifty, fewer than
thirty Jews were recorded living in Atlanta, less than one
percent of the city's residents, and by eighteen sixty, the
(02:36):
year before the United States Civil War began, the Jewish
population in the city had doubled. Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Society
was also founded. That organization came together with two primary missions,
assisting the city's impoverished Jewish population and securing a burial ground.
Two years after the Civil War ended, while Atlanta was
(02:59):
still rebuilding as a city, the Hebrew Benevolent Society took
its next step establishing a temple. And this move was
precipitated by the words of the Rabbi Isaac Liser of Philadelphia,
who was here presiding over a wedding that was the
first Jewish marriage ceremony in Atlanta in January of eighteen
sixty seven, and Rabbi Liser told the Southern Cities Jewish
(03:21):
community that they should establish a permanent place of worship,
and his words were definitely heard and they were encouraging.
When the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation was founded in eighteen sixty seven,
it was the first official Jewish institution in Atlanta by
the late spring of that year, just four months after
Rabbi Liser's encouragement, they had their charter. Over the next
(03:45):
eight years, the congregation planned and built a temple in
downtown Atlanta, which was completed in eighteen seventy five. The
early years for the temple, which is the name it
came to be known by that shortened version, We're a
little bit rocky. There was a series of change overs
in rabbis as the congregation struggled with its identity and
the type of worship that it would favor, swaying between
(04:06):
traditional and reform ideologies. But in three year old Rabbi
David Marx was hired and he would stay at the
temple for more than half a century, steering it toward
classical reform Judaism. When Rabbi Marx retired after World War Two,
he was replaced with Rabbi Jacob roth's Child in nine six.
(04:27):
Rothschild built on Marx's work and fostering connections with the
greater Atlanta community, including with other religious faiths. Rabbi roths
Child was also a vocal supporter of civil rights and
social justice, and This was a departure from his predecessor's work,
who had felt that in order to keep his congregation
as safe as possible from anti Semitic sentiments in the community,
(04:49):
it was best to avoid confrontations with the wider community
on such issues. To be clear, there was a very
real and understandable reasoning behind Marx's effort is to keep
peaceful relationships with Atlanta's gentile population. Many of the Temple
community remembered vividly an event from nineteen thirteen when a
(05:10):
member of the temple named Leo Frank was lynched by
a mob after being accused of the murder of a
young girl. The evidence against him was thin, but by
virtue of being an outsider, being a Northerner who had
moved to the South and a Jew, Leo Frank became
a scape a scapegoat who was easy to vilify. That
(05:31):
is a way oversimplified version of this story. We have
an episode about it in the archive. It was a
huge miscarriage of justice, and much of the Jewish community
in Atlanta opted to keep a low profile after that
out of out of self preservation. Yeah, so when we
say that that Rabbi Marx had not been vocal about
(05:55):
civil rights. It wasn't necessarily because he didn't care about them,
but he was very concerned about the anti semit issues
that were still very much a part of culture at
the time. But on Yam Kapoor. Almost from the time
that he became the rabbi at the temple, Rothschild used
the holiday as an opportunity to speak about segregation and
to vocally oppose Jim Crow laws. He did so during
(06:18):
subsequent Yam Kapoor sermons as well. It kind of came
to be expected as the topic. He included the following
as he addressed his congregation, how comforting this day might be.
Here's the perfect opportunity to find ourselves forgiven. God's standard
is too high for us. His law is too difficult.
(06:39):
Our sins were just the expected failures of all mortals.
All we need to do, therefore, is come into His
presence On each Yam Kapoor, acknowledge our inevitable guilt and
pray for forgiveness and low we shall be forgiven. We
are held accountable for our conduct, We are responsible for
our acts. Won't rationalize your guilt by claiming that morality
(07:03):
is too difficult for attainment by mere man. Don't pretend
helplessness because the right way to live is placed out
of your reach. Don't for a moment think that you
can blame your sinfulness on the fact that goodness is
beyond your grasp. Quite the opposite is true. We must
do more than view with alarm the growing race hatred
(07:24):
that threatens the South. The problem is ours to solve,
and the time for the solution is now. We have
committed no overt sin in our dealings with negroes. I
feel certain that we have treated them fairly. Certainly, we
have not used force to frighten them. We have even
felt a certain sympathy for their predicament. No, our sin
(07:48):
has been the deeper one, the evil of what we
didn't do. This was, as you might suspect, not entirely
welcomed rhetoric. The fear of bigoted anti Semitic sentiment was
still very real to some of the people that Rothschild
was speaking to. They had lived through that nineteen incident,
and they knew how scary the world could be. They
(08:09):
didn't want to invite conflict or stirrup trouble, and they
were certainly afraid of stirring up the level of anti
Semitism that had led to Leo Frank's murder. I would
say also, this was in the nineteen forties, so there
was huge reason to be afraid based on events going
on in Europe yep like there was, there was a
lot of a reason that people felt the need to
(08:32):
stay quiet. And then additionally to all that, Rothschild was
something of an outsider himself. He was from Pittsburgh and
he came to lead the temple after having served as
an Army chaplain. So while some of his congregation agreed
with his ideas but feared retribution for them, others dismissed
his message as being out of touch with the culture
(08:53):
of the South and the tentative peace among the differing
cultures that made up Atlanta. But to Rothschild, the morality
that he felt was an integral part of his faith
meant that he had to use his platform to address
social injustice. So he continued to speak out again and again,
and he put actions behind his words. He joined interfaith
(09:15):
organizations and civic groups, including the Southern Regional Council, the
Georgia Council on Human Relations, as well as the Greater
Atlantic Council on Human Relations, and under his stewardship, the
temple hosted an institute for the Christian clergy every February.
