Kindler of Souls: Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas 9780292794795

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KINDLER OF SOULS

Fo c u s o n A m e r i c a n H i s t o ry S e r i e s Center for American History University of Texas at Austin Edited by Don Carleton

KINDLER OF SOULS Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas

by Rabbi Henry Cohen II

university of texas press

austin

Copyright © 2007 by the university of texas press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2007 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713–7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Henry, 1927– Kindler of souls : Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas / Rabbi Henry Cohen ii. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Focus on American history series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-292-71461-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-292-71461-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Cohen, Henry, 1863–1952. 2. Rabbis—Texas—Galveston—Biography. 3. Reform Judaism—Texas—Galveston. 4. Galveston (Tex.)— Social conditions. 5. Galveston (Tex.)— Biography. i. Cohen, Henry, 1927– Poems. Selections. ii. Title. iii. Series. bm755.c6c64 2007 296.8'341092—dc22 [b] 2006017295

To the great-grandchildren of Rabbi Henry Cohen Henry and Ruth, Shelley and Lisa

CO NTENTS

ix

Acknowledgments Prologue

xi

chapter 1.

From Torah to Tennyson

1

chapter 2.

Being Jewish in Jamaica

chapter 3.

Little Jerusalem

chapter 4.

Planting Roots

chapter 5.

The Storm and Its Impact

chapter 6.

From Health to Horror

chapter 7.

“Through the Gateway of Galveston”

57

chapter 8.

“Dear Graduates”: On Being a Rabbi

67

chapter 9.

From the Kaiser to the Klan

11

19 27 39 47

79

chapter 10.

Prison Reform: The Rabbi and the Convict

chapter 11.

Family Matters and Memory: 1930–1950

chapter 12.

The Rabbi and His Times

87 97

113

Appendix: Selected Poems by Rabbi Henry Cohen Notes

129

Glossary

137

Bibliography Index

147

143

123

AC K N OW LEDGMENTS

i would first like to express my gratitude to Dr. Stanley Dreyfus, who first motivated me to write about my grandfather. I was also encouraged by Rabbis Norman Koch and Jimmy Kessler, who persisted in urging me to remember every detail about my experiences with Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas. I appreciate the research of Hollace Ava Weiner, who helped me in my efforts to discover the origin of stories that have become legendary. I could not have written this work without The Man Who Stayed in Texas, by my parents, Anne Nathan and Harry I. Cohen. I have included significant information not available to them in 1941 and I have added my memories of the last decade of the life of Rabbi Cohen. I was aided by the research on the genealogy of the Cohen family, undertaken by Kerry Cohen of Australia, great-grandson of Moses Cohen, the eldest sibling in Henry Cohen’s family. I am grateful to my first cousin once removed, Prof. Henry Frisch, his wife, Priscilla, and my wife, Edna, for joining me in examining much of the Henry Cohen Collection at the Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin. Edna also provided moral and editorial support. I am grateful to my son-in-law, Harry Phillips, for his technical expertise in the formatting of the manuscript.

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Acknowledgments

I am also most appreciative of the cooperation of Casey Greene, head of Special Collections at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, and also of the valuable assistance of Jane Chapin, who provided much-needed information from the Rosenberg Library’s newspaper index. At the University of Texas, I was aided by Allison Beck, assistant director of the cah, and by Dr. Donald Carleton, director of the cah. I am particularly grateful for the encouragement and support of Dr. Carleton during the process of writing, revising, and publishing this book. I am most appreciative of the patience and guidance of Wendy Moore, assistant editor, Mary J. LaMotte, manuscript editor, and Sue Carter, copyeditor, at the University of Texas Press. I was also encouraged to undertake this work by Dr. Gary Zola, director of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and by Kevin Proffitt, director of archives there. Some of the most relevant discoveries I found in the Stephen Wise Papers at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York and the President Taft Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Henry Cohen II rabbi emeritus Beth David Reform Congregation Gladwyne, Pennsylvania

PROLOGUE

in september 1930, Rabbi Stephen Wise, spiritual leader of New York’s Free Synagogue and president of the Jewish Institute of Religion, was asked by the Seven Arts Feature Syndicate to list “the ten foremost religious leaders in this country.” The list was published on September 22 in the New York Times. It included Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, seven other Christian clergy, and Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston, Texas. The headline read: “10 Leaders of Church Listed by Rabbi Wise . . . One Negro among Them.” (That one Jew was among them did not impress the headline writer.) In explaining his choice of Rabbi Cohen, Rabbi Wise wrote that “one man in the rabbinate, Henry Cohen, had come to have a fine religious or spiritual influence in a large section of the country” and that “Woodrow Wilson referred to him as ‘the foremost citizen of Texas.’”1 Wise went on to say that he, along with Jacob Schiff, had urged Cohen to move to New York to be Chaplain at Large to the Jewish Inmates of Public Institutions of New York, but that Cohen respectfully declined because of his sense of duty to the people of Galveston and the life of the state of Texas. Wise, arguably the foremost public speaker in the American rabbinate, concluded, “Oratory

