Huffington Magazine Issue 8 | Page 49

HUFFINGTON 08.05.12 SHALOM Y’ALL Jewish communities in cities like Birmingham have suffered. “There has been a huge influx of Jews from the Northeast down South,” says Stuart Rockoff, director of the history department at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss. “But there’s also been a significant migration of Jews from other parts of the South to big Southern cities.” Alabama, once a beacon for Jewish immigrants and AmericanJewish migrants seeking prosperity in its booming steel industry, has 8,850 Jews left in a state of 4.8 million people, down from a high of 13,000 in the early 20th century, when the state’s population was less than half of what it is now. The X