And while he worked hard to foster understanding across varying faiths,
(09:36):
Rabbi Rothschild also works to bridge the color divide as well,
asserting that black ministers must be included in these kinds
of gatherings, and he also invited leaders of the black
community to speak at the temple. In late nineteen fifty seven,
so after he had been working at this for about
a decade. In Atlanta, Rothschild co authored the Atlanta Manifesto,
(09:57):
which was an anti segregation document that was sign and
by more than eighty area religious leaders and was directed
at city authorities. While he worked on the manifesto, Rothschild
was not one of the signatories because he felt that
the city's Christian leaders should head the initiative for it
to have its best chance at a positive reception, and
that manifesto read in part, we do not believe that
(10:20):
the South is more to blame for the difficulties which
we face than our other areas of our nation. The
presence of the Negro in America is the result of
the infamous slave traffic, an evil for which the North
was as much responsible as the South. We are also
conscious that racial injustice and violence are not confined to
(10:42):
our section, and that racial problems have by no means
been solved anywhere in our nation. Two wrongs, however, do
not make a right. The failures of others are not
just a justification for our own shortcomings, nor can their
unjust criticisms excuse us for a failure to do our
duty in the sight of God are one concern must
(11:06):
be to know and to do that which is right.
And all of this vocal opposition to racism on the
part of the rabbi did not go unnoticed by the
greater population. But unfortunately the rabbi's efforts to foster understanding
and compassion led to some very serious consequences, and we're
going to talk about that right after we first paused
(11:28):
for a little sponsor break. While there were people in
Rabbi Rothschild's congregation who were a little unsettled by his
constant engagement with social issues, there were plenty of people
(11:49):
from outside the temple's community who were downright incensed. For example,
in May of n Rothschild was engaged as a speaker
at Atlanta's first bapt As church. In the evening of
his lecture, a man appeared outside the church carrying a
picket sign specifically against the rabbi, and then he later
heckled the rabbi during the Q and A segment of
(12:11):
the evening's presentation. And there was already a weird conflation
on the part of white supremacist groups when it came
to the Jewish and Black communities. If you listen to
our episodes about the Palmer Raids, you may recall how
Palmer and stirring up a panic, started to lump anarchists
and communists together as one huge threat pool and then
(12:34):
eventually cast suspicion on all immigrants. There was a similar
though different rhetoric playing out in the South of the
nineteen fifties. And to be clear, there are Jewish black people, yeah,
but this was viewing the Jewish community as a whole
in the Black community as a whole sort of the
same general threat base, yes uh. And so for example
(12:56):
of how these things got combined, one flyer that was
being circulated by the Christian Anti Jewish Party at the
beginning of the nineteen fifties was titled Jews behind race mixing,
and this flyer claimed that the Jewish population was working
against segregation so that the white race would be diluted
and weakened, warning that quote a race once mongrelized is
(13:18):
mongrelized forever. So there was no illusion that an outspoken
rabbi arguing against segregation wasn't going to make people angry.
But the real moment where it became clear that rossjo
that Rothschild was really ruffling feathers came and the very
early morning of October twelfth, when there was an explosion
(13:41):
at the temple. It was three forty am on a Sunday.
Rabbi Rothschild was called at seven five am by the
custodian at the temple, Robert Benton. Benton had been the
one to discover the damage when he arrived at work
that morning. And you might think, as you listen to
this and you think about the timeline, that an explosion
(14:01):
that large at three in the morning would have woken
the neighborhood, and it did. But when police patrolled the
area in response to calls about the noise, they did
not drive up the temple's driveway and from their perspective.
They couldn't see the hole in the building from the streets,
so it looked like everything was fine. I'm imagining that
they went to investigate this noise and then we're basically like, huh,
(14:22):
that was weird, right. Fifty sticks of dynamite had been
detonated at the temple's north entrance, and the blast made
a huge hole in the building. Fortunately, though there were
no injuries. There was, however, somewhere between one hundred thousand
and two hundred thousand dollars worth of damage to the structure,
(14:45):
depending on what source you are looking at. Yeah, especially
if you're looking at newspapers from the time, the number
varies wildly. One of the things that I read suggested
that two hundred was like the highest estimate, but as they,
you know, got more and more information about how bad
the damage was, it it crept downward a little bit
(15:05):
closer to the one thousand dollar number. Still a very
large sum in wherever or now. Yeah, I think we're
so used to modern uh stories of explosions or damages
being in the billions, that it may not seem initially
that large an amount to the modern ear but in
(15:25):
fact it's a lot of money. Uh and this attack
was claimed by a white supremacist group called the Confederate Underground.
A man claiming to be the leader of the group
and calling himself General Gordon, phoned the United Press International
Office to tell them, quote, we bombed a temple in Atlanta.