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is so often a cheap and easy thing, life is always so difficult and stern a thing. Henry Cohen is a soul who touches and kindles souls.”2 But why? Why was Henry Cohen considered a kindler of souls? Why did President Wilson refer to him as “the foremost citizen of Texas?” Why did he become a legend? The legend was set to music by Irv Tunick, who wrote “An American Ballad,” produced on nbc’s religious program, “Frontiers of Faith,” in cooperation with the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1955. Three years after his death in 1952, Rabbi Cohen had become something of a folk hero: In all the state of Texas From Ft. Worth to San Anton’ There’s not a man who hasn’t heard Of Rabbi Henry Cohen The sick, the poor, the needy, No matter what their creed . . . His heart was always open To a fellow-man in need This book—a search for the man behind the myth—is not simply an academic exercise. As his grandson, I not only bear his name but feel—in my later years—a responsibility to contribute what I can to an understanding of the man behind the myth. What I propose to add to the biographies and articles about him are personal reminiscences, some background on the history of his times, and a recognition of how he both reflected and transcended the religious and social ideologies of his time. I grew up in Houston, but on weekends we went to Galveston, where I enjoyed being with my grandparents and listening to amazing stories about the legendary rabbi. Psychologically, it was as though I had two grandfathers named Henry Cohen. There was “Grandpa Cohen”—we never called him “Zayde,” because the only Yiddish I knew was “Bei Mir Bist du Schein” as sung by the Andrews Sisters. Grandpa Cohen enjoyed saying to me such silliness as “ellipticalasiatical pantry curious nervouscordial.” Grandpa Cohen belted out from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H M S Pinafore: “For he is an Englishman, for he himself hath said it . . .” Grandpa Cohen would

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annoy Grandma by singing British dance hall ditties considered Rrated by Victorian standards: “Go away, naughty boy . . .” Grandpa Cohen smoked cigars ’til the ashes fell and burnt holes in his black suit, further annoying Grandma. Grandpa Cohen would reminisce about the time he dressed a broom like a man and put it in the bed of a lady friend of the family who was spending the night at the rabbinage. Grandpa Cohen also made sure the family memorized moralistic or clever poems that he would tape to the wall opposite the toilet. For sixty-five years I have been unable to get out of my head: We had a little tea party this afternoon at three; ’twas very small, three guests in all just I, myself and me. Myself ate up the sandwiches and I drank all the tea. ’Twas also I who ate the pie and passed the cake to me. (The poems my grandfather taught me are lodged in my brain, even though I can’t recall the plot of last week’s movie.) Grandpa Cohen liked lyrics and, on occasion, liquor. After returning from his morning rounds, he would belt down a shot of scotch and perhaps recall how he had provided a case of scotch for the great Scottish vaudevillian, Harry Lauder, whenever he would perform in Galveston, singing “I Love a Lassie,” or, for the home crowd, “The Dixie Girls Are Good Enough for Me.” That was the Grandpa Cohen who, when I returned from my third year at the Hebrew Union College, asked almost plaintively, “What could I teach at the College?” I answered: “Maybe you could teach the students how to be rabbis.” Grandpa Cohen was a natural. By that I mean he was the same on the pulpit as off, no deep sonorous tones. Who you saw and heard was who he was. That was Grandpa: a playful, earthy, life-loving, unpretentious mensch, a very human being. Then, in my psyche alongside Grandpa the mensch was Rabbi Cohen, super-mensch. Not “Grandpa,” but Rabbi Cohen, was the almost mythic hero of many stories I loved hearing as a child. There were stories of South Africa, where Cohen quickly learned to interpret the click dialect of the Zulus. He would show on his head the scar from the wound he received when he was hit over the head by a Zulu with the butt of a gun. More impressive

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Prologue

were stories of how he would intervene with those in power on behalf of those in need. The most famous of those stories concerns the stowaway Demchuk, who was about to be sent from Galveston back to Russia, where he would surely be executed. Rabbi Cohen was not able to persuade the local port authorities in Galveston to let him stay, so he went to Washington and eventually saw President Taft. There are different versions of the story. The first written account is included in Chapter 8. All versions agree that the Rabbi did persuade the president to release Demchuk into Cohen’s custody and that Taft was amazed that the Rabbi had come all the way from Texas on behalf of a Greek Catholic. This is but one of many stories told of Rabbi Cohen that demonstrated the power of one small but mighty man to move mountains. My cousin, the Rabbi’s only other grandson, David Frisch, doubted the veracity of some of the tales. I believed with perfect faith every word. David became a physicist. I became a rabbi. My research has led me to believe that the truth lies somewhere in between David’s skepticism and my unquestioning faith. The Rabbi’s personal correspondence (including letters to and from President Taft) provides evidence of many instances when he rescued a fellow human being (whatever his/her faith) from a crisis situation. Other stories are based on oral history, told by friends and family, some of which were retold in The Man Who Stayed in Texas, by my parents, Anne Nathan and Harry I. Cohen. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle of September 18, 1949: “When a New York publishing firm asked him to write his autobiography, he refused. ‘How can a man write about his own life, without talking about himself,’ he exclaimed. ‘What would I say—I, I, I?’” A colleague has suggested that the search for “the facts” is less important than the truth of a rabbi who often would take extraordinary measures to help others. I can bear witness to his regular routine, as I—in my early teens— would tag along as he visited hospitals, bringing hope to the patients of every faith. He was often quoted as saying: “There’s no such thing as Episcopalian scarlet fever, Catholic arthritis, or Jewish mumps.” I recall his ascending the stairs of the Orphan’s Home carrying large cartons and shouting, “Ice cream!” I would spend hours sitting on the front porch of his home at 1920 Broadway as visitors would

