ewish Stars in Texas ~ Rabbis and Their Work

H O L LACE AVA WEINER Foreword by Rabbi Jimmy Kessler

Texas A&M University Press

~)::!,,~ COLLEGE STATION Preface

When I arrived in Texas the summer Ofi977, my Dallas cousins, Irene and Joe, had an old issue of D: The Magazine ofDallas propped on their man­ tel like some favorite family portrait. The cover pictured Rabbi Levi Olan, a local icon with a countenance guaranteed to sell magazines. l Nine months later, I moved to Fort Worth, a city of half a million, where Rabbi Robert Schur's name was a household word. He was a civil rights leader and humanitarian with a reputation disproportionate to his 350-member Reform congregation. The city's Orthodox rabbi, Isadore Garsek, was like­ wise a giant in the public eye. A scholarly entertainer and educator, Garsek drew busloads of Jews and non-Jews to hi s book reviews, where he breathed expression into characters from best-selling novels. The prominence of these rabbis gave me culture shock. I was born in Washington, D.C., where 5 percent of the populace is Jewish and rabbis are too numerous to gain much notice. In Texas, where Jews are a minuscule portion of the population - six-tenths of 1 percent-rabbis had evolved into public personalities, precious resources recruited for a variety of roles. Their scarcity guaranteed their visibility and entree to leadership circles. In a Bible Belt state that historically prized individuality over con­ formity, rabbis were objects of curiosity and respect who brought erudi­ tion and an exotic element to the Western mix. Their Old Testament roots engendered deference, while their educational training outside the region elevated them to a lofty intellectual plane. Moreover, a rabbi's keen sense of social justice, honed through centuries of Talmudic commentary, gave him moral clout, particularly in Texas where other ministers stressed sal­ vation in the next wo rld rather than justice on earth. The reason a rabbi was on a magazine cover became clear. Fast-forward to 1991. I was a veteran reporter with the Fort Worth Star­ Telegram, interviewing an Israeli at the home of Fay Brachman, president of the Texas Jewish Historical Society. In persuasive, Jewish-mother style, Fay pulled me aside and practically ordered me to write a book about the Lone Star State's Jewish past. So much has occurred; so little is recorded. Preface xv XIV PREFA C E that affiliated with Judaism's Reform movement-the denomination that Her directive echoed in my soul. Al though I was a news reporter rather interprets the faith in light of Western culture and stresses social justice than a religion writer, stories of Jewish inlere5t often carried my byline. and community service. One of the rabbis was affiliated with both the Re­ Recording my heritage comes naturally. Still, a book topic eluded me for a form and the Conservative branch ofJudaism, which seeks to balance tra­ year. Then I foun d myself at a banquet, seated next to a grandmother from dition with modernity. Not surprisingly, Reform rabbis best fit the book's Lubbock who had a crucifix dangling from her neck and a twang to rival selection criteria of rabbinical figures who became civic leaders. Texas his­ LBJ's. "Ah knew a Jew once," Emily Finnell told me. "He was Rabbi Alex tory, however, includes many Orthodox and Conservative rabbis who be­ Kline. He brought art and culture to Lubbock, Texas." So great was this came well-known municipal leaders. Traditional rabbis mentioned in the rabbi's reputation that when he died, the local museum named a room in book and who merit further study in this regard include Isadore Garsek of his honor. Fort Worth, Abraham Schechter of Houston, and Joseph Roth of EI Paso. Click! Then and there I decided to examine Texas history through the The breadth and shape of Texas made geography another selection eyes of its rabbis. Stories about their careers and their communities could criteria for this study of influential rabbis. A vast state, Texas stretches provide a new window on Texas' past and the American Jewish experience. 800 miles, north to south, from the Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico, and So many nearly forgotten rabbis have left imprints on twentieth-century 77 miles, east to west, from the forests bordering the Deep South to the Texas. As civic leaders they founded hospitals, symphonies, and charities. 0 deserts of the Southwest. Surely the Jewish community in Lubbock-an As moral leaders, they confronted the Ku Klux Klan and championed arid, agricultural hub on the edge of the Great Plains-developed with racial minorities. Appointed to state boards, rabbis worked for academic a different profile than Brownsville's congregation on the Gulf Coast's freedom and prison reform. Within the Jewish world, they were instru­ Mexican border. The dynamics of Houston- with its population explo­ mental in resettling ten thousand refugees who entered the United States sions-seemed evident in the recurrent schisms within its Jewish congre­ through Galveston and eight thousand penniless Jews who arrived in gations. Dallas, a more stable city, historically resolved its frictions behind North America via Mexico's port ofVeracruz. Outside the Jewish commu­ the scenes. Fort Worth, although only forty miles west of Dallas, developed nity, they delivered invocations at rodeos and instinctively formed ecu­ a Jewish community a world apart-smaller, less organized, more indif­ menical alliances with Texans of all creeds. The names of Lone Star rabbis ferent, and less munificent toward Jewish causes. When rabbis stepped up appear on state documents, on cornerstones, and in Texas and Mexican to pulpits across Texas, the interaction of place and personality shaped history books. Elsewhere they might not have been as proactive or prominent. Rabbis their careers. Scattered Jews have been part of the Texas landscape since before its who accepted a call to the Lone Star State, especially when it was still a far founding as a republic. Jewish soldiers of fortune and land developers corner of the Diaspora, often did so as a last resort. Several were never or­ came as single men into what was a Catholic province of Mexico. When dained. Others had no better pulpit offers. Those from Europe were often Texas gained its independence in 1836, the republic'S thirty-nine thousand rebelling against traditional religious practices. These maverick rabbis inhabitants included two hundred Jews, among them at least a dozen vet­ were drawn to places with little Jewish history or hierarchy, communities erans of the Texas Revolution.2 A decade later, when Texas attained state­ where they could create their own religious blueprint. Texas provided am­ hood, it had one Jewish institution-a Hebrew cemetery consecrated in ple room. Houston in 1844 by a visiting rabbi. Mixers, mavericks, and motivators, the eleven rabbis profiled in this The first concentrated wave ofJewish settlers to Texas came in the 1870S, study are a varied lot, selected mainly for their impact beyond their con­ with the completion of railroad lines. Texas was often a place of second gregations. All of them were foreign-born (although five grew up in the settlement for these entrepreneurs. Many were merchants from Germany United States), an indication that they were amenable to change. Nine of (meaning Alsace and Prussia) who had previously lived in the Midwest or the rabbis were raised within a framework ofOrthodox Judaism-the de­ the Deep South. A second wave of Jewish immigrants began arriving in the nomination that stresses rituals and traditions-yet none remained as ob­ 18805, driven from Eastern Europe by pogroms-Russian government­ servant into adulthood or old age. Ten of these rabbis led congregations XVI PREFACE Preface xvii

