Rabbi Hinchin on Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus

Southern & Jewish

Southern & Jewish celebrates the stories, people, and experiences – past and present – of Jewish life in the American South. Hosted by the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, posts come from educators, students, rabbis, parents, artists, and many other “visitors-to and daily-livers-of” the Southern Jewish experience. From road trips to recipes to reflections, we’ll explore a little bit of everything – well, at least all things Southern and/or Jewish. Shalom, y’all!

Sometimes oral history interviews yield interesting clips that don’t have a clear home among our current history resources. Fortunately, this blog now gives me a space to share some of these selections from our archives.  The first one comes to us from an interview conducted this past June with Rabbi Martin Hinchin, who served for 31 years as rabbi of Gemiluth Chassodim in Alexandria, Louisiana.

In the clip below, Rabbi Hinchin talks about his years as a student at Hebrew Union College and his relationship with Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus.  Dr. Marcus (1896-1995) was one of the first scholars of American Jewish History and the founder of the American Jewish Archives, which were renamed for him after his death.