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xv

arrive, some with problems, others with the desire simply to meet “Doctor Cohen,” as he came to be called. But after they left, he would open the Galveston Tribune and read with me his favorite comics: Mutt and Jeff and the Katzenjammer Kids. Grandpa Cohen was back. Of course, I did hear the stories of how he blended the role of rabbi and social worker in the Galveston Movement, welcoming thousands of immigrants and then helping them find work throughout the Southwest and Midwest. Surely the most significant influence he had on a state level was as the leader of successful efforts to reform the Texas prison system. Of course, there were the stories of how he and his friend Father Kirwin kept the Klan out of Galveston. In 1963, after ten years in the rabbinate, I contributed “Portrait of a Rabbi” to Rabbi Stanley Dreyfus’ book of tribute, Henry Cohen: Messenger of the Lord. In 1986, I went through the Henry Cohen Papers at the University of Texas, which had, at his insistence, been kept from public viewing for twenty-five years after his death. It was around the millennium—I had been a “rabbi emeritus” for seven years—that Rabbi Dreyfus urged me to add what I could to an understanding of my grandfather. One of my grandfather’s successors in Galveston and my Liturgy Professor at the Hebrew Union College, Dreyfus was upset that most of today’s rabbis—and therefore most American Jews—know little or nothing about Henry Cohen of Texas. So I wrote “A Forgotten Tzaddik,” published in the Winter 2006 issue of the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ CCAR Journal (portions of this book were based on the article). The “tzaddik” (righteous one) in the history of Jewish mysticism was the charismatic leader of a community of disciples who believed they could come closer to God by observing their tzaddik and learning from his example. Grandpa Cohen was something like a tzaddik for American Reform Jews during the first half of the twentieth century. He was something more: a mentor for several generations of Reform rabbis. As both pastor and social activist, he became the model for many of his younger colleagues. Henry Cohen should not be forgotten. His place in the history of American Judaism and the state of Texas should be studied. I have been particularly interested in considering how he both reflected and

xvi

Prologue

transcended his times. This volume is my response to Mrs. Willy Loman’s plea in The Death of a Salesman—“Attention must be paid.” We shall first return to his early years in London, which reveal how he began his vocation as “a soul that touches and kindles souls.” Then we shall view his life and career from Jamaica to Mississippi to Galveston, where he became “the man who stayed in Texas.”

KINDLER OF SOULS

CH A P T ER 1

From Torah to Tennyson

H

enry Cohen grew up as a British Jew to the sounds of hazanut (cantorial chants) and the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan. He knew the history of British Jewry. Expelled from England in 1290, after economic crisis led to using them as scapegoats and confiscating their property, Jews were not allowed to return until an embryonic capitalism needed their talents. The first to return were Sephardim, who had been forced out of Spain and found refuge in Holland and Italy. Within fifty years they were followed by a larger number of Ashkenazim (Jews from Central and Eastern Europe). The Sephardim still considered themselves the Jewish elite, and when Henry was born, April 7, 1863, the most prominent Jew in Britain was the Sephardic businessman and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore. The Ashkenazic community was, from 1844 to 1890, led by Nathan Adler, chief rabbi of the Great Synagogue, who insisted on the preservation of traditional Judaism as interpreted by the halakhic (Jewish legal) authorities of Europe and himself. Not that all or even most British Jews lived according to Jewish law. While Adler exercised control over congregations and their rituals, many individual Jews exercised their freedom to choose whatever traditions they found meaningful. Some historians suggest that this assertion of

2

Chapter 1

autonomy was a reflection of the prevailing capitalist economy, which required that entrepreneurs and consumers be free to make their own decisions. The gap between the official religion and the independence of congregants may also reflect the pattern of the Anglican church, many of whose members were neither “orthodox” believers nor attenders, even though the clerical leadership held to traditional creed and practice. Given such autonomy, one may wonder why a Reform Jewish movement did not flourish on British soil, as it had in Germany. Historian Todd Endelman points out that unlike the Jews on the Continent, who had to relinquish much of their ethnic or national Jewish identity in order to gain their civil rights, for British Jews emancipation was unconditional. They did not feel the pressure to become “English citizens of Mosaic persuasion.”1 Rather, to use Reconstructionist terms, they could live simultaneously in both the British and Jewish civilizations. (For an explanation of the Reconstructionist movement within Judaism, see Glossary.) Another reason why Reform Judaism began in Germany rather than England may have been that in Germany civil rights were initially granted to only a minority of urban German Jews. The children of these Jews received advanced education and became part of the modern culture, whereas most German Jews remained in smaller communities which were barely touched by modern trends, and so they retained medieval beliefs and practices. Given two such different patterns of Jewish life within Germany, Reform Judaism emerged, in part, to enable emancipated Jews to practice a Judaism not bound by Jewish law while preventing them from being assimilated into the dominant Christian community. In contrast, in England the entire Jewish community was granted basic civil rights. It is also true that for British Jewry, emancipation came about gradually between 1830 and 1870. The first Jew to be admitted to Parliament, Lionel Rothschild, was elected in 1858. Generally, however, since very few Jews aspired to be part of the British ruling class, they were quite content with the social and economic opportunities open to them. The Board of Deputies was the central body for British Jewry. Led by Sir Moses Montefiore, it upheld official Orthodoxy by refusing to certify David Wolf Martin, minister of the breakaway reform-minded

