text: I am a Jew living in a college town in Mississippi for the past 5 years. I was born & raised in the North. I think Evans should rename his book "Fiddler on the Roof in the South". His book is a very nostalgic look back at Jewish history - as it was in the past here. It's very much: the southern Jews were all so happy, they all fit in and were accepted, etc. He does cite a few instances where they had problems - but these usually involved us 'Yankee Jews', like the instances when a few (Yankee)Rabbis in the South fought for civil rights. 
  Evans should realize that times have REALLY CHANGED HERE! The evangelical Christians in my town (which is most people here) harrass me like crazy - 'I am praying for you!' 'Have you read the words of Jesus, who was a Jew like you?' 'When will you come to my Church'. Blah, blah, blah. Thank God for the minority of Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and a few others who live here. They are the only ones to accept me for the way I am, and the way I will stay - a Jew. 
  I want all who are reading this to realize that I am only speaking for my experience. Jews who reside in cities in the South have told me that they have had far better experiences, and that they cannot relate to what I am saying.
  But I do want to ask Evans a few questions:
  1) If things are so great for the Jews in the South: Why have you lived in New York for decades now???
  2) Why don't you at least write either a new Forward to the book, a magazine article, etc., contrasting some of the ways in which the lives of Jews in the South have changed over time (for some of us at least), primarily due to the rise of the evangelical Christians?
  I read Evans' books before I moved here, and nothing much he describes in his books is my life here. For a Jew who really cares about her/his religion living here is depressing; it is practically Jew-less; and, at best, the majority of a certain denomination of Christians here ignore me. (By the way, I am planning to move to a city!)
  By the way, don't bother writing to me to tell me that I am "wrong", or to invite me to things like the Bible Study at your Church. Believe me, with all the praying for me that is going on in this town, and all the myriad attempts to convert me, if it hasn't happened by now, as they say in these parts, it just ain't gonna happen
  