rabbi. His 1873 m igration to Hempstead, a rail depot fifty miles beyond Houston, illustrates why Jews initially came to Texas and how they prolif­ Amarillo OKLAHO MA erated and culturally assimilated. The rabbi's great-grandson, politician NEW ARK, ,MEXIGO Robert Schwarz Strauss, became chairman of the National Democratic Party and United States ambassador to Russia. Rabbi Samuel Rosinger, a younger, more adaptable religious figure than Schwarz, was jobless in 1910 when he answered a want ad from a Beau­ Spur• ~askell mont synagogue seeking a "mixer." The ad demonstrated the congrega­ Stamford• tion's need of an "ethnic broker," a diplomat who could "bridge the gap between different cultures," an ambassador to the gentiles equipped to Waco T E X A S • take a seat at the communal table in a city where Jews were a prominent minority and everyone was awash in oiP Au stin o As rabbis "mixed" they took the lead in communal projects and gained Lockhart. secular notice. Tyler's Maurice Faber served on the University of Texas Board of Regents, making front-page news in 1916 when he tangled with •San Antonio the governor over academic freedom. Galveston's Henry Cohen, who spearheaded state prison reform, lobbied and befriended mayors, gover­ nors, and presidents. Cohen's name has become synonymous with West of Hester Street (Mondell Productions, 1983), the docu-drama that reenacts " MEXICO the arrival of Jews through Galveston. Gulf Fort Worth's Rabbi G. George Fox provides some counterpoint to of fNl MILES Mexico ' . Cohen. While bold and humanitarian, Fox had a less than positive attitude n 0 1or, 200 toward the refugee movement that Cohen championed; Fox had Jewish prostitutes deported, while Cohen delivered funeral rites over a harlot's The eleven cities profiled in this book are designated by six-pointed Jewish stars. grave; Fox minimized the influence of the Ku Kl ux Klan, while Cohen Austin, the Texas state capital, has a five-pointed star. Other.cities shown on the confronted it. Fox's twelve years in Texas spotlight the uneasy collisions map are among the places mentioned in the text. Map by Frank Pontari. and accommodations between cultures. His career also contrasts the far­ reaching impact of a Texas pulpit with the unheralded ministry of a big city rabbi. sponsored massacres. These refugees had led insulated lives and clung to The theme of refugee resettlement picks up in El Paso with Rabbi Mar­ past religious rituals, leading to tension between them and the old-guard tin Zielonka, who helped resolve an international dilemma when illegal Jews, who seemed more Texan than Jewish. A third wave of Jews came to Jewish refugees slipped across the border in 19 21. Zielonka's efforts led to Texas between 1907 and 1914, drawn by the Galveston movement, an effort the twentieth century's largest Jewish migration to Mexico. Despite his to steer refugees away from the crowded northeastern cities and into the refugee relief work, Zielonka fell into disfavor with much of El Paso Jewry hinterland. From this wave of ten thousand refugees, three thousand because of his ideological stance against Zionism-another theme that settled in Texas, eventually sending for relatives. runs through the Jewish history of the region. The first rabbi in this case study, Heinrich Schwarz, was an immigrant A better consensus builder was Sam Perl, a lay rabbi whose Browns­ from the first wave, an old-fashioned figure, more of a family rabbi than a ville congregation provides a close-up of small-town life along the Texas­ communal leader. Research indicates that he was Texas' first ordained Mexican border. A consummate "ethnic broker," Perl was neither a scholar XVlll PRE FACE Prefa ce XLX nor a theologian. He was a haberdasher with the personality, civic pride, tory.4 Professor Marcus, then ninety-seven years old, cautioned me that chutzpah, conciliatory skills, and deep religious attachment sought in a rabbis who went to Texas, particularly before the Second World War, were Texas rabbi. His heartwarming career illustrates how, in the absence of a not the best and the bright ~ st. The motion picture, The Frisco Kid (Warner trained rabbi, the community anointed one. Brothers, 1979), which chronicles the pratfalls ofa young