From Torah to Tennyson

3

West London synagogue, as qualified to officiate at Jewish marriages, claiming his congregation was not a synagogue. It has been estimated that before 1880, 61 percent of the 60,000 British Jews were middle class; 24 percent were poor; and 15 percent were wealthy, having been successful as merchant bankers or financiers.2 The leaders of British Jewry did consider it important to “take care of their own.” So, in 1859, Lionel Cohen created the Board of Guardians to coordinate relief efforts for the urban poor. The acculturated middle class considered poverty to be disreputable and feared that the Jewish poor could pose a threat to their social achievements. After 1880, the task of caring for one’s own became much more formidable, with the mass migration of Jews from Eastern Europe increasing the number of British Jewry to 300,000 by 1914. Henry Cohen’s parents, David and Josephine, had come to London in the 1850’s as part of an earlier trickle of immigrants from Russo-Poland, probably from the village of Rava. David, a tinsmith by trade, found employment as a gas meter manufacturer. On the side he fashioned Jewish ceremonial objects for sale. He held religious services in the back of his gray stone house on Lancaster Road. Josephine (née Tikoczinka) would give birth to eight children: in Russo-Poland, Moses (1851), and then in England, Rosetta (1853), Mark (1855), Amelia (1858), Rebecca (1859), Henry (1863), Sarah (1865), and Hannah (1867).3 Of all Henry’s siblings, he was closest to Mark. Hannah migrated to South Africa, writing regularly to Henry, even after he settled in Galveston. (I know, because I collected the stamps on her letters.) The strength of character of David and Josephine was captured in two remarkable portraits by Philip Snowden, a member of the British Royal Academy. It was highly unusual for an artist of such status and talent to portray members of the lower middle class. But Snowden had such enormous regard for David and Josephine that he painted the portraits as a gift.4 There being no public school system in Britain, education was organized along sectarian lines. When Henry was nine, he began attending Jews’ Hospital (also called N’veh Tzedek, or Habitation of Righteousness), a boarding school in West Norwood. Jews’ Hospital, which had been converted from an old-age home and was subsidized by wealthy Ashkenazim, trained boys and girls up to the age of thirteen for trades and domestic service. Hebrew was taught two hours

4

Chapter 1

each day. Enrollment was limited to children of the “respectable poor” who had lived in England for at least ten years and were connected with one of the city’s synagogues.5 Henry was an outstanding student with a talent for languages. He was awarded the Evalina Rothschild prize of £. Once, he and his classmates had a “battle of potatoes” with some village children who taunted them. The children would say, “I had a bit of pork, and I stuck it on a fork, and I gave it to a Jew-boy Jew.” Henry and his friends would respond: “I had a bit of beef, and I stuck it on a leaf, and I gave it to a Christian thief.”6 Among Henry’s classmates at Jews’ Hospital was Israel Zangwill, who would become a novelist and playwright and who would, along with Henry Cohen, play a key role in the immigration of Jews through Galveston (see Chapter 7.) Henry and Israel became friends. My grandfather told me that he mentioned to Zangwill that he was moved by a piyyut (liturgical poem), “Va-ye-esayu.” Years later Zangwill composed a free translation in the form of a hymn, “All the World Shall Come to Serve Thee,” sung in American Reform congregations for decades. Years later Henry would send to Zangwill an Aztec head that he had found in Mexico and that bore a striking resemblance to his boyhood friend. When Henry left Jews’ Hospital at fifteen, he was planning to attend the University of London. However—as the story has been told—after feeling the calluses on his father’s hand, Henry became determined not to cost his father another shilling. So, he secured a job with the Board of Guardians and attended Jews’ College at night. Jews’ College had been established in 1855 “for the purpose of affording a liberal and useful Hebrew and English education to the sons of respectable parents and training of ministers, readers and teachers.”7 Henry learned to translate the prayer book and the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and to chant from the Torah. He studied Hebrew grammar, Jewish history, and religion. Dr. Michael Friedlander, the principal, was a German Jew who had specialized in Oriental and Classical Languages. The kind of minister the College hoped to produce was described in the London Jewish Chronicle: “men of thorough English feelings and views, as conversant with the classics of their own language as with those of the sacred tongue, as acquainted with modern science as versed in ancient lore; . . . whose

From Torah to Tennyson

5

ardour and enthusiasm will break forth and rouse and kindle with Shakespearean vigor and Miltonian sweetness.”8 During weekdays Henry worked for the Board of Guardians, rushing with boundless energy from one client to another, providing funds for meals or clothes, to enable the poorest of families to subsist and to hope that their children would have more opportunities. Among his duties was the collection of funds from the Rothschild firm which supported the philanthropy. There, as an elderly Henry Cohen told the story, he would occasionally see the former prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who was so impressed that such a small lad could do so much that he affectionately called him “little Henry.” Somehow “little Henry,” who years later would preach about the virtue of energy and efficiency, found the time to perform a clairvoyance act with his brother, Mark. With his exceptional memory, Henry developed a coded language; he would don a blindfold while Mark held something that belonged to a member of the audience. The question “Can you tell me what I am holding?” might indicate a gentleman’s watch. “What have we here?” might be the code for a lady’s handbag. The high point of his show business career was the charity event at which he spotted in the audience—in the language of W. S. Gilbert—the “ultra-poetical super-aesthetical” Oscar Wilde. After three years in Jews’ College, at eighteen, Henry gave in to Mark’s plea that he should take a break from his studies and, before becoming a clergyman, experience a totally different kind of world in South Africa. Henry received a letter dated May 16, 1881, from Sydney Samuel of the Board of Guardians, testifying to the high quality of his work with the Board and presenting him with a gift of £65.5, collected from members of the Board (including Sir Nathaniel Rothschild) to help him on his way. One week later Henry received another letter, this from Lionel Cohen, president of the Board, wishing him well: I was requested, in the name of the Board, to convey to you the fact . . . that you have during the period of your service here, gained the full confidence of your employer, and carried out your work to their entire satisfaction. The Board desires me to express its hope that you may be fortunate in the new life on which you are embarking, and that in the future as in the past,

