In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store—suits and coats, shoes and hats, work clothes and school clothes, yard goods and notions—was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store." That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town (1920 population: 5,318) of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. Aaron Bronson moved his family all the way from New York City to that remote corner of northwest Tennessee to prove himself a born salesman—and much more. Told by Aaron's youngest child, The Jew Store is that rare thing—an intimate family story that sheds new light on a piece of American history. Here is One Man's Family with a twist—a Jew, born into poverty in prerevolutionary Russia and orphaned from birth, finds his way to America, finds a trade, finds a wife, and sets out to find his fortune in a place where Jews are unwelcome. With a novelist's sense of scene, suspense, and above all, characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when rural America was more peaceful but no less prejudiced, when educated liberals were suspect, and when the Klan was threatening to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, liberality, and decency can build a home anywhere. The Jew Store is a heartwarming—even inspiring—story.
In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store—suits and coats, shoes and hats, work clothes and school clothes, yard goods and notions—was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store." That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town (1920 population: 5,318) of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. Aaron Bronson moved his family all the way from New York City to that remote corner of northwest Tennessee to prove himself a born salesman—and much more. Told by Aaron's youngest child, The Jew Store is that rare thing—an intimate family story that sheds new light on a piece of American history. Here is One Man's Family with a twist—a Jew, born into poverty in prerevolutionary Russia and orphaned from birth, finds his way to America, finds a trade, finds a wife, and sets out to find his fortune in a place where Jews are unwelcome. With a novelist's sense of scene, suspense, and above all, characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when rural America was more peaceful but no less prejudiced, when educated liberals were suspect, and when the Klan was threatening to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, liberality, and decency can build a home anywhere. The Jew Store is a heartwarming—even inspiring—story.
Reviews-
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December 29, 1997
In 1920, two years before the author was born, her family became the first Jews to live in the small town of Concordia, Tenn. Against the objections of his wife, Aaron Bronson, a Russian Jewish immigrant who had worked in dry goods stores in Savannah, Ga., and Nashville, started his own business by opening Bronson's Low-Priced Store in Concordia, which the locals called "the Jew store." In this richly detailed memoir, in which her father's optimism contrasts sharply with her mother's anxiety about their ability to provide their children with a Jewish education in their new surroundings, Suberman evokes early-20th-century life in the rural South and depicts her family's struggles to find a place in a town where African Americans suffered discrimination and poverty, the Ku Klux Klan was on the march and townspeople viewed Jews with suspicion. Suberman provides vivid characterizations of Concordia's residents, especially Brookie Simmons, who not only gave the Bronsons a home but fought to end child labor in the town's factory. In 1933, Aaron finally yielded to his wife's entreaties and moved with her and their three children back to New York City, even though they had come to regard Concordia as home. Author tour. -
November 1, 1998
YA-Russian immigrant Aaron Bronson took his wife and children from their enclave of New York Jews to a tiny Tennessee town where he set himself up as a successful storekeeper in the 1920s. The social, economic, and even spiritual experiences of the Bronson family are recounted by its youngest member, who evidently was a keen listener to family tales as well as an observer of events around her in early childhood. Nearly half of this autobiographical work predates Stella Ruth's birth and even when she appears on the stage, she is no scene-stealer. Her mother had to hide her ethnicity on her jobs in New York, and took years to assimilate to life in Tennessee. Joey and Miriam, the older children, dealt with the blunt questions asked by local children about their Jewishness with aplomb and made good friends. Mr. Bronson had to sell the insular town of Concordia on the idea that a "Jew store," a low-priced dry-goods store, was even needed and, being a "born sal-es-man," he succeeded in selling the idea and the goods as well. Suberman's fine writing and her ability to record tones and scents as well as images make this a lively and engaging story. Anti-Semitism is presented factually, as are the limitations of various townsfolk's penchant for doing good or evil. This will attract casual readers and serve as a useful auxiliary text in classrooms.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA -
July 1, 1998
After retiring in 1995 as a publicist, Suberman returned for the first time to her birthplace, a small town in northwestern Tennessee. She decided to recount, using fictionalized names and places, her Jewish family's 11 years in that small town, from 1922 to 1933. The author's father, Aaron Bronson, a Jew orphaned from birth in pre-revolutionary Russia, immigrated to New York City. Eventually, he moved his family to rural Tennessee, where he opened up Bronson's Low-Priced Store. Since the Bronsons were the first Jews in town, residents referred to their business as the "Jew Store." Writing with a personal passion (with chapters on "The Bar Mitzvah Question" and "New York Aunts"), Suberman captures the trials her family faced and positive human relationships they formed while trying to adapt to an alien, closed, Southern Christian society. Her interesting, undocumented personal narrative puts a personal face on Ewa Morawska's scholarly social history, Insecure Prosperity: Small Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940 (Princeton Univ., 1996). Recommended for public and academic libraries.--Charles C. Hay, Eastern Kentucky Univ. Archives, Richmond -
July 1, 1998
Suberman tells the remarkable story of her family's sojourn as the only Jews in a small Tennessee town during the 1920s with such sparkle it reads like a novel. Her parents, poor Jews from the shtetls of Eastern Europe, first made their way to New York City, then boldly down to Tennessee where they hoped to establish a dry-goods business, the so-called Jew store. Upon arriving in the town Suberman calls Concordia, the young family was instantly taken in by the town's most independent woman, Miss Brookie, who proved to be an essential ally in helping them to launch Bronson's Low-Priced Store and to pass muster with the local chapter of the Klan. Although Suberman's father took to Concordia like the proverbial fish to water, her mother suffered mightily from a debilitating sense of isolation, but both were bighearted people who met anti-Semitism and racism head-on and ultimately did much to improve the life of the town. As Suberman illuminates this little-known facet of southern Jewish American culture, she offers fresh insights into the dynamics of one small town, where community spirit overcame prejudice. An absolute pleasure on all fronts. ((Reviewed July 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)
