Rabbi Perry Edward Nussbaum

Rabbi Nussbaum's career in Jackson reflected the tremendous pressures that southern rabbis felt in balancing their religious and moral ideals with societal demands to conform to white supremacy. Though they were not as outspoken as their northern colleagues who did not face the same threat of violence, Nussbaum and many of his fellow rabbis in the South helped lay the difficult groundwork for constructing a new South based on racial equality.

Rabbi Nussbaum became the first white clergyman whose home and house of worship were dynamited by racists. Nussbaum was a member of the Committee for Concern, which helped African-American churches to rebuild after they had been attacked or burned. Nussbaum drove to Parchman State Prison in the Delta each week during the summer of 1961 to visit and lend moral support to the Jewish Freedom Riders from the North. On the night of September 18th, 1967, a group of Ku Klux Klan members planted a bomb which destroyed much of the Rabbi’s office and part of the library. Although no one was hurt, this would not be the end. Two months later, the same Klan members bombed Nussbaum’s home while the rabbi was home with his wife. Miraculously, no one was hurt. In response to the events, 42 clergymen and sympathetic citizens joined in a “walk of penance” to Temple Beth Israel, where they held a Thursday night vigil, which attracted a crowd of 150 people, most of whom were not Jewish. Later, the same Klan group bombed the temple in Meridian, Mississippi. When they later tried to bomb the home of a Jewish leader in Meridian, they were captured by the police.

In World War II he was the assistant post chaplain at Camp Cooke, Calif., and was the chaplain for all hospitals in Manila at the end of the war. He left the Army as a colonel in the Chaplain Corps after 25 years of service.