Janice Rothschild Blumberg

Janice Rothschild Blumberg is a native Atlantan who returned here after many years in Washington, D.C. She graduated in the arts from the University of Georgia, and subsequently studied American Jewish history while experiencing it, often at close range as the wife - now widow - of two outspoken Jewish leaders, civil rights activist Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild of Atlanta and David M. Blumberg of Knoxville, Tennessee, international president of B’’nai B’rith, 1971-1978. Ms. Blumberg is the author of two books dealing with Atlanta Jewish history, One Voice: Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild and the Troubled South, and As But a Day, the story of Atlanta’s Hebrew Benevolent Congregation; and co-author of Deadly Truth, a fact-based novel about a Jewish family coping with apartheid in South Africa. She has written various articles for newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals as well as the entries about Atlanta and Georgia for the Encyclopedia Judaica. In 2013 she received the Samuel Proctor Outstanding Career Scholarship Award in Southern Jewish History from the Southern Jewish Historical Society. In addition to her writing, Ms. Blumberg held leadership positions in numerous organizations in both Atlanta and Washington. Currently a Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium Scholar at Morehouse College, she served for many years on the board of the American Jewish Historical Society, is a past president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, and chaired the board of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum from 1991 to 1998. Her most recent commitment is as a volunteer docent at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta. Her newest work, Prophet in a Time of Priests, recounts the extraordinary life of “Alphabet” Browne, whose colorful and eccentric life is a study in the history of American Judaism.