This is the last empty building we will bomb. Negroes
(15:46):
and Jews are hereby declared aliens. At six fifteen that evening,
there was another call, this time to the rabbi's home,
where his wife Denise answered they call. The call said,
I'm one of them that bombed your church. I'm calling
to let you know there's a bomb under your house
and it's lit. You've got five minutes to get out
(16:08):
and save your life. While Denis and the neighbor got
themselves and their children out of the house, it turned
out to have been an empty threat. Yeah. The police
came and did a full scan of the house and
found nothing. But how terrifying and horrible. UM and that
same group, the Confederate Underground, had attacked a synagogue in Charlotte,
North Carolina, the prior November. The dynamite that they used
(16:31):
in that attack failed to detonate, and between that failed
attempt and the explosion at the temple in Atlanta. The
Confederate Underground had bombed four other temples and Jewish community centers,
while their second attack in Gastonia, North Carolina, on February nine,
had also been thwarted by faulty dynamite. Their third and
fourth bombings, carried out just hours apart on March six, sixteenth,
(16:55):
at the Orthodox Temple Bethel in Miami, Florida and the
Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee, both caused building damage.
The fifth attack, at the Bethel Synagogue in Birmingham, Alabama,
on April was unsuccessful, this time to diffuse failure, and
the following day there was another failed attack at the
Jewish Community Center in Jacksonville, Florida. I feel like this
(17:17):
highlights the fact that, like the series of bomb threats
at Jewish community centers that is ongoing today, has layers
of being terrifying beyond just the fact that it's a
bomb threat, right, It's a bomb threat that's part of
a history of bomb threats and bombings specifically against Jewish
(17:38):
centers and houses of worship. Because of those attacks and
a protest demonstration outside the Atlantic Constitution offices in July,
where protesters carried signs reading free America from Jewish Domination.
The Temple and all synagogues throughout the South had increased
their security, but this was not enough to deter terrorists.
(18:02):
The other thing that happened as a result of the
previous attacks was actually an improvement in coordination across police
forces from jurisdictions throughout the South, and so after the
attack on the Temple, the law enforcement network activated immediately.
More than seventy five detectives worked in conjunction with agents
from the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in
(18:23):
an unprecedented effort to search for suspects in the crime.
Five days after the bombing, on October seventeenth, ninety five men,
all associated with the white supremacy groups, the National States
Rights Party and the Knights of the White Camellia were
indicted for the blast. Wallace Allen, Robert Bowling, George Bright,
(18:44):
Luther Corley, and Kenneth Griffin, and they eventually let one
of the men go, but the first of the five
men that they tried was George Bright, and his trial
started on December one, with Judge Derwood te Pie presiding.
The case against Bright was the strong is the prosecutors believed,
and the hope was that a conviction in his case
would make it easier to convict his cohorts. They're kind
(19:07):
of relying on a domino effect to take place. The
evidence against Bright included a note found in his home
that threatens terror against the Jewish population, anti Semitic literature
found in his home, and testimony from an FBI informant
who said that he had been in a meeting with
the other men in May of that year where they
planned the temple attack. Additionally, the man we mentioned earlier
(19:30):
who protested a lecture giving given by Rabbi Rothschild and
then heckled him from the crowd was also George Bright.
He had also been part of the anti Semitic protest
outside the newspaper offices. The jury in the case actually
came to a deadlock. There were nine in favor of
conviction and three that were opposed, and none were willing
(19:51):
to budge, so on the tenth day of the legal proceedings,
Judge Pye declared a mistrial. A second trial soon followed,
but this time Bright was acquitted. There's actually a whole
weird side story where his um lawyer was found in
contempt of court and I think actually ended up doing
some jail time, but he got his client off. Uh.
(20:13):
It sounded like a circus. But because of the failure
to secure a guilty verdict in what they thought was
clearly their strongest case, prosecutors eventually it took quite some time,
but they eventually dropped the charges against the other alleged conspirators.
No other suspects were ever charged for the bombing, so
there was absolutely never any justice in this case. Well,
(20:34):
and this is also pretty circumstantial evidence. It is clear
evidence that he was anti Semitic, but like not a
conclusive thing directly connecting him to the bombing um So well,
that's a somber element of this case. It does, as
(20:54):
we mentioned at the top of the show, have some
truly hopeful elements to it, and we will talk about
those after a quick word from one of our sponsors.
All of that outreach that Rabbi Rosschild had been doing
(21:14):
in Atlanta's diverse communities, as uncomfortable as it sometimes made people,
was really repaid in the aftermath of the bombing. People
from all walks of life rallied around ross Child in
his congregation. Religious and civic leaders in Atlanta and then
in the US and then around the globe contemned the attack.
The help came in both verbal condemnation of the attack
(21:35):
and in financial support for the temple to rebuild. The
mayor of Atlanta at the time, William be Heartsfield and
Amy will recognize if you have ever flown in or
out of Atlanta, said in an interview right after the attack, quote,
my friends, here you see the end result of bigotry
and intolerance, and whether we like it or not, those
practicing rabble rousing and demagoguery are the godfather of the
(22:00):
cross burners and the dynamiters. Yeah. There's actually footage of
of him making that pronouncement on television and in his
Southern accent. It's quite charming. The editor of the Atlanta Constitution,
Ralph McGill, another name you'll recognize if you've been in
the city. We have a street named after him, wrote
a series of editorials on the bombing, which eventually earned
him a Pulitzer Prize, in which he said, quote, you
(22:22):
cannot preach and encourage hate for the Negro and hope
to restrict it to that field. When the wounds of
hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.
Donations came from rich and poor alike, including one which
was sent in by Fulton County Prison Chaplain Bill Allison.
The money, the chaplain explained, had been contributed by the
(22:43):
prisons black population, who had taken up a collection to donate.
