Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina
Documentary Film; 81 minutes, color
“Riveting… sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant.” Charlotte Observer
Jews have been integral to North Carolina’s emergence as a progressive New South society. This richly textured documentary consists of oral histories, interviews with noted historians, rarely seen photographs and engaging re-enactments – that bring to life over 300 years of Jewish North Carolina history.
The Down Home film will take you on a Jewish cultural tour from the colony to the Sunbelt, from the coast to the mountains, from small agrarian market towns to bustling industrial cities. You’ll learn about a Jewish legislator who fought for his rights in 1808 and an immigrant grocer’s daughter raised in an African-American neighborhood. You’ll hear about peddlers and meet the entrepreneur of one of America’s largest retail chains. This richly textured documentary consists of first-person video histories, interviews with noted historians, rarely seen archival photographs and engaging re-enactments – that bring to life over 400 years of Jewish North Carolina history.
Down Home Movie Trailers
Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina – Early History
Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina – Late 1800s
Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina
View the Trailer
Down Home:
Jewish Life in North Carolina – Mid 20th Century
News & Press
Greensboro News & Record North Carolina Jews honor their past in documentary ‘Down Home’
The interesting thing about North Carolina is not only that the story has never been told or presented, but it’s never really been researched, Rogoff said.
Indy Week – Down Home is packed with colorful details about a tiny community (just 0.3% of North Carolina’s population) with a typically outsize presence.
Jewish communities have been tightly woven into the fabric of the South, and of North Carolina, since the earliest days of European settlement.
The Forward Down Home is a slickly produced documentary film and handsomely illustrated coffee-table book, celebrates Jewish contributions to North Carolina social, civic and commercial life.
Elderly Jews who lived the rural small-town experience are an endangered species, said Rogoff, who also authored the companion book, “Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina.” “Synagogues have shuttered in cities like Tarboro and Lumberton. Smaller communities are expiring. We need to document them.
Duke University – Jews in North Carolina have built lives around contradictions—rooted in Carolina soil yet tied to a global community, embracing the here and now yet reaching back to ancient traditions.
North Carolina Jews grounded their lives in timeless values—family, community, faith, learning—but here these values took on new meanings and inflections that blended past and present.