Goldring / Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life - Overview

Overview

Founded in 1986 as the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life provides educational and rabbinic services to isolated Jewish communities, documents and preserves the rich history of the Southern Jewish experience, and promotes a Jewish cultural presence. Macy B. Hart, a longtime director of the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, Mississippi, established the Museum in an effort to preserve the artifacts and history of small Jewish communities across the South in risk of extinction. In 2000, Hart expanded the museum into the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life.

Incorporating the research and historic preservation work of the Museum, the Institute opened in Jackson and created new departments of Rabbinic Services, Education, and Cultural Programs.

Funded by both large foundations and individual patrons, the Institute serves the spiritual, educational, and cultural needs of isolated and underserved Jewish communities in the South. Many of communities have neither a full-time rabbi nor a full-time Jewish educator. In turn, the Institute supports these communities through providing the services of an itinerant rabbi, a non-denominational religious school curriculum written and implemented by a team of educators, and a variety of cultural programs. The Institute currently serves a thirteen-state region: