The Jew Store

Thoroughly enjoyed this book! About a Russian-Jewish family who moves to a small town in the Southern US in 1920 to start a store. The author has a charming way of writing and portraying personalities. I also especially loved how she talked rather candidly about many things, both good and bad, but generally refrained from assigning morality. She portrays openly the difficulties of blacks and Jews in their town, but allows you to see the prejudices in her own family as well. It was a story full of life - the good, the bad, the ugly, but all told with an air of hope and love underneath it all. A great read that will leave you a lot to think about!

This is not a book that I would ever have picked up on my own. In fact, I dreaded having to read it. At the risk of sounding racist (which I most assuredly am not), I was afraid of another sad book about the horrible trials that a minority group has to weather. Instead, I found a truly delightful memoir. Aaron Bronson (nee Avram Droskowitz) left Russia for America, married a nice Jewish girl in New York, then headed south to Nashville. Apparently, in 1920s America, the dry goods stores in small towns were usually owned by Jews and called "the Jew store." The family moves to a small Tennessee town (Suberman has changed the name of the town and its inhabitants) and opens "Bronson's Low-Priced Store."
I think what I liked best about the show more book was the combination of ups and downs experienced by the family. They were part of the community, and became an integral part of the town's life. Yes, there were challenges, and they aren't glossed over, but there is always the mindset that this is how things happened at that time and place. A very enjoyable read. show less

Delightful

I grew up in a mid-sized, fairly sophisticated Southern town in the 50s and 60s, where there was a fair-sized Jewish community. And every bit as much antisemitism as Suberman's family faced. This is a wonderful window into the lives of the Southern Jews of the early 20th century, but probably not far off the mark for Jewish boomers, either.

Suberman's prose is note-perfect, and the story and people will grab you from the first page and won't let you go even on the last.

A memoir about a Jewish family pursuing the American Dream in the early twentieth century South. With a novelist’s sense of scene, suspense, and characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when educated liberals were suspect and the Klan was a major threat to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, and decency can build a home anywhere.

Ms. Suberman writes a sweet, loving memoir of her Jewish Russian immigrant parents and her siblings. Her father, known as Aaron in the book, moves his family from everything and everyone they know and love in NYC to, in 1920, a very rural corner of Tennessee.
The conditions are difficult, discrimination and prejudice are especially directed to Jewish, Catholic and people of color. The Klu Klux Klan is alive and well, approving or disapproving what they choose.
Aaron, however, is a patient and intelligent business man and in just a short period of time his "Jew Store" aka Bronson's Low Priced Store is in business and providing dry goods to farm families in the area.
All is not well with his wife, Reba. She misses the closeness of extended show more family and doesn't understand the Southern way of life. She laments the fact that there is no Jewish temple for her son to make Bar Mitzvah.
In a light-hearted manner, the author reveals how her family worked through these obstacles with eventual understanding and grace. show less

Stella Suberman’s relates the saga of her parents’ efforts to establish and run a discount store in the small Tennessee town of Concordia, much like many other Jewish families did in the years before the depression. For a time, it was fairly typical for small southern towns to have their own “Jew store.”

From Suberman’s story we learn what it’s like to live as the only Jewish family in the God-fearing Christian south, where the KKK still wields strong influence and the prejudice against Jews is obvious, overt and ubiquitous.

Many of the problems that surface are predictable. What happens when the author’s father, Mr. Bronson decides to offer a white person’s sales position to a capable black man? How does a Jewish family show more accomplish their son’s coming-of age Bar Mitzvah if there is no place to study the Torah? What do parents do when they want their children to marry within the faith but there are no other Jewish families for miles?

This is a fast and easy read, not particularly emotional or deep. But it does present a little known slice of Americana. show less

Stella Suberman’s relates the saga of her parents’ efforts to establish and run a discount store in the small Tennessee town of Concordia, much like many other Jewish families did in the years before the depression. For a time, it was fairly typical for small southern towns to have their own “Jew store.”

From Suberman’s story we learn what it’s like to live as the only Jewish family in the God-fearing Christian south, where the KKK still wields strong influence and the prejudice against Jews is obvious, overt and ubiquitous.

Many of the problems that surface are predictable. What happens when the author’s father, Mr. Bronson decides to offer a white person’s sales position to a capable black man? How does a Jewish family show more accomplish their son’s coming-of age Bar Mitzvah if there is no place to study the Torah? What do parents do when they want their children to marry within the faith but there are no other Jewish families for miles?

This is a fast and easy read, not particularly emotional or deep. But it does present a little known slice of Americana. show less