The chaplain received a letter of thanks from Rathschild which said, quote,
of all the gifts which we have received, this one
certainly is one of the most meaningful and heartwarming. The
social hall at the temple was named Friendship Hall to
acknowledge the many people from all over Atlanta and the
(23:05):
world who stood by Rothschild and his congregation and helped
them rebuild, and the rabbi's first sermon after the bombing,
he shared this message of hope quote. This despicable act
has made brighter the flame of courage, and renewed and
splendor the fires of determination and dedication. It has reached
the hearts of men everywhere, and roused the conscience of
(23:29):
people united and righteousness. All of us together shall rear
from the rubble of devastation a city and a land
in which all men are truly brothers, and none shall
make them afraid. The following year, on the anniversary of
the bombing, the temple had been repaired and red, white,
(23:49):
and blue stained glass windows filled the space that had
been the whole caused by the blast, and in a
statement to the press that was made on that anniversary,
Rabbi Rosschild said that the windows quote sim belies the
basic faith of the people. While the bomb attack had
the surprise consequence of bringing a lot of the Atlanta
community together, had also highlighted the problems that were still
(24:12):
so clear across the country. There were very valid questions
raised about whether there would be such kindness and good
pr if the same thing had happened at a black church.
There were already plenty of cases of racist violence on
the books against African Americans that had not been pursued
so diligently as the temple bombing, or at all in
(24:35):
some instances. The bombing in its reaction also caught the
segregationist movement off guard. While supporters of segregation had long
seen liberals from the North and the nub A CP
in the Supreme Court as their enemies in what they
thought was right, there were also efforts at this point
to try to disassociate from the militant white supremacist movements
(24:58):
like the National States Rights Party, the Knights of the
White Chamelea, and the kkk UH. They wanted not to
let that mar what they thought was their correct ideology,
and there were also some claims by white supremacist groups
that this whole bombing had been staged just to incriminate them.
There were certainly still many battles to fight in the
(25:19):
civil rights movement, and racial equality and frankly anti semitism
still remain issues today, but the bombing at the temple
is largely seen as a watershed moment that moved the
civil rights movement forward. When Rabbi Rothschild's wife, Janice Rothschild Blumberg,
wrote about the incident later in her life, she tiled
(25:40):
her writing the Bomb That Healed, and in that writing,
which appeared in American Jewish History magazine, Janice also astutely
acknowledged the racial divide that offered the temple a bit
of privilege. In the wake of this bombing. She wrote,
quote to churchgoing at Lantin's desecration of a house of
(26:00):
God was an abomination that it was Jewish, made no
difference that its members were white. Probably did. And I
also want to say that, uh, that particular piece of
writing is spectacular, and I encourage people to go read it.
It's available on j Store, because she really captures what
it was like to be in the midst of that
(26:20):
sort of weird shock wave, and what it was like
from receiving that call in the morning, how they were
dealing with it, what her emotions were doing, what the
community was doing. It's a really really good snapshot of
that moment in history. Well, and you and I, neither
of us is Jewish. We have not spent our lives
confronting anti semitism or racism. Frankly, so having perspectives from
(26:44):
people who are coming from that side of it is
super important. Rabbi Rothschild continued for his entire life to
be an outspoken advocate for equality, even more so after
the bombing them before he gave the eulogy for his
friend Martin Luther King, Jr. At an interfaith memorial in
(27:04):
Atlanta after the civil rights leader was assassinated. He died
of a heart attack on the last day of nineteen
seventy three, but the temple remains. It's changed and been
renovated several times to accommodate it's it's ever growing, uh community,
and it is still an active place of worship. It
is also on the National Park Service National Register of
(27:26):
Historic Places to Visit. I mean, it's a part of
Atlanta that we see all the time. People drive by it.
It is shown in the movie Driving Miss Daisy. It is.
It's a gorgeous, gorgeous structure and really lovely. So uh.
That is the story of the temple bombing, and it's
one of those things that I feel foolish. I did not,
(27:47):
even though I live here in Atlanta and I have
seen little snippets about it, I never really knew that
much about it. Yeah, And you and I had a
brief conversation before we started recording about having even been
there's a Jewish History museum in Atlanta, and having having
even been there, and I think gone through their exhibition
on his Jewish History in Atlanta through objects, it rang
(28:10):
a bell. But I knew so little about it at all. Yeah,
which is a pity. I mean, I know, within the
Jewish community it is still a very big deal and
something that they speak about a lot, but I had
no knowledge of that fact prior to digging into this research.
(28:32):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
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(28:53):
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(29:14):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Happy Saturday. This week on the show, I talked to
Jeremy Katz about his new book, The Jewish Community of Atlanta,
as well as the work that he does at the
Bremen Museum and how that museum is preserving past present
and what they hope will be future of the Jewish
community in Atlanta for everyone. And in our discussion, we
also talked about our previous episode on the Hebrew Benevolent
(00:23):
Temple bombing, and we're replaying that as a Saturday Classic today.
This episode originally came out February Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
(00:46):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Tracy B. Wilson, and uh for our listeners. Like I know,
sometimes when I'm listening to podcasts, I'm just letting them
flow and I don't always look at what's coming next,
like when I'm driving around. But if you are a
person that looks at your podcast selection and you pick
one or you just see it come up and you
like to read what's coming up, if you saw the
(01:08):
title for today's episode, you might be braced for a
really horrific or upsetting story. I, in fact, was braced
for such a thing when you told me what you
were researching this week. Uh. I give you relief because
the bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation temple in Atlanta
in the late nineteen fifties was a unique moment in
the civil rights movement. And while there are some elements
(01:30):
of the temple's free bombing history and some UH ideologies
that are troubling and horrific, I will give you a
spoiler and say that overall, this is really a very
very hopeful story. Yeah, there is. There is definitely a bombing.
