The Jew Store: A Family Memoir - Hardcover

In 1920s small town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store--selling work clothes and school clothes, sheets and towels, yard goods and notions--was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store," which is how Bronson's Low-Priced Store, Stella Suberman's father's retail establishment in Concordia, Tennessee, was known.

The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town (1920 population: 5,318) of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one beauty parlor, one barber shop, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches.

Like other enterprising Jewish immigrants of the period--Levi Strauss and the founders of Rich's and Goldsmith's, for instance--Aaron Bronson set out from New York City in search of a place to settle his family a nd prove himself as businessman and provider. He proved that...and much more.

With deft fondness and a fine dry humor, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when rural America was perhaps more peaceful but no less prejudiced, when educated locals were suspect, and when the Klan threatened all outsiders. In that setting, she brings both the townspeople and her family members to vivid life.

The Jew Store is the heartwarming--even inspiring--story of Aaron Bronson, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, liberality, and decency can build a home anywhere.

In my mother's mind the word Jew used all by itself, nakedly, as it were, was not a word but a curse. She believed it was used only by people who hated Jews. If it had its three letters--its "-ish"--on the end, ah, that made the difference. If I said that someone was a Jew, my mother would ask me, "So what is he? A no-goodnik? A gangster?"

As I have understood it, my mother had come out on the porch at the very moment Miss Brookie had used the phrase "Jew store" on the telephone with Tom Dillon, before my father's meeting with Dillon. Miss Brookie used it as shorthand for the kind of business my father had in mind...but all my mother knew at that moment was that Miss Brookie had said the unsayable--had said "Jew store." -- Stella Suberman, from The Jew Store