Dr. Terry Barr included in Half/Life, a "Jew-ish" anthology

April 21, 2006

We climb into our SUV and head out to view the Christmas lights around town. [My father] took us every year on Christmas Eve to see the lights. Hanukah. Christmas. From light to light.

- Dr. Terry Barr, from "And Half Again on Sunday"

After his father's death, PC professor of English Terry Barr began working on an essay that would eventually take years to complete. In it, he explored his past and tried to unearth and understand the consequences of being raised in an interfaith home in 1950s Alabama.

"I didn't find out until first or second grade that my father was Jewish," he said.

Barr notes it was somewhat late and entirely by accident that he discovered his father was not, like his mother, a Methodist. "Some neighbors were taking me home from school and my friend's mother mentioned the fact that my father hadn't gone to work because it was a Jewish holiday. I was raised in my mother's faith, and my father just never went to church with us."

While writing his essay, Barr says he attempted to understand why his father's faith was kept from him.

"I began wondering why nobody had ever discussed it with me, or volunteered to take me to his religious services. I found out more and more by hearing stories from the family of what my parents dealt with (as an interfaith couple)."

One story recounted in his essay involves his parents' wedding day, fraught with tension because no rabbi in the Birmingham area would marry the Barrs upon learning that their future children would not be raised in the Jewish faith. Finally, a rabbi was contacted in Montgomery and was paid fifty dollars to make a 200-mile roundtrip and perform the ceremony.

Upon hearing of a call for submissions from an editor working on a book about children raised in interfaith households, Barr worked up a proposal and crossed his fingers after sending the essay about his father to Laurel Snyder, a freelance writer, editor and the creator of the weblog JewishyIrishy. Snyder, whose mother is Irish-Catholic and whose father is Jewish, loved Barr's essay.

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Following extensive edits most notably for length that would make "And Half Again on Sunday" suitable anthology material Barr was pleased to realize he'd "found a home" for this deeply personal piece of writing.

"I like the idea of a group of people who have maintained who they are throughout thousands of years, many of the years being without a home, or being persecuted, or having to say that they are Jewish when it hasn't been a popular thing to do," he said.

Barr, who serves as chair of the English department at PC, infuses his obvious love of popular and fringe culture with a dedication to the classics through a widely varied curriculum in his classes. In addition to comic book culture, Barr explores with his students the terrain of independent film, contemporary novels, and independent music. His courses include the Modern British/American Novel, Modern British/American Poetry, American Literature and Ethnic Identity, Film and American Culture, Media and Society, the Holocaust, and Intro to Southern Studies.

In October of 2000, the Southern Jewish Historical Society's annual journal, Southern Jewish History, featured Barr's essay "A Shtetl Grew in Bessemer: Temple Beth-El and Jewish Life in Small-Town Alabama."

Half/Life: Jew-Ish Tales from Interfaith Homes is available at the Presbyterian College bookstore, as well as online at amazon.com.