Rating: 
Summary: Great History !!
Review: Stella Suberman is sixteen years older than I am, and much of the action in this narrative takes place before she was born. Call it a full generation before me. My recollections are not hers. I conjecture that the differences are perceptual although it is possible that the sociology changed that much in a generation. My town was in Mississippi, although I went to high school in Gibson County Tennessee not far from "Concordia."I don't recall a single dry goods store in my small town (5000 people), and there were several, that was not owned by Jews. They were not ever called "Jew Stores" to my recollection, and until this book set me to thinking, I had never remarked the fact that no goyim were in the dry goods business in small town Mississippi. Maybe that says more about my "raisin'" than about the sociology of my town, but I can recall no overt discrimination *against* jews until I grew up and moved to New York. Years later, it came to my attention that there was a "jewish discount" among the merchants in Mississippi that was not extended to goyim, but that is another investigation for another time. I am intrigued with the fact that the Bronson family encountered such intense discrimination so shortly before I became sentient. Stella Suberman's account, although filtered through the perception of her parents, rings true, and reads like a novel. We have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go. Assuming that assimulation is our goal.
Rating:
Summary: Like it was for non-Jews, too!
Review: The authenticity of detail hit me over and again, describing not only how it felt to be Jewish in white anglo-saxon Prodestant Tennessee, but the way everyone was: open armed but not altogether open minded, graciously phrasing back-talk, helpful when you least expected it, back-stabbing the same way, and sugar-coating every topic but money. When it came to money, you didn't pay protection after the fact, like industrial cities; you first worked for permission. Fabulously The Jew Store tells this tale! True to my own memory is the white woman whose lemon merangue pie was acclaimed, only it was her cook's. The cook, called that but doing cleaning, gardening, child rearing, and everyting else. Learning to listen backwards if you wanted to know what someone was actually saying, as in "we're so glad you came over and didn't even call!" The sugar-coated talk from mean, angry men. The social standing that harked to who-knew-where... This was the small mill town I grew up in in NC, too. It produced the fragile sounding Southern-belle diction that was good for date bait 'up north,' as her daughter found out; but that belied the resolve of strong, smart women with wonderful senses of humor, as shown in her characters. Anyone who grew up in a small mill town in the South prior to -- say 1970 --- met plenty of folks just like these. How glorious to have this touching volume of remembrances.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be Jewish to love this book!
Review: The Jew Store is a wonderful, absorbing memoir, rich with detail about a Jewish family's experiences in a tiny, "dot on the map" southern town. Stella Suberman's vivid descriptions of her Russian immigrant parents' adjustment to this life include unflinching examinations of the prejudices and imperfections of the community they join as well as those the couple bring with them. So much happens to the family in the course of this memoir that the narrative is as compelling as a good novel. The dilemmas the family faces are so convincingly rendered--Where will Joey get the training necessary for his bar mitzvah? Will Miriam marry a gentile?--that I was occasionally moved to tears. By the time you reach the end of the book, you will miss some of these people, as if they have become part of your own story.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be Jewish to love this book!
Review: The Jew Store is a wonderful, absorbing memoir, rich with detail about a Jewish family's experiences in a tiny, "dot on the map" southern town. Stella Suberman's vivid descriptions of her Russian immigrant parents' adjustment to this life include unflinching examinations of the prejudices and imperfections of the community they join as well as those the couple bring with them. So much happens to the family in the course of this memoir that the narrative is as compelling as a good novel. The dilemmas the family faces are so convincingly rendered--Where will Joey get the training necessary for his bar mitzvah? Will Miriam marry a gentile?--that I was occasionally moved to tears. By the time you reach the end of the book, you will miss some of these people, as if they have become part of your own story.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be Jewish to love this book!
