Nourishing Jewish joy in the Bible Belt
During an internship in Jackson, Mississippi, Lauren Balfour ’28 learned how transformative it can be for Southern Jews to share religious and cultural experiences, make connections and understand their region’s complicated past.
By Susan Piland
Photography by Charles A. Smith
August 12, 2025
Growing up Jewish in a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi, Lauren Balfour ’28 had an early education in the different ways people practice their faith.
Standing on the bimah during her bat mitzvah, seeing the smiling faces of her classmates from the local private school she attended through the eighth grade — a school where she was the only Jewish kid in her grade — was “truly an amazing experience,” Balfour says.
But there are less pleasant memories, too. Though the school was well aware that she is Jewish, when she was 5 she was given an ashen cross on her forehead during an Ash Wednesday service. Upset, she wiped it off immediately. The school never responded to her mother’s concerned emails about the incident, seeming to brush it off as no big deal.
Coming to Brandeis was a culture shock, Balfour says, “because for so many years I didn’t have a vibrant Jewish community. I didn’t necessarily choose Brandeis for the Jewish life, but I found it there. And it was really, really nice and comforting.”
A biology major who is considering adding a major in business, Balfour is an active member of several Jewish student groups. She swims on the women’s swimming and diving team. She’s enthusiastic about her classes. A notable favorite has been Religious Education in America, taught by Ziva Hassenfeld, GSAS MAT’09, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor in Jewish Education (Hassenfeld’s teaching style is “beyond engaging,” Balfour says).
This summer, as a rising sophomore, Balfour took an internship at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL), in Jackson. The ISJL, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, serves Jewish communities in 13 Southern states. It provides online b’nai mitzvah training and Torah study; sends a traveling rabbi to congregations that don’t have a full-time leader; maintains an Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities website, which tells the often-forgotten Jewish histories of Southern towns and cities; creates curricula for religious schools. In short, it offers many ways for Southern Jews to enrich their religious and cultural experiences, and make connections with one another.
The Earl and Shirlee Katz Endowed Internship for Jewish Communal Service, offered through the university’s World of Work program, provided Balfour some financial support during her ISJL internship. Among her duties was helping to put together the institute’s annual June conference, which draws participants from throughout the South. “It’s two and a half days of Jewish joy,” Balfour says. “So many people wanted to be there.”
Balfour’s time at the ISJL also gave her a chance to delve deeply into the civil rights history of the South and the ways that Jews, including many Brandeisians, played a part in the struggle. Her own synagogue in Jackson — Beth Israel Congregation, founded in 1860 — was one of the epicenters. In 1967, the synagogue was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Two months later, the home of the congregation’s rabbi, who served as a chaplain to imprisoned Freedom Riders, was also bombed.
“My summer at the ISJL is something I will talk a lot about over the upcoming years,” she says. “Change in history, change in civil rights, doesn’t happen overnight. It is in constant flux.
“I carry the understanding that I have power, too. I have the power to say something. I have the power to change something. Knowing you’re not stuck is a very energizing feeling.”
Brandeis undergraduates who undertake unpaid internships in such fields as social justice, Jewish service, politics, public service and more may pursue a World of Work fellowship, a competitive grant that helps reduce financial obstacles, offered through the Hiatt Career Center.
