A Corner of the Tapestry

Book excerpt: One of the most comprehensive studies ever done on a state’s Jewish community, A Corner of the Tapestry is the story—untold until now—of the Jews who helped to settle Arkansas and who stayed and flourished to become a significant part of the state’s history and culture. LeMaster has spent much of the past sixteen years compiling and writing this saga. Data for the book have been collected in part from the American Jewish Archives, American Jewish Historical Society, the stones in Arkansas’s Jewish cemeteries, more than fifteen hundred articles and obituaries from journals and newspapers, personal letters from hundreds of present and former Jewish Arkansans, congregational histories, census and court records, and some four hundred oral interviews conducted in a hundred cities and towns in Arkansas. This meticulous work chronicles the lives and genealogy of not only the highly visible and successful Jews who settled in Arkansas, but also those who comprised the warp and woof of society. It is a decidedly significant contribution to Arkansas history as well as to the wider study of Jews in the nation.