Nicknamed “Music City USA,” Nashville is best known as the home
of the Country Music industry. Countless aspiring singers,
writers, and musicians head to Nashville looking for fame and
fortune. But Nashville was a center for fortune seekers long
before the traditional songs of Southern and Appalachian
musicians began to be pressed onto shellac and vinyl. Beginning
in the mid 19th century, growing numbers of Jews from Europe
came to Tennessee’s capital city in search of a better life.
There they found opportunity and established a community that
continues to thrive today. Although Nashville was founded in
1780, it did not attract a significant Jewish presence until the
1840s. A few Jews had lived temporarily in the town that had
been originally called Fort Nashborough. In 1795, Benjamin and
Hannah Myers lived in the growing trading post on the Cumberland
River, where Hannah gave birth to their daughter Sarah. Members
of New York’s Shearith Israel congregation, the Myers did not
stay in Tennessee long, moving t