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Chapter 1

you may by industry, zeal, and attention find your reward in the confidence you inspire. Wishing you a safe and pleasant voyage, Believe me . . .9 Henry and Mark left Southampton in June 1881. The voyage was safe if not entirely pleasant. In “Three Years in Africa,” Henry wrote of his experience on board the good ship Arab as it sailed past the Madeira Islands on the way to South Africa. Henry described “some beautiful views of English scenery” as the ship sailed by the Isle of Wight. The voyage was marred by his bout with seasickness, during which “the sight of food made me think of the hereafter.” Capetown was a cacophony of diverse languages and dress. He noted that the traffic of slaves began in 1620 with the discovery of America and remarked that “the early navigators practiced a great deal of barbarity toward the natives.” Henry found the diamond industry to be in full swing in Kimberly. There he began learning the click dialect of the “Negro tribes.”10 While Mark worked in Capetown as a bookkeeper, Henry explored the countryside and went down into the mines in Kimberly. However, fearing he would lose his ability to read the sources of Jewish law and lore in the original Hebrew and Aramaic, Henry wanted to find someone with whom to study Talmud. He discovered such a companion in Moses Davis, owner of a dry goods store in Molteno. Davis not only hired Henry but also found time to study with him. It was while working in the store that Henry became so familiar with the click dialects of the Zulus that he decided to move to Robertson, a garrison town where he worked part time as an interpreter. He learned to shoot a rifle at target practice with the soldiers. His paycheck he sent home to his parents. To support himself he found another part-time job at Steinman’s general store. One hot day in February while the soldiers were out of town on maneuvers, a band of Zulus attacked the town. Henry found himself with only sixteen men, rifle in hand, poised to repulse the natives. The next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness and feeling a searing pain on the top of his head. Mr. Steinman explained that a Zulu had seized his gun and cracked him on the head with it. There had not been much of a skirmish because the men were able to generate enough fire power to hold off the natives until the troops

From Torah to Tennyson

7

returned. Henry’s chief concern was: “Did I shoot anyone?” Mr. Steinman assured him that he had not. The evidence for the incident, other than Henry’s recollection, was a visible scar on the top of his head, a scar which for years he would show to visitors as he recounted the tale. A poignant postscript: The War Office had listed Henry among the dead, and his parents sat shivah for him. When the error was corrected, Henry’s mother gave an extra measure of charity to the poor. Returning to England in June 1883, Henry resumed his studies at Jews’ College, now more intent than ever to graduate as a Jewish “minister.” Before 1896, there was no way in England to receive semichah, ordination as a rabbi authorized to interpret Jewish law.11 A new kind of religious leader emerged: “a pastoral preaching Jewish clergyman, giving a unique cast to Anglo-Judaism . . . The community needed readers who would preach regularly in English, visit the sick and the poor, and, more generally reflect the cultural level of the community.” The Jewish Chronicle urged that these ministers should, above all, be able “to expound the principles of Judaism from the pulpit in choice and dearest language.”12 Strict traditionalists were critical of these new roles for Jewish clergy. One remarked that he “could not find any John Bullism in Judaism.” According to Endelman, the lack of advanced training in halakhah was the direct consequence of Rabbi Adler wanting to be one of the few authorized interpreters of Jewish law in all of Britain. Adler sent his own son, Herman, to Prague to pursue rabbinic studies at the yeshiva of Solomon Rapoport, where he received semichah. All in the family!13 Henry graduated from Jews’ College in 1884. While not an expert in Jewish law, Henry Cohen emerged from the College steeped in the knowledge of Jewish tradition, history, and literature, with a particular interest in the Aggadic portions of rabbinic literature, that is, nonlegal passages consisting of sayings, stories, and commentaries that had a moral or spiritual message. (He would later collect some of the most meaningful in his Talmudic Sayings, published by Bloch in 1894.) He was also qualified to be a shochet (ritual slaughterer) and a mohel (to perform Brit Milahs), and to fulfill the function of reader, hazan (cantor), preacher, and pastor. It was also the intention of the founders of Jews’ College that its graduates be quite at home in the culture of Victorian England.

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Chapter 1

Henry had a particular love for all the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Among his favorites was Patience, which satirized the super-aesthetic cult that revolved around Oscar Wilde. He enjoyed the satirical critique of certain preachers and philosophers: You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases Of your complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind. And everyone will say, as you walk your mystic way If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be. From his early years as a preacher, Cohen did not try to impress with fancy phrases or obscure oratory. He spoke directly and to the point, whether he was comforting the distressed or urging the apathetic to action. Another favorite was Rudyard Kipling. One would hope that Cohen was not swept up in the rhetoric that at times rationalized British imperialism. I remember hearing him recite “Gunga Din,” but I also remember “Recessional”: “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, Lest we forget.” Those who advocate a twentyfirst-century version of “the White Man’s Burden” could use a bit of Kipling’s humility. (The “Burden” was the duty of the British to teach the poor colored people of Asia and Africa the values and ways of Western civilization. Sound familiar?) But it was Alfred, Lord Tennyson who provided the poetic antidote to dreams of empire. Into his eighth decade, Henry Cohen carried in his heart and often in his coat pocket the dream of “Locksley Hall”: For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be . . . Til the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

From Torah to Tennyson

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Whether from the prophesies of Isaiah or the fantasies of Tennyson, Henry Cohen emerged from his British and Jewish civilizations an optimist and idealist, ever able to salvage in the saddest of times an element of hope grounded in faith in both God and humanity, a faith that would be challenged by personal tragedy and the moral failures of the twentieth century.

Henry Cohen at twenty-one, in Jamaica.