Review: The Jew Store is a wonderful, absorbing memoir, rich with detail about a Jewish family's experiences in a tiny, "dot on the map" southern town. Stella Suberman's vivid descriptions of her Russian immigrant parents' adjustment to this life include unflinching examinations of the prejudices and imperfections of the community they join as well as those the couple bring with them. So much happens to the family in the course of this memoir that the narrative is as compelling as a good novel. The dilemmas the family faces are so convincingly rendered--Where will Joey get the training necessary for his bar mitzvah? Will Miriam marry a gentile?--that I was occasionally moved to tears. By the time you reach the end of the book, you will miss some of these people, as if they have become part of your own story.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful as well as enjoyable
Review: The life of the Bronson's in a typical 1920's midsouth rural town is not so different than what many baby boomers experienced as Gentiles in middle America in the 1950's. As I read I could hear in my mind's eye the rhetoric of fear, disapproval and sometimes hate that the good Christians of our town reflected in their covert and even overt behaviors regarding Jews, Blacks, Asians and yes, Catholics. It is not to different than what we hear Southern Baptist Ministers saying about Muslims after 9/11. Suberman's character development of the towns people with which he endured is classically detailed. She brought Ms. Brookie to life for me. I was immediately able to identify the Ms. Brookie in our town. Besides great characters the book taught me a great deal about the phenomenom of a [Jewish] Store. My family routinely shopped in them because they had what farm families needed at the price they could afford. I just didn't know that is what they were. Although most have not survived this midwest rural city of 160,000 folks still have a few and I still shop in them because they still have what I want at the best price. towns. Thank you Ms. Superman for a good read, some nostalgia and a new awareness of the ignorance of many who sit in our town's church pews every Sunday.
Rating:
Summary: Evocative
Review: This book evokes memories of my own family history. Although the author grew up in a small town in the South in the 1920s and early 30s, I related to the experience as my grandfather set up a store 100 miles away from New York City in a small town. The author's father opened a store in a small rural Tennessee town in 1920. My family stayed in that town and I grew up there. In the 1960s, I often worked as a clerk and stock boy in that store. The experience of the author was one of a certain amount of isolation; her family was the only Jewish family in a small town in Tennessee. My family, on the other hand, although a minority, was part of a small Jewish community. My community was indeed small as I was the only Jew in my HS class. However, I least I had a small community of Jews, indeed there was a vibrant synagogue and Jewish children in other grades in the school. The author's family faced a fair amount of antisemitism whereas I faced only a very small amount, certainly not enough to have made much of a difference in my life. This book tells of events that occured before the author was born or when she was too young to remember. Accordingly, much of this book is written from family legend rather than her own recollections. Of course, as she grew older, she recounts events from memory. Were some stories, therefore slightly embellished? Who knows??!! But then again, does it really matter? This book gives a touching taste of what it was like to be Jewish in the rural South many decades ago. It recounts family squabbles and relationships that all immigrant Jewish families shared. It touches us by showing how outsiders can slowly gain the trust of a community and become part of the community. Finally, this book shows the heartache of a family choosing between remaining in a community that it has grown to love or uprooting itself to fight assimilation. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: This is a charming memoir, not a great literary history, so you will like this book a lot if you approach it with that in mind. It sheds a more personal light on the immigrant experience than many scholarly works on the same subject, especially that of the Russian Jewish peddler trying to make it in the south as a shop-owner. The tension between Jewish families' desires to fit in and the prerequisites of assimilation, versus this family's desire to maintain a Jewish identity but not at the cost of alienation, keeps the pages moving. The generational conflicts of the Roaring Twenties, the Klan, the economic collapse of the Great Depression all give the reader a slice of small-town America in an era that doesn't get much attention any more. I found it delightful.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating story of life in a small southern town in 1920s
Review: This is truly remarkable story of Jewish life in a small southern town in the 1920s. It not only vividly captures the relationships between all of the ethnic groups in the town (jews, gentiles, blacks) but paints a powerful vision of what life was really like back then. The relationships between the main characters, their thoughts, goals, aspirations and motivations are captured beautifully in this novel. I felt like I was back in rural Tennessee in the 1920s as I read this book.
Rating:
Summary: a small masterpiece
Review: This jewel of a book richly deserves five stars. The author's depiction of a Jewish family living in a small town in Tennessee in the 1920s is beautifully written. Especially impressive is the way the author wrote about anti-semitism without exploiting the issue for dramatic effect. (Compare this memoir, set in the 1920s, with moronic modern flicks like "School Ties" in which students at a boarding school in the 1950s shout at a Jewish student, "We hate you because you're Jewish." Give me a break.) Just as the author's family's Jewishness is dealt with subtly, so are the townspeople drawn: all of them seem genuine, not stereotyped. So restrained is the author, yet so talented, that a low-key but powerful scene toward the end of the book sneaked up on me: I found that I had tears running down my face as I read. I miss the townspeople and the author's family. I wish I could go back in time and drive to that town and find all of them still there. This memoir is far superior to the overrated Angela's Ashes; The Jew Store is the book that should have won the Pulitzer Prize.
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