Greenville Diary: A Norther Rabbi Confronts the Deep South, 1966-1970

Despite my long involvement in writing Jewish history, I never imagined that my late father, Rabbi Abraham Ruderman, might become the subject of my study of the past. This all changed some four years ago when he died in Jerusalem at the age of eighty-nine. Among his belonging was a filing cabinet filled with old sermons and a set of personal diaries that contained entries over a span of close to seventy years. I filled my suitcases with as much as I could carry, and since then, his writings, especially the worn diaries, composed in old hardcover school composition booklets, have been my constant companions.