CH A P T ER 2

Being Jewish in Jamaica

I

n the summer of 1988, in Kingston, Jamaica, I was deeply moved as I stood before the teva (Sephardic term for prayer platform) from which my grandfather, more than a century earlier, had led services for the Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites. He had been sent to Jamaica in 1884, a twenty-one-year-old minister newly graduated from Jews’ College. Two years before his arrival a mighty fire had swept through Kingston, destroying both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic synagogues. The two congregations tried to put aside differences and merge.1 After all, they were both “orthodox,” accepting the belief that God had revealed both the Written Law (the five books of Moses) and the Oral Law (interpretations rendered by traditional rabbis over the centuries). They differed “merely” in their pronunciation of Hebrew, the melodies of their prayers, the layout of the synagogue interior, and other minor matters. However, the zealots from each community were unhappy with the merger, and so formed their own synagogues. The attempt to unify two congregations thus yielded three. Henry Cohen was sent to the British colony, in the words of Hillel, “to be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving humanity and drawing them near to the Torah.”2 A photograph from the year in Kingston shows Cohen as a slim but

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striking figure in a black robe with a white ascot and a top hat above impassive eyes and an aquiline nose. In 1885, he officiated at the laying of the cornerstone for the new structure of the Amalgamated Congregation, rebuilt in the same style as the original: a triangular arch high over three Greek columns. In 1907, an earthquake destroyed the building, but again, it was rebuilt. Only the name had changed. It was now Shaare Shalom (Gates of Peace), popularly known as the Duke Street Synagogue. Some eighty years later a powerful hurricane struck the island. Pleas went out to American rabbis for funds to help rebuild the structure. When I sent in my modest contribution, I mentioned that my grandfather had laid the cornerstone of the original building. Ernest Henriques de Souza, lay leader and repository of Jamaican Jewish history, responded immediately: “Come on down,” and my wife and I visited Kingston in the summer of 1988. I was immediately struck by the fact that this synagogue, unlike any other I had seen, had two ner tamids, eternal lights, which should always shine as a reminder that God’s presence, the Torah, and the Jewish people will always be in the world. But why two? Ernest explained: “One for the Ashkenazim; one for the Sephardim.” Those lights jogged my memory, and I recalled my grandfather’s reminiscences about the continued bitterness between the two communities despite their amalgamation, bitterness that made his life difficult and was one factor that led to his leaving after only one year. But Jamaican Jewry should not be characterized by the tension between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim. That particular conflict was far from unique. What is special about the Jews of Jamaica is their proud history, of which Henry Cohen must have been aware. Ernest de Souza claimed that the very first Jews in the New World landed in Jamaica with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1494. They were Marranos, Jews who had nominally converted to Christianity but practiced Judaism secretly and, fearing discovery, had fled the Spanish Inquisition. These Marranos called themselves Portuguese to conceal their Jewish identity. Jews did manage to find an “oasis of toleration” in the Dutch colony of Recife, a seaport in Brazil. However, in 1654, the Portuguese captured the colony and brought with them the Inquisition. The Recife Jews fled, one boatload going to New Amsterdam (later New York City). These were the

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first Jews in the thirteen colonies. Many more went to Jamaica, ruled by Spain. The very next year, 1655, the British captured Kingston from Spain. The pilot who helped guide the British attack was a Marrano, Capt. Campoe Sabbatha, and another pilot, named Acosta, was the chief negotiator in the Spanish surrender. The British troops were warmly welcomed by the Marranos, who, no longer having to disguise their Jewish identity, joined with the “Portuguese” Jews already there to form a proud, openly practicing Jewish community.3 During the eighteenth century, there were as many Jews in Jamaica as in all the thirteen colonies plus Canada. In 1787, the first Ashkenazic synagogue was founded in Jamaica by German and English Jews. These Jews, some of whom developed the sugar and vanilla industries, prospered. It was Jews who produced the famous Myers’s Jamaican rum. In the 1830’s, the British abolished slavery. Because those Blacks who could now vote favored the Jews over the British ruling class, eighteen of the forty-seven seats in the legislature were held by Jews. The Blacks and Jews together challenged the White Anglican plutocracy. (This was perhaps the very first BlackJewish coalition.) In 1884, an emissary from the Amalgamated Congregation journeyed from Jamaica to London to find a religious leader for the newly established synagogue. Lionel Cohen, president of the Board of Guardians, introduced him to the young Henry Cohen, who had just graduated from Jews’ College. There are many possible reasons why Henry was willing and eager to meet the challenge: He had heard of the proud history of Jamaican Jewry; he was qualified to lead both Ashkenazim and Sephardim in prayer; he welcomed the opportunity to put some distance between himself and the authoritarian Dr. Adler; and his African adventure had not satisfied his desire to travel to the far corners of the empire. In his papers, Henry preserved the “memorandum of agreement” between himself and officers of the Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites. It stipulated that the congregation was obligated to provide Mr. Cohen with “a suitable outfit” and to pay for his passage on the Royal Mail Steamer on the condition that Mr. Cohen would “perform the duties of Assistant Reader (either in the Portuguese or German minhag [custom],” would “act as Mohel to the Congregation, as well as (should emergency arise) Shochet, also as Hebrew teacher to

