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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Faith and Foodways in Alabama

ORAL HISTORY

Jessica Goldstein

Temple Beth-El

Jessica Goldstein, born in 1969, grew up in the Homewood community of Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, she attended temple at Knesseth Israel with her family. Every Friday, her mother prepared gelfite fish, soup, and challah bread for Shabbat dinner. Goldstein attended college in Israel, studying anthropology and linguistics at the University of Tel Aviv.

She returned to the United States to study nursing. Goldstein has worked both in nursing and in the medical research field. She currently works for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Her family now attends Temple Beth-El in Birmingham and she continues to celebrate Shabbat dinners every Friday night with varying menus and a community of friends and family.

Date of interview:
2019-11-08

Interviewer:
Michelle Little

Photographer:
Cary Norton

Download Transcript

“

“Most of the people sitting around the table were not Jewish, and so that’s sort of an interesting thing, that I made this seminally Jewish thing that I did particularly to uphold my Jewish tradition, with a bunch of people who weren’t Jewish.” - Jessica Goldstein

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