The North Carolina State Capitol will host the traveling exhibit “Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina” from April 1st to May 31st, 2022. The exhibit is available during the Capitol's regular hours, Monday-Friday, 9-5 and Saturdays 10-5, and it is FREE to view. Over the course of ten panels, this exhibit features a timeline of Jewish history in North Carolina, focusing on topics such as family, being southern, commerce, immigration, community, and learning.
For more than 400 years, Jews have shaped North Carolina life. Along the way, they themselves were transformed as Jewish culture and traditions encountered Southern customs and manners. North Carolina Jews grounded their lives in timeless values—family, community, faith, learning—but here these values took on new meanings and inflections that blended past and present. Jews in North Carolina have built lives around contradictions—rooted in Carolina soil yet tied to a global community, embracing the here and now yet reaching back to ancient traditions. They are Southern Jews and Jewish Southerners. Their story is just one chapter in our country’s ongoing immigrant saga, a story that new arrivals of all faiths and ethnicities are reliving in the changing South.
Down Home was created by Jewish Heritage North Carolina. Jewish Heritage North Carolina is the only statewide independent organization dedicated to collecting, preserving and presenting the history of the Jewish people of our state. They seek to present programs that educate and showcase the richness of Jewish life and serve as a resource to connect and enhance the state’s diverse Jewish communities as well as promote a familiarity with the culture and lifestyle of Jews to the general public. For more information about Jewish Heritage North Carolina, please visit https://jewishnc.org.