Upcoming Events

“PAPER BRIDGES”: LETTERS OF HOPE AND DESPAIR, 1933-1945
JHSSC Spring Meeting

Saturday, April 29 – Sunday, April 30, 2023

Arnold Hall
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC

REGISTER HERE

Join us for the JHSSC spring meeting featuring author Rebecca Wildman.  Building upon Wildman’s wonderful book Paper Love, the Spring Meeting will explore the experiences of Jewish letter writers during World War II and the Holocaust.  Our discussions will include several collections of letters sent to South Carolina by friends and family in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Sarah Wildman
Paper Love
Sarah Wildman is an op-ed page editor at the New York Times. She is the co-creator, producer, and host of Foreign Policy’s First-Person podcast.

Prior to joining FP as a deputy editor, she was the global identities and borders writer at Vox, a position she originated. Sarah Wildman has lived in and reported from Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Washington, Jerusalem and Berlin. She was a Dart Center Ochberg fellow (a project of the Columbia School of Journalism) in 2015 and the 2014 Barach Non Fiction Writing Fellow at the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Wildman won the 2010 Peter R. Weitz Prize, from the German Marshall Fund, a prize awarded for “excellence and originality,” in European coverage, a 2011 Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association for commentary, and a 2008 Lowell Thomas Award Winner for travel writing.

Saturday, April 29
11:00 AM Registration

11:30 AM – 12:15 PM Lunch

12:15 – 12:45 PM Opening remarks 

12:45 – 2:00 “Paper Love – Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind” Sarah Wildman

2:00 – 2:15 Break

2:15 – 3:00 PM News from Home, Pleas for Help, Lost Connections: 
Holocaust Era Jewish Family Correspondence

Chad S.A. Gibbs

3:00 3:15 Break

3:30 – 4:45 PM Helen Stern Lipton Letters – Family Discussion
Lilly Stern Filler, Marcie Stern Baker, Ellen Lipton Yampolsky
Moderator Chad Gibbs

5:00 – 6:30 PM Reception  Stern Student Center Garden (rain location Arnold Hall, Jewish Studies)

Dinner on your own.

Sunday, April 29

9:30 – 10:30 AM Board Meeting

10:45 – 12:15 PM  Torn Pages: The Hopes and Hard Realities of Wartime Letters
Chad Gibbs in conversation with Leah Davenport and Grace Shaffer

Ongoing Projects

JHSSC’s Jewish Merchant Project

For more than 300 years, Jewish settlers – from across the Atlantic and around the country – have made their homes in South Carolina. The earliest Jews populated Charleston, Georgetown, and later Columbia, where they held a variety of occupations and became immersed in civic life. By the late 1800s, Jewish merchants had set up shop on downtown streets in towns big and small, and more than 100 years later their legacy remains alive through their descendants. The Jewish Merchant Project (JMP) goal is to preserve memories of the men and women who have played vital roles in communities across South Carolina. Their stories are our history.

Beginning in 2017, the JHSSC partnered with Historic Columbia and the College of Charleston to undertake a state-wide survey of Jewish merchants, past and present. The JMP website is the foundational product of that survey and will capture the impact of Jewish businessmen and women on communities, large and small, as well as the networks of family and friends that led Jewish men and women to call this state home.

Jewish Merchant Project | Explore the Merchant Map

Historic Columbia and Columbia Jewish Heritage Initiative

Purpose: Identify and fill gaps in the documentation of Columbia’s Jewish History; Document stories of Holocaust survivors who settled in Columbia; Encourage dialogue by collecting and sharing stories, images, and documents; Broadcast information to diverse audiences through print and web-based media and public programs; Create an ongoing coalition to sustain the effort in the future; Record stories of elders of Columbia’s Jewish community. To read the entire article about the Columbia Jewish Heritage Initiative go to Page 11 of the Fall 2015 Magazine.

Contact:
To learn more about or participate in the Columbia Jewish Heritage Initiate,  go to www.historiccolumbia.org/CJHI or Contact: Robin Waites, Executive Director Historic Columbia, rwaites@historiccolumbia.org.

Are you planning an event pertaining to South Carolina Jewish History?
Contact us to have it listed here on our site.