There is also racism and anti semitism, But the story
(01:53):
is not the parade of tragedy you may be expecting
based on title. Correct. So it may if you were
worried or scared that this is when you just were
not ready for today. Uh, it is probably not going
to be as upsetting as you think, although of course
there is some upsetting rhetoric being discussed on the part
of people that would bomb a thing. UH. So we're
(02:15):
going to hop right into it. While Atlanta has had
a Jewish population since the city was founded, at the
end of eighteen forty seven, Jews were really a small
minority of the city's people. In eighteen fifty, fewer than
thirty Jews were recorded living in Atlanta, less than one
percent of the city's residents, and by eighteen sixty, the
(02:36):
year before the United States Civil War began, the Jewish
population in the city had doubled. Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Society
was also founded. That organization came together with two primary missions,
assisting the city's impoverished Jewish population and securing a burial ground.
Two years after the Civil War ended, while Atlanta was
(02:59):
still rebuilding as a city, the Hebrew Benevolent Society took
its next step establishing a temple. And this move was
precipitated by the words of the Rabbi Isaac Liser of Philadelphia,
who was here presiding over a wedding that was the
first Jewish marriage ceremony in Atlanta in January of eighteen
sixty seven, and Rabbi Liser told the Southern Cities Jewish
(03:21):
community that they should establish a permanent place of worship,
and his words were definitely heard and they were encouraging.
When the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation was founded in eighteen sixty seven,
it was the first official Jewish institution in Atlanta by
the late spring of that year, just four months after
Rabbi Liser's encouragement, they had their charter. Over the next
(03:45):
eight years, the congregation planned and built a temple in
downtown Atlanta, which was completed in eighteen seventy five. The
early years for the temple, which is the name it
came to be known by that shortened version, We're a
little bit rocky. There was a series of change overs
in rabbis as the congregation struggled with its identity and
the type of worship that it would favor, swaying between
(04:06):
traditional and reform ideologies. But in three year old Rabbi
David Marx was hired and he would stay at the
temple for more than half a century, steering it toward
classical reform Judaism. When Rabbi Marx retired after World War Two,
he was replaced with Rabbi Jacob roth's Child in nine six.
(04:27):
Rothschild built on Marx's work and fostering connections with the
greater Atlanta community, including with other religious faiths. Rabbi roths
Child was also a vocal supporter of civil rights and
social justice, and This was a departure from his predecessor's work,
who had felt that in order to keep his congregation
as safe as possible from anti Semitic sentiments in the community,
(04:49):
it was best to avoid confrontations with the wider community
on such issues. To be clear, there was a very
real and understandable reasoning behind Marx's effort is to keep
peaceful relationships with Atlanta's gentile population. Many of the Temple
community remembered vividly an event from nineteen thirteen when a
(05:10):
member of the temple named Leo Frank was lynched by
a mob after being accused of the murder of a
young girl. The evidence against him was thin, but by
virtue of being an outsider, being a Northerner who had
moved to the South and a Jew, Leo Frank became
a scape a scapegoat who was easy to vilify. That
(05:31):
is a way oversimplified version of this story. We have
an episode about it in the archive. It was a
huge miscarriage of justice, and much of the Jewish community
in Atlanta opted to keep a low profile after that
out of out of self preservation. Yeah, so when we
say that that Rabbi Marx had not been vocal about
(05:55):
civil rights. It wasn't necessarily because he didn't care about them,
but he was very concerned about the anti semit issues
that were still very much a part of culture at
the time. But on Yam Kapoor. Almost from the time
that he became the rabbi at the temple, Rothschild used
the holiday as an opportunity to speak about segregation and
to vocally oppose Jim Crow laws. He did so during
(06:18):
subsequent Yam Kapoor sermons as well. It kind of came
to be expected as the topic. He included the following
as he addressed his congregation, how comforting this day might be.
Here's the perfect opportunity to find ourselves forgiven. God's standard
is too high for us. His law is too difficult.
(06:39):
Our sins were just the expected failures of all mortals.
All we need to do, therefore, is come into His
presence On each Yam Kapoor, acknowledge our inevitable guilt and
pray for forgiveness and low we shall be forgiven. We
are held accountable for our conduct, We are responsible for
our acts. Won't rationalize your guilt by claiming that morality
(07:03):
is too difficult for attainment by mere man. Don't pretend
helplessness because the right way to live is placed out
of your reach. Don't for a moment think that you
can blame your sinfulness on the fact that goodness is
beyond your grasp. Quite the opposite is true. We must
do more than view with alarm the growing race hatred
(07:24):
that threatens the South. The problem is ours to solve,
and the time for the solution is now. We have
committed no overt sin in our dealings with negroes. I
feel certain that we have treated them fairly. Certainly, we
have not used force to frighten them. We have even
felt a certain sympathy for their predicament. No, our sin
(07:48):
has been the deeper one, the evil of what we
didn't do. This was, as you might suspect, not entirely
welcomed rhetoric. The fear of bigoted anti Semitic sentiment was
still very real to some of the people that Rothschild
was speaking to. They had lived through that nineteen incident,
and they knew how scary the world could be. They
(08:09):
didn't want to invite conflict or stirrup trouble, and they
were certainly afraid of stirring up the level of anti
Semitism that had led to Leo Frank's murder. I would
say also, this was in the nineteen forties, so there
was huge reason to be afraid based on events going
on in Europe yep like there was, there was a
lot of a reason that people felt the need to
(08:32):
stay quiet. And then additionally to all that, Rothschild was
something of an outsider himself. He was from Pittsburgh and
he came to lead the temple after having served as
an Army chaplain. So while some of his congregation agreed
with his ideas but feared retribution for them, others dismissed
his message as being out of touch with the culture
(08:53):
of the South and the tentative peace among the differing
cultures that made up Atlanta. But to Rothschild, the morality
that he felt was an integral part of his faith
meant that he had to use his platform to address
social injustice. So he continued to speak out again and again,
and he put actions behind his words. He joined interfaith
(09:15):
organizations and civic groups, including the Southern Regional Council, the
Georgia Council on Human Relations, as well as the Greater
Atlantic Council on Human Relations, and under his stewardship, the
temple hosted an institute for the Christian clergy every February.
