On April 18th, the Historic Savannah Foundation will host a discussion on “Jewish Foodways in the Lowcountry South" as part of a lecture series called "People, Places and Stories That Define Savannah." Among the guests featured are “Kugels & Collards" authors Rachel Barnett and Lyssa Harvey, sharing stories of food, family and tradition in Jewish South Carolina.
If you appreciate the diversity of the region that we have chosen to call home, then their story is quite fascinating. The book began as a blog discussing Jewish History in Columbia, South Carolina. It wasn’t long after that they found so many stories involved food. A publisher approached them about putting together a book and here we are.
Recently, I had a very interesting chat with co-authors Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey and decided their story might best be told in their own words. Following is a summary of our conversation that has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tell me how this idea got started?
We never started out writing a book, quite frankly. We started with a blog with Historic Columbia about six years ago when we were volunteers with a group that were putting a program together about Columbia, South Carolina's Jewish history. Lisa and I suggested we did all the traditional things, but we thought food would be a different way to go.
We came up with Kugels and Collards and it became a blog initially to tell Columbia's Jewish history through the memory of food and recipes. So we'd reach out to friends and contacts and ask people to send us six to 900 words, their favorite food memory, their grandmother's, whatever the recipe was, whether it's Jewish holidays or just around the table stories or things like that.
How did this blog end up as a book?
USC Press came calling and said, would we be interested in taking this to a statewide book? And we said, sure. And about the time we signed the contract, we went into lockdown for COVID.
For two years during Covid, we did online and we would talk on Mondays and we each had a list of people across the state that we were inviting to give us their family stories. So after four years, our book is now out.
So these stories from families across South Carolina with Jewish histories that they can tell us in their short stories, but through the lens of food and memory, and it is in their words. We pulled it together. We weren't sure how the book would be organized originally, but as the stories came in, themes started emerging.
What kind of themes?
We could have called the book a little chopped liver because everybody gave us chopped liver recipes. So we'd have to go back to people and say, don't you have some? Surely your mother or grandmother made something else. And it's really funny because people don't tend to make chopped liver that often these days, least for Rosh Hashanah, I'd never make it, but it has a great memory. There's something in people's memory banks about chopped liver and it's the one that their "Bubby" (grandmother) made. Either they had a creamy one or somebody had an eggy one, but to them it was the best.
In your research and putting all this together, how large was the Jewish population of South Carolina?
South Carolina has, really, our history is sort of like Savannah. Charleston, the first Jewish person documented in Charleston in 1695, A KBE, which is the reform synagogue in Charleston, is celebrating its 275th year of continuous Jewish communal life this year. And so Charleston was a port just like Savannah and by 1800 Charleston actually had more Jews than New York, and then it went downhill after that.
But we have this deep history in the state and they spread out. They would go from Charleston inland. Sumter, South Carolina, has a very old Jewish community that was established by some of the members of KBE. And then of course you have Columbia. Now these days we still have very vibrant Jewish community in our state growing, Greenville's growing. We were just there a few weeks ago. We're getting an influx like everyone else in the South. We're getting all the retirees, we're getting a lot of folks moving down for jobs, for whatever.
If someone were to attend your book signing on the 18th, what can they expect?
People can expect us to talk about the Southern Jewish table because people are fascinated, particularly folks that are not from here, that this even exists. We've found that it's of interest. People tend to think that Jewish food is a corn beef sandwich or a bagel. And this is this is different. This is what I grew up with. I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. I mean, this was very typical for us, so we were really surprised when it became something a little different. They'll hear about that. We'll talk about the book, we'll talk about a few of the stories and a few of the interesting folks that we met along the way.
Then we like to hear from people. We want to hear their stories because everybody is connected with food. Food is one of those things that just brings out memories. I mean, it's the smell, it's the taste. People really react to this. We did this in Memphis a few weeks ago, and we had so many people that had great stories to share. And so we like to engage the audience. We want to hear from people. We are still collecting stories. We love this. We think it's really important that people preserve their food stories and their recipes.
Lyssa and Rachel’s book signing will be held at the Historic Savannah Foundation, 321 East York Street, Downtown Savannah on April 18th beginning at 6pm. There will be a wine selection preceding at 5:30pm Reservations are recommended as space is limited.
The event will be hosted at Historic Savannah Foundation's headquarters, located at 321 E. York St. Attendees are invited to a wine reception at 5:30 p.m. and the discussion will start at 6 p.m. Admission is free for members and $15 for non-members. Members and non-members may RSVP by emailing Kendall Graham at [email protected] or calling 912-233-7787, ext. 109.
