Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

7 Facts About Jewish Tennessee

1. Tennessee’s first known Jewish settler, David Hart, arrived in Memphis in 1838.

2. In 1896, 19-year-old Adolph Ochs, the son of German Jewish refugees, bought a controlling share of the failing Chattanooga Times. After making the paper profitable, he went on to buy The New York Times in 1896. During his time as publisher, circulation of the Times increased from printing 20,000 weekday copies in 1896 to more than 466,000 in 1934.

3. December 17, 1862 General Ulysses S. Grant ordered that all Jews be expelled from the military district, which comprised land in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. The order was later revoked by President Lincoln.

4. Jacob May emigrated from Germany in 1879 to settle in Nashville. During the late 1930s, his family sponsored the immigration of about 230 Jewish refuges families.

5. Fanny Rose Shore was born in Winchester, Tennessee in 1917. She later changed her name to Dinah Shore and became one of the most celebrated TV personalities of the 40s and 50s.

6. In the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, Abe Fortas, a Washington lawyer born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, established the right of counsel for the accused. Fortas later served on the Supreme Court.

7. Tennessee elected its first Jewish congressman Steve Cohen, in 2006. He hails from Memphis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.