While working on some smaller projects, we saw that there was no documentation of Jewish life in WNC. When we went to the WNC Heritage website [a consortium of the Asheville Art Museum, the Asheville-Buncombe Library, UNC-A, the YMI Cultural Center, Appalachian State University, the Appalachian Cultural Museum and the Southern Highland Craft Guild], we saw informational headings about African-Americans, Cherokee, and Mountaineers. There was no Jewish presence. We made it our goal to combine existing and undocumented materials to create a Jewish Life in WNC heading.
“Many people who come to the south are surprised to find out that there is a strong Jewish community that has been here for more than 100 years. That certainly includes Asheville and the surrounding area. I have personally been laughed at by people outside the south who thought I was making that up. In our interviews for The Down Home Project, the state-wide history of Jews of North Carolina, Rabbi Michael Robinson, 80, who was born and grew up in Asheville, but lived outside the south as an adult, told us that when he was in the navy in WWII, shipmates would not believe that he was Jewish and from the south.”Jan Schochet, partner History@Hand
There is a sense of urgency in collecting the oral histories from the time period of the height of Jewish merchants in downtown Asheville and Jewish merchants who came to small towns of western North Carolina like Sylva and Bryson City. The merchants are in their eighties and nineties now, and we realized that we needed their stories to document an era that is gone—a time when business was more personalized. The owners knew their customers and remembered things about them—what they liked, what their family members liked, how their children were doing, what size clothing they wore or their shoe size.
As History@Hand interviews they also collect memorabilia and photographs. These are taken to Ramsey Library, Special Collections at the University of North Carolina Asheville to be added to their collection: Jewish Life in Western North Carolina. Parts of theses collections are digitized and available online. See the links page . We encourage families to share their photos and materials from the past by either donating it to Ramsey Library Special Collections or lending it to be digitized.