3 Review(s)

The story of one of Savannah's first and most prominent Jewish families, the son who died on the battlefield, and the house that remembers it all. Gratz Cohen's ghost seemed to haunt the apartment as its new owner worked to bring it back to life. As the work progressed, Jason Friedman became obsessed with understanding who the Cohens were, and how their story fit into existing narratives about the Jewish South and the Civil War. Liberty Street: A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War is a family saga wrapped in a memoir of Friedman's own southern Jewish upbringing and return home, and the way an old house became a portal to another world. The Cohens are well-known among those versed in southern Jewish history, but sensing that there was more to their story than had yet been told, Friedman set out to learn as much as he could about the family and their world. Friedman provides a nuanced look at what it meant to be a wealthy Jewish family before and during the Civil War, and paints a portrait of a sensitive young man tormented by conflicting pulls of love and duty. Delving into the lives of an extraordinary Southern Jewish family, Liberty Street meditates on the uses of memory and the ways our understanding of the past influences how we live today.