Southern Jewish Life is a magazine in three versions — the print magazine serving the Jewish communities of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and northwest Florida, with Deep South and New Orleans editions, and starting in Summer 2023, a new online edition, Southern Jewish Life Regional, that covers the rest of the South. We are a unique magazine for a unique community.
This publication began in Birmingham in 1990 as The Southern Shofar, a monthly newspaper serving all of Alabama. In 1999 we expanded to Mississippi and changed the name to Deep South Jewish Voice. We added the Florida panhandle — the truly “southern” part of Florida — shortly thereafter. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we stepped in to serve the Louisiana Jewish community and have been the community’s Jewish news source ever since. In 2009, we shifted our emphasis to exclusively local content that can’t be found elsewhere, changing to a full-color magazine format and becoming Southern Jewish Life.
The two regional print editions — Deep South and New Orleans — have pages devoted to their own communities and sharing some common content of region-wide interest.
Starting with August 2023, Southern Jewish Life Regional will be an online edition of SJL that covers the rest of the South — from Virginia and Kentucky in the north, to East Texas in the west, the Carolinas and Georgia in the East, and northern Florida to the South — North Florida, but the part of Florida that is Southern. The online version is also meant to supplement the print versions in our core coverage area.
Over the years we have won many national Simon J. Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association. Our website is regularly updated with the latest news from around the region. We also publish This Week in Southern Jewish Life, an email that is one of the most comprehensive in the country, featuring regional and national stories of the week. We have Facebook and Twitter feeds, keeping readers updated on breaking news.
We are the official publication of the Greater New Orleans Jewish community, and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans and its constituent agencies publish their monthly newsletter as an insert in Southern Jewish Life.
It has always been our goal to provide a large-community quality publication to all communities of the South. In our core coverage area, the print versions are mailed to every Jewish household, without a subscription fee, and those outside the area can subscribe. We love what we do, and who we do it for.
Documenting this community, a community we are members of and active within, is our passion.