The Jewish Experience in Appalachia: Resources

This is a short list but its a beginning. Please feel free to add any resources of which you're aware.

http://www.coalfieldjews.com/
Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History by Deborah R. Weiner, the Research Historian and Family History Coordinator at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, is an award-winning book published in 2006 by the University of Illinois Press.

Coalfield Jews traces the stories of vibrant Eastern European Jewish communities in the Appalachian coalfields from the 1890s to the 1950s. The book is based on a wide range of primary sources, from synagogue records to local newspapers, from court transcripts to moving personal statements and oral histories. Its themes touch on social, cultural, religious, labor, economic, and regional history. Coalfield Jews is a "unique and engaging," "full of surprises" foray into a previously unknown part of the American Jewish experience and a "required reading" for any student of American Jewish history.

Coalfield Jews won the Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Prize in 2007. It was selected among 11 books published nationally between 2003 and 2006 for its contribution to the field of Jewish history in the American South.

http://are.as.wvu.edu/reed.htm
Righteous Remnant: Jewish Survival in Appalachia
A Public Broadcasting documentary film produced by Professor Maryanne Reed, West Virginia University
Text and a section of the film available at link.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/southern-and-jewish/tag/appalachia/
Denouncing Germany’s Haman from Harlan, Kentucky
(excerpt)
One might assume that the Jews living in Harlan were cut off from the issues and events that preoccupied Jews living in places like New York. But this would be incorrect. While I was going through the records of the B’nai Sholom at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, I came upon a fascinating discovery. In 1933, the congregation held a Purim event which drew over 100 people. During the program, the congregation adopted a motion “protesting against the Haman-like designs of the German Hitler.” The congregation sent a copy of the resolution to President Franklin Roosevelt and the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Local Christian ministers also joined the protest statement....

Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities - Boone, North Carolina
http://www.isjl.org/north-carolina-boone-encyclopedia.html

Ever since the days of Moses, Jews have been drawn to mountains. In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish retirees have found their Sinai in the natural beauty and mild climate of western North Carolina’s mountains. In Boone, Jews have gathered together to establish one of the most unique Jewish congregations in the South.

In 1974, a small group of Jewish college professors at Appalachian State University, led by history professor Sheldon Hanft, began to meet together informally. Prompted by a Charlotte-based circuit-riding rabbi program that served small Jewish communities in North Carolina, the group met initially in people’s homes. Later, the group, which officially named themselves the “Boone Jewish Community,” moved to a building in downtown Boone. Over the last few decades, the congregation has met at local churches, including the Unitarian Church for many years and most recently St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

From its early days, the group expanded in the summer as Jewish retirees from Florida came north seeking to escape the heat of the sunshine state. These so-called “halfbacks,” (since they were traveling half-way back from Florida to their original hometown of New York), brought a new if intermittent vitality to the Boone Jewish Community. While weekly Shabbat services would attract a crowd in the summer, it was often hard to get a minyan during the winter. Also, most of these retirees already belonged to a congregation in Florida, so many had little interest in establishing a more formal congregation in Boone.

This growing Jewish “halfback” population brought a strong demand for Jewish cultural life. In the 1990s, a group of Jews on nearby Beech Mountain, led by Ed and Molle Grad, founded a cultural havurah, which they named “Havurah of the High Country.” During the summer months, the havurah meets every three weeks for lunch and a cultural program on Jewish music, art, history, or philosophy. Most havurah members also belong to the Boone congregation....