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JN: You tell the stories of a lot of
Jewish Confederate patriots. Do
you have a favorite?
RR: I put [Maj.] Adolph Proskauer

on the cover. I picked him because
he was a war hero. He was an immi-
. grant from Prussia; he came to
Mobile, Ala. He enlisted as corporal
and was promoted to major — a big
thing: a leader of 1,000 men.

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JN: Some of the stories are joy-
ous, others heartbreaking. Was
there one that made an impres-
sion on you?
RR: One that made a impact on me

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was the death and agony of one
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"he died a good Jew -- we even had
him benched" (an Orthodox custom
of renaming the dying to protect
them). It's such a poignant story

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the process of aiming it into a Broadway
show, the powers that be made changes
that, to me, took away much of the heart
and soul. It didn't run very long on
Broadway, but all the presenters from
around the country came to see it and
basically said if we could go back to
some of the ideas we had in Houston, it
would play well around the country.
To the producers' credit, they let me
have the keys to the car again, and I went
back to those things that I really thought
were important. The bottom line is that
we toured it last year, and it was so suc-
cessful that we're touring it again.

What song from the show do you
consider the most universal?
FW: There's a song called "I'll Never
Pass This Way Again" about a young
soldier, and it doesn't matter whether
he's with the North or the South.
What matters is that he's walking to
meet his regiment.
Every day of his life, he walked
through the same woods and the same
meadows and saw the same sky and
trees and lake. He's walking through a
place he's probably never going to
[see] again because of the battle he's
about to go to, and he knows that.
All the things he took for granted all
his life now become very special. That

JN:

JN: How did Southern Jews recon-

cile their ethnic history, which
included periods of enslavement,
with their Southern culture and
lifestyle?
RR: You assume that because Jews

today are politically liberal, that
that is what Judaism has always
stood for. That is not true. The
issue of Jews and slavery — that is a
real hot debate among academics.
Most people believe Jewish law for-
bids slavery, or that you have to free
slaves every seven years. The Torah

song speaks to something that tran-
scends the Civil War and goes to any
soldier in any war.

JN: What happened with your son's
assignment that led to this show?
FW: My son was studying the Civil
War in school, and I just did not
think that the textbooks and the lec-
tures were inspiring the kind of pas-
sion that the Civil War should. He
was reading great speeches by Lincoln
and Frederick Douglass, but he wasn't
really paying much attention.
I said, "If Hootie & the Blowfish
were singing these same words, would
you pay more attention?"
And he said, "Yeah, sure Dad. You
go make that happen, and I'll listen."
I run a record company (Atlantic), so
I took that as a challenge, and that's
exactly what I did. I did this double
album [of music and thematic readings].
James Garner plays Lincoln. Maya
Angelou is the voice of slavery. Danny
Glover is Frederick Douglass, and Ellen
Burstyn is the White House maid.
The Complete
[The Civil War
Work] is the largest American theater
album probably ever made. It has 31
acts on it from Hootie & the Blowfish
to Bebe Winans, Patti LaBelle, Trisha
Yearwood and Travis Tritt. The entire

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