My Father's People: A Family of Southern Jews - Hardcover

Louis D. Rubin, Jr.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807128082 ISBN 13: 9780807128084

Publisher: LSU Press, 2002

Synopsis

Louis Rubin's people on his father's side were odd, inscrutable, and remarkable. In contrast to his mother's family, who were "normal, good people devoid of mystery," the ways of the Rubins both puzzled and attracted him. In My Father's People, Rubin tells "as best I can about them all -- my father, his three brothers, and his three sisters." It is a searching, sensitive story of Americanization, assimilation, and the displacement -- and survival -- of a religious heritage.
Born between 1888 and 1902 in Charleston, South Carolina, their father an immigrant Russian Jew, the Rubin children suffered dire poverty, humiliation, and separation when their parents became incapacitated. Three of the boys were sent to the Hebrew Orphans' Home in Atlanta for several years. Yet the sons all managed to build long, productive, even notable lives and livelihoods, becoming, variously, a newspaper editor, Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter, businessman, and -- in the case of Rubin's father -- a far-famed long-range weather prognosticator.
Private people, reticent to discuss their painful early years, the Rubins were not easily knowable. Still, the author draws a strikingly candid portrait of each, using memories, stories, keen insight, and broad empathy -- fascinating character studies full of individual propensities and peculiarities that together reveal the wider family resemblance. Although the Rubins were mostly nonreligious as adults, their family's rabbinical tradition and their experience as southern Jews were key to their vocational fervor and the lives they made for themselves. "They were Americans, and they were Jews," Rubin concludes. "These were enough."
Told with Louis Rubin's signature eloquence and wit, My Father's People is a testimony to the courage of immigrant southern Jews and their gifts to their chosen country.

About this title

About the Author

Louis D. Rubin, Jr., is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, founder of Algonquin Books, and the author or editor of over fifty titles.

Reviews

Rubin's loving tribute to his paternal ancestors "a remarkable group of people" is as close to perfect as a family story gets. In gentle, matter-of-fact prose, Rubin, now 77 and one of the great lights of Southern letters, tells the stories of Hyman and Fannie Rubin, his grandparents, and their seven children. "What happened to them and to their parents must have been so distressing, so painful to remember, perhaps so deeply humiliating, that doubtless there was little incentive on their part to relive the memories of that time," he writes. "What happened" was that in 1902, 16 years after settling in Charleston, S.C., Hyman suffered a heart attack and became unable to support his family. Harry, the eldest child, was old enough to work. But Dan, Manning and Louis, 10, eight and seven, were sent to the Hebrew Orphans' Home in Atlanta for several years. Dora, Esther and Ruth stayed home. Eventually, Hyman was able to reunite the family. "[T]hey were a brave band, and what they did with their lives deserves to be recorded." Daniel became a successful playwright, Manning a newspaper editor. Years after illness robbed Louis of his ability to make a living in business, he became celebrated for his ability to predict the weather. Rubin's descriptions are affectionate, yet he doesn't gloss over their flaws, and as a result, those he knows best come alive for readers. 18 b&w photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807128082
• ISBN 13: 9780807128084
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 139