In honor of the Jewish observation of Rosh Hashanah which begins at sundown on September 8th, Around the D planned an article on the first Jewish students at Davidson. That plan got slightly derailed by a lack of records.
We do have records that show one Jewish student attending during the 1931-32 academic year and one in 1932-33 but so far we don’t know if one student stayed 2 years or if it was 2 different students. My attempts to check student lists for those years haven’t produced any likely candidates.
Another registrar’s report shows that there was a Jewish student at Davidson from 1939 to 1944- but again we don’t know if that was one student or more than one. During the 1944, there were 4 Jewish students and I’m hoping that there are some alumni who remember these students and can help us identify them. And if you remember any of the other students from different denominations, we’d love to know who they are.
Since the students eluded me, I tried another approach and found several rabbis who spoke at Davidson in the1940s through the auspices of the Jewish Chautauqua Society. Below are articles from the Davidsonian reporting on the talks.
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