rabbi exiled from Lubbock's Rabbi Alex Kline also became a leading citizen in a remote Europe to the Far West, was not far off the mark. Texas, Marcus recalled, town with a dearth of Jews. Refined, intellectual, and at the end of a disap­ was a "loch," a hole, a landscape incapable of retaining polished or ac­ pointing career, Kline expected to retire to obscurity. Instead, his West complished rabbis. He allowed that most rabbis who ventured to Texas Texas years turned into his zenith. Audiences th rilled to his cut-and­ were "decent fellows," but not the caliber sought by prestigious pulpits in pasted collection of artistic prints. At a time when Dallasites tried to out­ New York, Chicago, or Cincinnati. law abstract art, Kline taught Lubbock residents to appreciate it. Through In light of his remarks, the professor was surprised to learn that Mau­ the medium of art, Alex Kline, along with his wife and partner Eleanore, rice Faber, a lackluster member of the Central Conference of American built bridges of tolerance and understanding. Rabbis, had pulled the charter of a Masonic Lodge allied with the Klan. He Not all rabbis achieved popular success. Ephraim Frisch -like Kline an was unaware that Rabbi Sidney Wolf, his former student, had founded the intellectual who shared his professional life with his wife-was forced to Corpus Christi Symphony and integrated the municipal golf course. He retire from his San Antonio pulpit in 1942. Still, he is revered for his sup­ was fascinated with Martin Zielonka's refugee work in Mexico and insisted port of labor unions, his focus upon poor Mexican Americans, and his that all my files on the subject be copied, at his expense, and sent to the sentiments against Francisco Franco's tyranny in Spain. A visionary, he in­ American Jewish Archives. spired a generation of idealistic young adults, but alienated many estab­ Still, the Cincinnati-based historian remained irreverent toward Rabbi lishment Jews and gentiles by his lack of tact. In San Antonio, he remains Henry Cohen, describing him as "something of a poseur," a man with controversial. "pizzazz," but without a rabbinical diploma. The only Texas rabbi Marcus World War II set off a tinderbox of emotions among Jews over whether praised wholeheartedly was Levi Olan, the theologian whose portrait had or not to champion the creation ofIsrael. Houston's most prestigious con­ graced the cover of D magazine. Marcus, I subsequently learned, had gregation, Beth Israel, ruptured over political Zionism. The drama that urged Levi Olan to accept the Dallas pulpit. unfolded has rarely been explored in print, although it directly affected the As the guru of American Jewish history, Marcus seemed intrigued careers of three rabbis-Henry Barnston, Robert 1. Kahn, and Hyman Ju­ that so many "average" rabbis had mastered the Texas environment and dah Schachtel. The narrative focuses on Schachtel, a friend to LBJ and made a difference far beyond their pulpits. He postulated that Texas' needs George Bush, a rabbi who reflected Houston's love of the limelight. had served as a catalyst to their careers, turning these religious leaders This study closes with another postwar pulpit, that of Dallas's Rabbi into "men for all seasons." Marcus cautioned that I not treat Texas rabbis Levi Olano A heavyweight thinker, arresting speaker, and community ac­ as saints, but he acknowledged that our conversation had revealed the tivist, Olan roasted the right wing, championed African Americans, and Lone Star State as an untapped vein of rabbinical research and Jewish became a media star via his Sunday radio sermons. His career invites com­ scholarship. parison with Schachtel. Both were prominent in major metropolitan ar­ eas; both built national reputations; both delivered weekly radio sermons. Olan, however, dared make audiences and public officials uncomfortable. He never soothed, but challenged and changed attitudes. His arrival and his impact are evidence of the growth and maturity of the Texas rabbinate. Before embarking on this research, I made a pilgrimage to Cincinnati to run my ideas by the late Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, founder of the American Jewish Archives and blunt authority on Jewish American his-