Publisher Larry Brook meeting Jordan’s King Hussein at a Jewish press event at the palace in Amman in 1995. Of course there’s a wild story behind this…
Larry Brook has been editor and publisher of Southern Jewish Life, a monthly magazine that covers four Southern states, for over 30 years. Based in Birmingham, the magazine covers the Jewish communities of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle. It started as The Southern Shofar in 1990, covering Alabama, then changed to Deep South Jewish Voice in 1999. The publication changed to a magazine format and took its current name in 2009.
A participant in interfaith dialogue since high school, and having covered the phenomenon of Christian Zionism for decades, he recently launched a new online magazine, Israel InSight, for Christian supporters of Israel.
A Birmingham native, he was one of the earliest graduates of the Birmingham Jewish Day School (now N.E. Miles Jewish Day School) and was the first alumnus to serve on the board. He graduated from Indian Springs School and returned to Alabama after graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in religious studies and no idea what to do with it. While in college, he worked for University Journal, a thrice-weekly newspaper, and for Iron Crown, a publisher of role-playing games.
During his time running Southern Jewish Life, he has traveled the Southern back roads, visiting anywhere and everywhere that has or had a Jewish presence. While the publication emphasizes Southern Jewish history, he has also written extensively on Christian support of Israel, long before it became a major phenomenon, and the complicated story of Jewish involvement in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
Brook has received 25 national Rockower Awards for excellence in Jewish journalism and several New Orleans Press Club awards, and is past vice president of the American Jewish Press Association.
He has spoken at synagogues and churches, at Limmud New Orleans and the Passover retreat at Camp Ramah Darom. He is author of the forthcoming books “Not Just Black and White: Southern Jews and the Civil Rights Struggle” and “Where Do You Keep The Animals: What Christians Don’t Realize They Don’t Know About Jews and Judaism,” as well as a compilation of some of the biggest and wildest stories from Southern Jewish Life’s first three decades.
Brook is also an alumnus of the inaugural class of Birmingham Youth Leadership Forum and much later, Leadership Birmingham, and has served on the boards of numerous Jewish and community-wide organizations.