History Department

Throughout much of the Rolling Fork Jewish community’s history, Greenville’s Hebrew Union Congregation was their religious home.  Jews from the Sharkey County towns of Rolling Fork, Cary, and Anguilla went to services in Greenville and were buried in the Jewish cemetery there.  In the 1950s, Rolling Fork Jews formed their own congregation named after one of the community’s Jewish pioneers.

In the 1880s, Henry Kline arrived in Anguilla by way of the emerging railroad.  Although he started a department store and helped other Jewish merchants and farmers in the region, Kline was unsatisfied with the Jewish education structure in this rural area.  As a result, he gathered all the children of the town and began teaching them Hebrew lessons every Sunday in his home.  Even without a temple, Kline felt that his children should be knowledgeable in the practices of Judaism; living in a rural environment could not be an excuse for them.  Even though Kline moved his family by 1921 to Vicksburg, he never forgot the kids of the area and never gave up his farm.

While Henry Kline had passed away by 1953, Jewish residents of the southern Delta desired a Jewish experience that was more accessible than Greenville.  As a result, Mrs. William Klaus led an effort in September of 1953 to start a Rolling Fork congregation.  The first organizational meeting occurred at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Grundfest, and the group began meeting at the parish house of the local Episcopal Church.  Rabbi Herbert Hendel of Greenville visited every second and fourth Sunday of the month to lead services beginning at 7:30 PM.  These hour-long worship services were quite popular and attracted between forty and fifty people per evening, an impressive number considering the small Jewish community.  Along with services, the congregation also held community Passover Seders in the mid-1950s.

By 1956, the Rolling Fork congregation, known then as the Henry Kline Memorial Congregation in honor of the religious school pioneer, became so successful that some were discussing the possibility of a permanent house of worship.  By October 1956, local Jewish and Christian families had donated money for a permanent synagogue building.  The structural creators were Jack and Ike Grundfest who built the temple in honor of their father, Morris, and their brother, Sam.  Between the 1960s and the 1980s, quite a few Jewish families participated in the synagogue with Greenville’s rabbis supporting its distant congregants on a regular basis.  Leadership was also found in the families of Anguilla, Rolling Fork, and Cary.  Longtime Rolling Fork mayor Sam Rosenthal, for example, served as president of the congregation.  The temple became an established and accepted part of the community.  Local football coaches used to rearrange the schedule around the High Holiday season so that the Jewish players could participate in the great American pastime while remaining true to their faith.

As in other parts of the Mississippi Delta, Jewish life has declined in Sharkey County.  By the 1990s, the synagogue’s membership had dwindled in size, and the congregation finally closed in 1992.  The remaining Jews around Rolling Fork remain active in Greenville’s Hebrew Union Congregation.