Award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker, Edward Cohen will discuss his widely-acclaimed memoir, The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi (Bantam Books, 2002). Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of The Peddler's Grandson will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

Advance Praise

"The Peddler's Grandson is an intelligent and candid account of the author's love-hate relationship with each of the powerful often conflicting cultures that shaped him. You do not have to be Southern and/or Jewish to recognize the importance of this beautifully written memoir."--Stella Suberman, author of The Jew Store

"A rich, evocative and warm-hearted memoir about an important but often overlooked aspect of the Jewish experience in America. What arcs between the author's two poles of identity--his Jewishness and his `southernness'--is a new and often surprising notion of what it means to be an American."--Jonathan Kirsch, author of Moses, A Life and Harlot by the Side of the Road

Book Description

Cohen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt, thousands of miles from the northern centers of Jewish culture. As a child he sang "Dixie" in his segregated school, said the "sh'ma" at temple, and, while the civil rights struggle exploded all around, worked at the family clothing store that catered to blacks.

His grandfather Moise had left Romania and all his family for a very different world, the Deep South. Peddling on foot from farm to farm, he was the first Jew many Mississippians had ever seen. Moise's brother joined him and they married sisters, raising their children under one roof, an island of Judaism in a sea of southern Christianity.

In the 1950's, insulated by the extended family of double cousins, Edward believed the world was populated totally by Jews--until the first day of school, when he had the disquieting realization that he was the only Jew in his class. At times he felt southern, almost, but his sense of being an outsider slowly crystallized, as he listed to daily Christian school prayers, as he tried to explain his annual absences to classmates who'd never heard of Rosh Hashanah. At Christmas, his parents' house was the only one without lights. In the seventh grade, he was the only child not invited to dance class.

In a compelling work that is nonfiction throughout but conveyed with a fiction writer's skill and technique, Cohen recounts how he left Mississippi for college to seek his own tribe. Instead he found that among northern Jews he was again an outsider, marked by his southernness. They knew about holidays like Simchas Torah; he knew Confederate Memorial Day.

He tells a story of displacement, of living on the margin of two already marginal groups, and of coming to terms with his dual loyalties, to region and religion. In this poignant, unsparingly honest, and often bitingly hilarious portrait of cultural contradiction, Cohen's themes--the separateness of the artist, the tug of assimilation, the elusiveness of identity--resonate far beyond the South.

The Author

Edward Cohen, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, moved with his wife to Venice, California, where he is a freelance writer and filmmaker. Previously he was head writer and executive producer for Mississippi Educational Television.

His documentaries on southern or Jewish subjects include Good Mornin' Blues with B.B. King, The Islander, starring James Best, Passover and Hanukkah, narrated by Ed Asner, all broadcast nationally by PBS. His other documentaries include The Parchman Trials (an expose of Mississippi's penal farm), and The Last Confederates (the story of the little known culture of the descendants of the expatriate Confederates who emigrated to Brazil after the Civil War). His documentary work has received has received numerous international film festival awards, as well as two CINE Golden Eagles.

More recently he wrote, produced, directed and edited The Natchez Jewish Experience for the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. The film tells the bittersweet story of a once-thriving congregation in Natchez, Mississippi, now down to a handful of members dedicated to keeping their temple open until the last member shuts out the lights. The documentary won the Judah P. Magnes Museum Muse Award for Best Historical Documentary.

The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB are co-sponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. This event is being put on in partnership with UCSB Bookstore and Santa Barbara Jewish Federation.