And while he worked hard to foster understanding across varying faiths,
(09:36):
Rabbi Rothschild also works to bridge the color divide as well,
asserting that black ministers must be included in these kinds
of gatherings, and he also invited leaders of the black
community to speak at the temple. In late nineteen fifty seven,
so after he had been working at this for about
a decade. In Atlanta, Rothschild co authored the Atlanta Manifesto,
(09:57):
which was an anti segregation document that was sign and
by more than eighty area religious leaders and was directed
at city authorities. While he worked on the manifesto, Rothschild
was not one of the signatories because he felt that
the city's Christian leaders should head the initiative for it
to have its best chance at a positive reception, and
that manifesto read in part, we do not believe that
(10:20):
the South is more to blame for the difficulties which
we face than our other areas of our nation. The
presence of the Negro in America is the result of
the infamous slave traffic, an evil for which the North
was as much responsible as the South. We are also
conscious that racial injustice and violence are not confined to
(10:42):
our section, and that racial problems have by no means
been solved anywhere in our nation. Two wrongs, however, do
not make a right. The failures of others are not
just a justification for our own shortcomings, nor can their
unjust criticisms excuse us for a failure to do our
duty in the sight of God are one concern must
(11:06):
be to know and to do that which is right.
And all of this vocal opposition to racism on the
part of the rabbi did not go unnoticed by the
greater population. But unfortunately the rabbi's efforts to foster understanding
and compassion led to some very serious consequences, and we're
going to talk about that right after we first paused
(11:28):
for a little sponsor break. While there were people in
Rabbi Rothschild's congregation who were a little unsettled by his
constant engagement with social issues, there were plenty of people
(11:49):
from outside the temple's community who were downright incensed. For example,
in May of n Rothschild was engaged as a speaker
at Atlanta's first bapt As church. In the evening of
his lecture, a man appeared outside the church carrying a
picket sign specifically against the rabbi, and then he later
heckled the rabbi during the Q and A segment of
(12:11):
the evening's presentation. And there was already a weird conflation
on the part of white supremacist groups when it came
to the Jewish and Black communities. If you listen to
our episodes about the Palmer Raids, you may recall how
Palmer and stirring up a panic, started to lump anarchists
and communists together as one huge threat pool and then
(12:34):
eventually cast suspicion on all immigrants. There was a similar
though different rhetoric playing out in the South of the
nineteen fifties. And to be clear, there are Jewish black people, yeah,
but this was viewing the Jewish community as a whole
in the Black community as a whole sort of the
same general threat base, yes uh. And so for example
(12:56):
of how these things got combined, one flyer that was
being circulated by the Christian Anti Jewish Party at the
beginning of the nineteen fifties was titled Jews behind race mixing,
and this flyer claimed that the Jewish population was working
against segregation so that the white race would be diluted
and weakened, warning that quote a race once mongrelized is
(13:18):
mongrelized forever. So there was no illusion that an outspoken
rabbi arguing against segregation wasn't going to make people angry.
But the real moment where it became clear that rossjo
that Rothschild was really ruffling feathers came and the very
early morning of October twelfth, when there was an explosion
(13:41):
at the temple. It was three forty am on a Sunday.
Rabbi Rothschild was called at seven five am by the
custodian at the temple, Robert Benton. Benton had been the
one to discover the damage when he arrived at work
that morning. And you might think, as you listen to
this and you think about the timeline, that an explosion
(14:01):
that large at three in the morning would have woken
the neighborhood, and it did. But when police patrolled the
area in response to calls about the noise, they did
not drive up the temple's driveway and from their perspective.
They couldn't see the hole in the building from the streets,
so it looked like everything was fine. I'm imagining that
they went to investigate this noise and then we're basically like, huh,
(14:22):
that was weird, right. Fifty sticks of dynamite had been
detonated at the temple's north entrance, and the blast made
a huge hole in the building. Fortunately, though there were
no injuries. There was, however, somewhere between one hundred thousand
and two hundred thousand dollars worth of damage to the structure,
(14:45):
depending on what source you are looking at. Yeah, especially
if you're looking at newspapers from the time, the number
varies wildly. One of the things that I read suggested
that two hundred was like the highest estimate, but as they,
you know, got more and more information about how bad
the damage was, it it crept downward a little bit
(15:05):
closer to the one thousand dollar number. Still a very
large sum in wherever or now. Yeah, I think we're
so used to modern uh stories of explosions or damages
being in the billions, that it may not seem initially
that large an amount to the modern ear but in
(15:25):
fact it's a lot of money. Uh and this attack
was claimed by a white supremacist group called the Confederate Underground.