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the Jews’ Free School if required, on terms and conditions to be approved of by the Vestry of the forementioned Synagogue . . . at a salary of one hundred pounds sterling per annum . . . commencing the first day of August, 1884.”4 How to meet the needs of both Sephardim and Ashkenazim? He opted to alternate between the two traditions: On one Shabbat, he would use the Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation and chant Sephardic melodies. On the next Shabbat, he would shift to Ashkenazic sounds and songs. To no avail. During the service itself, some would hiss or find other ways to harass the young minister, who was doing his best to find a compromise. Some Sephardic Jews considered themselves superior to the Ashkenazim, who were of a lower social and economic status. This Sephardic elitism even affected Henry’s personal life. As he told my parents, he was attracted to a rather shy young woman of Sephardic parentage. As they became better acquainted, Henry mentioned that his parents had migrated to London from Eastern Europe. Her words were still lodged in his brain half a century later: “The man I marry must forget he ever had any family outside of my own.” Thus ended a budding romance. Henry also remembered his landlady telling him, “If I had one drop of Ashkenazic blood in me, I would kill myself.”5 Still, Henry aimed to please. When Hyam Barrow, president of the congregation, proudly offered him a glass of the finest aged rum on the island, Henry downed it with one gulp. As he retold the story, he found the nearest couch, lay down, and slept for at least twentyfour hours. After one year in Jamaica, Henry decided that he had his fill of congregational conflict, Sephardic snobbery, and Jamaican rum. He intended to return to London to find a more simpatico synagogue. Still, Henry Cohen was highly regarded by the leaders of the congregation, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic. A letter signed by Altamont de Cordova and listing twenty-four contributors stated, At the request of several members of the Congregation of Amalgamated Israelites . . . I have much pleasure in presenting you with a purse the value of which you will please not estimate by its intrinsic worth but by the standard of regard and esteem which have induced them to proffer it. I have also to convey to

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you their earnest expressions of good-will, and the prayer that your future career will be one of prosperity, the reward of that religious zeal and charity which have marked your short sojourn amongst us.6 The year Henry Cohen left Jamaica, 1885, was the same year that a gathering of fifteen Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh to formulate what came to be regarded as the fundamental principles of Classical Reform Judaism. As has been noted, the Reform movement began in Germany in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Its basic premise—that the Written and Oral Law was not revealed by God and therefore did not rest on divine authority—presented a challenge to the reformers: What are the core beliefs of Reform Judaism, and how does one determine which traditions are required? The rabbis at Pittsburgh maintained that ethical monotheism is the essence of Judaism, that the Bible, while “a potent instrument of religious and moral instruction,” also reflects “primitive ideas of its own age,” and that we should consider binding “only the moral laws and only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives.” Israel was defined as strictly a religious community, not a nation. The Platform held that Judaism is a “progressive religion” that strives to be “in accord with the postulates of reason,” and so while asserting that the soul is immortal, it denies “the belief in bodily resurrection.” These ideas were imported from the German Reform movement. However, these American reformers emphasized more than did most German reformers the theme of social justice: “We deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.”7 This pursuit of social justice, the reformers believed, would lead to a messianic age brought about not by a personal messiah but by human beings of many faiths striving together for a peaceful world. Jews should set an example through their lives and so be a light to the nations. The Platform was not proclaimed until November 1885, but its ideas had been widely promulgated by Reform rabbis in America, from David Einhorn in Baltimore to Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati, since mid-century. Wise, the architect of Reform Judaism in America,

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had at first tried to unite all American Jews under one American Judaism, which he believed would inevitably become “reform.” The dream of a united American Judaism, however, was not to be realized. At a banquet sponsored by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1883, the more traditional rabbis stormed out of the dining hall after having been served, of all things, shrimp, leaving what history has labeled “the trefah banquet.” But the main reason that the dream did not become reality was the migration from 1880 to 1914 of about 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe who were mostly either Orthodox or secularists, some of whom were anti-religious socialists. Neither the Jews who were Orthodox nor those who were secularists would be likely to join a Reform congregation. There were, however, rabbis who could not accept Reform’s rejection of the authority of Jewish law, nor could they accept the Orthodox belief that the entire Torah was revealed by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. As early as 1860, led by Marcus Jastrow, these rabbis organized the Historical School of Judaism; this evolved into the Conservative movement and was very appealing to many of the immigrants from Eastern Europe (see Glossary). One wonders how young Henry Cohen reacted to these competing trends within Judaism. He had just emerged from the frustrating experience of trying to create unity within an Orthodox congregation. It must have seemed to him that if two Orthodox groups, the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, could not get along under one roof, how could such a broad spectrum of Jews—Reform, Conservative, Orthodox—be united under the rubric of American Judaism? Perhaps, then, one would have to accept the need for religious diversity within Judaism throughout the world. It is likely that the young man would have been receptive to the idea of religious diversity; it has been suggested that even in London, little Henry was inclined to be lenient in the observance of Jewish tradition.8 How else could he have traveled with Mark to South Africa, where the dietary laws would be almost impossible to follow? Still, he was returning to London and a Jewish religious establishment which would surely be sending him to an Orthodox congregation. But while he was in New York, waiting for passage across the Atlantic, a Reverend Henry Jacobs met him, spoke with him, and suggested that he might be more compatible with a congregation in Woodville, Mississippi, that

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was—by a fortunate coincidence—looking for a rabbi. For American Jews, even though a graduate of Jews’ College was not authorized to rule on issues of Jewish law, such a graduate, trained to be a minister, pastor, preacher, and teacher, was considered to be a rabbi, though he was often referred to as “Reverend Mr.” At the age of twenty-two, Henry Cohen made one of the most crucial decisions of his life. He went South.

