Georgia
Where there’s a whole lot more than peaches.
Atlanta · Savannah · Thomasville · Augusta · Macon
The Journey
Georgia felt like a state constantly moving between its past and its future.
In Atlanta, we visited the State Capitol, its gold dome rising above one of the most important cities in the South. We explored the World of Coca Cola and tasted flavors from around the world, then walked through the underwater tunnel at the Georgia Aquarium, surrounded by sharks, rays, and an incredible variety of marine life.
We also visited Stone Mountain. The enormous carving is a remarkable feat, but its Confederate imagery is also a powerful reminder of a bitter period of American division and of how that history continued to be memorialized long afterward.
The farther we traveled, the more another Georgia appeared. Smaller towns, old courthouses, historic streets, enormous trees, and a slower rhythm that felt far removed from Atlanta.
Savannah was something else again. We walked beneath its famous oak trees, explored galleries connected to the Savannah College of Art and Design, and wandered through streets that seemed to carry centuries of history. Near Augusta, we even stopped at a farm and tasted fresh peaches straight from the tree.
Then there was Thomasville. For all its Southern charm and beauty, the town became something much deeper for me when I discovered one of the darkest and least known chapters of Jewish life in America.
Georgia became one of the most exciting states we explored, full of history, culture, nature, contradictions, and surprises.
We definitely want to go back.
Jewish Georgia
My most memorable encounter with Jewish Georgia happened in Thomasville.
I walked through the town, visited its synagogue and Jewish cemetery, and stood near the place connected to a remarkable event from 1862. During the Civil War, local citizens gathered at the Thomas County courthouse, blamed Jewish merchants for shortages and rising prices, and passed resolutions giving Jewish families ten days to leave.
Standing there, it was difficult to reconcile that history with the quiet, beautiful Southern town around me. Neighbors had suddenly been turned into outsiders.
Georgia’s Jewish story, however, begins very differently. In Savannah, Jews arrived in 1733, only months after the colony itself was founded. They established Congregation Mickve Israel, today the oldest Jewish congregation in the South.
I stood outside that synagogue, visited the old Jewish cemetery and the Sheftall family burial grounds, and saw a Jewish community whose roots reach almost to the beginning of Georgia itself. In Augusta, I visited the state’s oldest surviving synagogue building, while in Atlanta we encountered thriving Jewish life, including something far less historic but equally welcome, good kosher pizza.
That contrast stayed with me. In one Georgia town, Jews had been there almost from the birth of the colony. In another, more than a century later, they were told they did not belong.
Jewish Georgia carried both stories.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Georgia was how easily history can hide in plain sight.
Thomasville today is beautiful and quiet. Nothing about walking its streets immediately tells you that in 1862 people gathered there and decided that their Jewish neighbors no longer belonged.
Yet elsewhere in the same state, Jews had been part of Savannah almost from the moment Georgia itself began.
Days later, my daughters were happily drinking kosher Coca Cola in Atlanta while I was still thinking about those Jewish families who had once been told to leave their homes.
That contrast stayed with me.
America has given its citizens extraordinary freedom and opportunity, but its history also reminds us how quickly belonging can be questioned.
Georgia reminded me that enjoying the present and remembering the past are not opposites. Responsible citizens do both.
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