A man claiming to be the leader of the group
and calling himself General Gordon, phoned the United Press International
Office to tell them, quote, we bombed a temple in Atlanta.
This is the last empty building we will bomb. Negroes
(15:46):
and Jews are hereby declared aliens. At six fifteen that evening,
there was another call, this time to the rabbi's home,
where his wife Denise answered they call. The call said,
I'm one of them that bombed your church. I'm calling
to let you know there's a bomb under your house
and it's lit. You've got five minutes to get out
(16:08):
and save your life. While Denis and the neighbor got
themselves and their children out of the house, it turned
out to have been an empty threat. Yeah. The police
came and did a full scan of the house and
found nothing. But how terrifying and horrible. UM and that
same group, the Confederate Underground, had attacked a synagogue in Charlotte,
North Carolina, the prior November. The dynamite that they used
(16:31):
in that attack failed to detonate, and between that failed
attempt and the explosion at the temple in Atlanta. The
Confederate Underground had bombed four other temples and Jewish community centers,
while their second attack in Gastonia, North Carolina, on February nine,
had also been thwarted by faulty dynamite. Their third and
fourth bombings, carried out just hours apart on March six, sixteenth,
(16:55):
at the Orthodox Temple Bethel in Miami, Florida and the
Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee, both caused building damage.
The fifth attack, at the Bethel Synagogue in Birmingham, Alabama,
on April was unsuccessful, this time to diffuse failure, and
the following day there was another failed attack at the
Jewish Community Center in Jacksonville, Florida. I feel like this
(17:17):
highlights the fact that, like the series of bomb threats
at Jewish community centers that is ongoing today, has layers
of being terrifying beyond just the fact that it's a
bomb threat, right, It's a bomb threat that's part of
a history of bomb threats and bombings specifically against Jewish
(17:38):
centers and houses of worship. Because of those attacks and
a protest demonstration outside the Atlantic Constitution offices in July,
where protesters carried signs reading free America from Jewish Domination.
The Temple and all synagogues throughout the South had increased
their security, but this was not enough to deter terrorists.
(18:02):
The other thing that happened as a result of the
previous attacks was actually an improvement in coordination across police
forces from jurisdictions throughout the South, and so after the
attack on the Temple, the law enforcement network activated immediately.
More than seventy five detectives worked in conjunction with agents
from the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in
(18:23):
an unprecedented effort to search for suspects in the crime.
Five days after the bombing, on October seventeenth, ninety five men,
all associated with the white supremacy groups, the National States
Rights Party and the Knights of the White Camellia were
indicted for the blast. Wallace Allen, Robert Bowling, George Bright,
(18:44):
Luther Corley, and Kenneth Griffin, and they eventually let one
of the men go, but the first of the five
men that they tried was George Bright, and his trial
started on December one, with Judge Derwood te Pie presiding.
The case against Bright was the strong is the prosecutors believed,
and the hope was that a conviction in his case
would make it easier to convict his cohorts. They're kind
(19:07):
of relying on a domino effect to take place. The
evidence against Bright included a note found in his home
that threatens terror against the Jewish population, anti Semitic literature
found in his home, and testimony from an FBI informant
who said that he had been in a meeting with
the other men in May of that year where they
planned the temple attack. Additionally, the man we mentioned earlier
(19:30):
who protested a lecture giving given by Rabbi Rothschild and
then heckled him from the crowd was also George Bright.
He had also been part of the anti Semitic protest
outside the newspaper offices. The jury in the case actually
came to a deadlock. There were nine in favor of
conviction and three that were opposed, and none were willing
(19:51):
to budge, so on the tenth day of the legal proceedings,
Judge Pye declared a mistrial. A second trial soon followed,
but this time Bright was acquitted. There's actually a whole
weird side story where his um lawyer was found in
contempt of court and I think actually ended up doing
some jail time, but he got his client off. Uh.
(20:13):
It sounded like a circus. But because of the failure
to secure a guilty verdict in what they thought was
clearly their strongest case, prosecutors eventually it took quite some time,
but they eventually dropped the charges against the other alleged conspirators.
No other suspects were ever charged for the bombing, so
there was absolutely never any justice in this case. Well,
(20:34):
and this is also pretty circumstantial evidence. It is clear
evidence that he was anti Semitic, but like not a
conclusive thing directly connecting him to the bombing um So well,
that's a somber element of this case. It does, as
(20:54):
we mentioned at the top of the show, have some
truly hopeful elements to it, and we will talk about
those after a quick word from one of our sponsors.
All of that outreach that Rabbi Rosschild had been doing
(21:14):
in Atlanta's diverse communities, as uncomfortable as it sometimes made people,
was really repaid in the aftermath of the bombing. People
from all walks of life rallied around ross Child in
his congregation. Religious and civic leaders in Atlanta and then
in the US and then around the globe contemned the attack.
The help came in both verbal condemnation of the attack
(21:35):
and in financial support for the temple to rebuild. The
mayor of Atlanta at the time, William be Heartsfield and
Amy will recognize if you have ever flown in or
out of Atlanta, said in an interview right after the attack, quote,
my friends, here you see the end result of bigotry
and intolerance, and whether we like it or not, those
practicing rabble rousing and demagoguery are the godfather of the
(22:00):
cross burners and the dynamiters. Yeah. There's actually footage of
of him making that pronouncement on television and in his
Southern accent. It's quite charming. The editor of the Atlanta Constitution,
Ralph McGill, another name you'll recognize if you've been in
the city. We have a street named after him, wrote
a series of editorials on the bombing, which eventually earned
him a Pulitzer Prize, in which he said, quote, you
(22:22):
cannot preach and encourage hate for the Negro and hope
to restrict it to that field. When the wounds of
hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.
Donations came from rich and poor alike, including one which
was sent in by Fulton County Prison Chaplain Bill Allison.
The money, the chaplain explained, had been contributed by the
(22:43):
prisons black population, who had taken up a collection to donate.
The chaplain received a letter of thanks from Rathschild which said, quote,
of all the gifts which we have received, this one
certainly is one of the most meaningful and heartwarming. The
social hall at the temple was named Friendship Hall to
acknowledge the many people from all over Atlanta and the
(23:05):
world who stood by Rothschild and his congregation and helped
them rebuild, and the rabbi's first sermon after the bombing,
he shared this message of hope quote. This despicable act
has made brighter the flame of courage, and renewed and
splendor the fires of determination and dedication. It has reached
the hearts of men everywhere, and roused the conscience of
(23:29):
people united and righteousness. All of us together shall rear
from the rubble of devastation a city and a land
in which all men are truly brothers, and none shall
make them afraid. The following year, on the anniversary of
the bombing, the temple had been repaired and red, white,
(23:49):
and blue stained glass windows filled the space that had
been the whole caused by the blast, and in a
statement to the press that was made on that anniversary,
Rabbi Rosschild said that the windows quote sim belies the
basic faith of the people. While the bomb attack had
the surprise consequence of bringing a lot of the Atlanta
community together, had also highlighted the problems that were still
(24:12):
so clear across the country. There were very valid questions
raised about whether there would be such kindness and good
pr if the same thing had happened at a black church.
There were already plenty of cases of racist violence on
the books against African Americans that had not been pursued
so diligently as the temple bombing, or at all in
(24:35):
some instances. The bombing in its reaction also caught the
segregationist movement off guard. While supporters of segregation had long
seen liberals from the North and the nub A CP
in the Supreme Court as their enemies in what they
thought was right, there were also efforts at this point
to try to disassociate from the militant white supremacist movements
(24:58):
like the National States Rights Party, the Knights of the
White Chamelea, and the kkk UH. They wanted not to
let that mar what they thought was their correct ideology,
and there were also some claims by white supremacist groups
that this whole bombing had been staged just to incriminate them.
There were certainly still many battles to fight in the
(25:19):
civil rights movement, and racial equality and frankly anti semitism
still remain issues today, but the bombing at the temple
is largely seen as a watershed moment that moved the
civil rights movement forward. When Rabbi Rothschild's wife, Janice Rothschild Blumberg,
wrote about the incident later in her life, she tiled
(25:40):
her writing the Bomb That Healed, and in that writing,
which appeared in American Jewish History magazine, Janice also astutely
acknowledged the racial divide that offered the temple a bit
of privilege. In the wake of this bombing. She wrote,
quote to churchgoing at Lantin's desecration of a house of
(26:00):
God was an abomination that it was Jewish, made no
difference that its members were white. Probably did. And I
also want to say that, uh, that particular piece of
writing is spectacular, and I encourage people to go read it.
It's available on j Store, because she really captures what
it was like to be in the midst of that
(26:20):
sort of weird shock wave, and what it was like
from receiving that call in the morning, how they were
dealing with it, what her emotions were doing, what the
community was doing. It's a really really good snapshot of
that moment in history. Well, and you and I, neither
of us is Jewish. We have not spent our lives
confronting anti semitism or racism. Frankly, so having perspectives from
(26:44):
people who are coming from that side of it is
super important. Rabbi Rothschild continued for his entire life to
be an outspoken advocate for equality, even more so after
the bombing them before he gave the eulogy for his
friend Martin Luther King, Jr. At an interfaith memorial in
(27:04):
Atlanta after the civil rights leader was assassinated. He died
of a heart attack on the last day of nineteen
seventy three, but the temple remains. It's changed and been
renovated several times to accommodate it's it's ever growing, uh community,
and it is still an active place of worship. It
is also on the National Park Service National Register of
(27:26):
Historic Places to Visit. I mean, it's a part of
Atlanta that we see all the time. People drive by it.
It is shown in the movie Driving Miss Daisy. It is.
It's a gorgeous, gorgeous structure and really lovely. So uh.
That is the story of the temple bombing, and it's
one of those things that I feel foolish. I did not,
(27:47):
even though I live here in Atlanta and I have
seen little snippets about it, I never really knew that
much about it. Yeah, And you and I had a
brief conversation before we started recording about having even been
there's a Jewish History museum in Atlanta, and having having
even been there, and I think gone through their exhibition
on his Jewish History in Atlanta through objects, it rang
(28:10):
a bell. But I knew so little about it at all. Yeah,
which is a pity. I mean, I know, within the
Jewish community it is still a very big deal and
something that they speak about a lot, but I had
no knowledge of that fact prior to digging into this research.
(28:32):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook U r L or
something similar over the course of the show, that could
be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast
at i heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff
works email address no longer works, and you can find
(28:53):
us all over social media at missed in History. And
you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google
pod Cast, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
(29:14):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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