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n its centennial edition of 1924, the Woodville Republican reported: “No minister who ever served a church in Woodville was more popular than was Rabbi Henry Cohen.”1 I would offer two explanations: First, Henry Cohen was a “people person.” Throughout his life, he not only cared about people but had a knack for making them feel worthwhile. One of his favorite ways of evoking a smile was to ask a person his or her name and then to explain its derivation: “Godfrey—that’s Teutonic. It means ‘God’s grace.’ Is your family English or German?” This was a sure way to one’s ego. Second, he built upon Woodville’s Christians’ fond feelings for their Jews. Dean of American Jewish historians Jacob Marcus offers this explanation: “The welcome given [in Mississippi] to the immigrant Jews from Germany was enthusiastic for a very clear reason: Jews represented a numerically and politically powerless substitute for the independent middle class feared by plantation owners as a potential political rival for economic and political power.”2 Also, the Jewish immigrant’s sense of civic responsibility and social consciousness was similar to that of the Southern elite. The Jews were grateful for “the religious and economic benefits they derived from the system in which they shared.” The Wilkinson County’s museum director, David Abner Smith, reported that when Henry Cohen arrived in

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Woodville, it was more acceptable for Protestants to socialize with or marry Jews than Catholics. Among the reasons: most Jews were from France or Germany, closer culturally than Catholic immigrants from Italy. Woodville, founded in 1809, was still a small town of 1,200 souls. It became prosperous after the railroad came through in 1831, providing easy access for plantation owners to send their cotton to market. The Jewish cemetery was established in 1848, when two peddlers, Jacob Schwarz and Joseph Cohen, paid $50 for a small plot so they could bury a fellow peddler. Woodville became a cotton marketing center and so attracted Jewish merchants and their families. The first religious services were held in 1850, and Congregation Beth Israel (House of Israel) built its synagogue in 1878. Despite the small number of Jews (there were eighteen families in the congregation when Cohen left in 1888), Woodville was called “little Jerusalem,” a testimony to the larger community’s warm welcome to its new Jewish citizens.3 When Henry Cohen arrived in Woodville in 1885, he was dismayed to find that Saturday (i.e., the Sabbath) was market day, when farmers would come into town to sell their crops and buy what they needed from the town’s merchants. Although Cohen knew that he was serving a Reform congregation whose members were not shomrei Shabbat (keepers of the Sabbath according to Jewish law), he could not shed his Orthodox upbringing overnight. So he proposed what seemed to him a reasonable compromise: the Jewish merchants would not open their stores until Shabbat morning services had ended. The Jewish merchants were understandably upset: who was this newcomer to interfere with the businesses of the men who paid his salary? But there must have been something about Henry Cohen—his sincerity, his integrity—that commanded their respect. They agreed to his conditions. Fortunately, Rabbi Cohen was not a long-winded preacher, and services were over by eleven. Because so many of Woodville’s merchants were Jews, the farmers delayed their arrival into Woodville on Saturday. So, the Christian businessmen decided that they, too, would close on Saturday morning, until the Jewish services had ended. More than a few of these good Christians attended Sabbath services, and the Rabbi became known as one of the finest speakers in the region, despite a slight stut-

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ter.4 (After all, Moses was a stutterer, “slow of speech and slow of tongue”; Exodus 4:10.) Rabbi Cohen wrote every word of his early sermons with a clear, firm hand in composition books. Whether he was preaching about faith in God or the evil of slander, he would ultimately base his conviction on reason. (“It is only reasonable to believe” was one of his more frequent phrases.) His sermon on immortality is reminiscent of the eighteenth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn’s widely read Phaedon, in which Mendelssohn appealed to reason to affirm the immortality of the soul. Cohen preached: “Many forget that there is a hereafter. The body descends to conception. The spirit returns to its Author to answer for deeds done in the flesh . . . Is it reasonable to believe that the man who has been truthful and righteous will meet the same end as the wicked? A just and omnipotent God will provide reward and punishment.”5 This faith in the hereafter remained with Henry Cohen throughout his life, and almost half a century later gave him strength to bear the untimely loss of his daughter, Ruth, to cancer. Rabbi Cohen was invited to speak in other Mississippi towns, from Natchez to Vicksburg. After one lecture, a local newspaper noted that “he handled his subject—‘Women’—in his usual masterly manner, and was especially pleasing to the female element.”6 There is no manuscript of that particular speech, but there is a handwritten speech he gave in 1885 on the issue of women’s suffrage. He was against it.7 Again, he based his argument on what he considered reason: women do not have minds that understand business and money matters and so could not understand the economic issues before the voters. Also, men would never vote for candidates who would endanger their wives or daughters. Henry Cohen was twenty-three. Just when he changed his views is not known. What I do know is that throughout his married life, it was his wife, Mollie, who had a head for business and handled the family finances. Approximately three decades later, Rabbi Cohen was one of seven charter members of the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association.8 In 1922, Rabbi Cohen “chaired a committee of the Central Conference of American [Reform] Rabbis which passed a resolution by a 55–11 vote, recommending the ordination of women rabbis . . . it would be another fifty years before the first woman rabbi was ordained.”9

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What came to be a distinguishing aspect of Cohen’s rabbinate began in Woodville. It was there in southern Mississippi that he became the Jewish community’s emissary to its Christian neighbors. He taught foreign languages (primarily French) two hours each day in a “Female Seminary.” The Rabbi was so admired by the citizens of Woodville that on Rosh Hashanah in 1887 the American Israelite reported: “The Rev. Cohen far eclipsed all his former efforts . . . There were a great many of the best Gentile citizens present.” The article lists the names of doctors, attorneys, an army captain, and a Christian minister and his family.10 In the spring of 1888, Rabbi Cohen was invited to speak before B’nai Israel, the Jewish congregation in Galveston, Texas, which was looking for a rabbi. The president of Woodville’s Beth Israel wrote to Leo Levi, president of B’nai Israel, that although Cohen’s term of service would not expire until September, the congregation would immediately release him to aid and promote his advancement . . . I do not think Mr. Cohen has a single enemy in the entire community. To the contrary he is universally beloved and respected in both Jewish and Christian circles . . . He is zealous and faithful in the discharge of his duties, extremely earnest and sincere in his religious views, and thoroughly conscientious in his convictions in every respect, as a man, minister and as a scholar. He is esteemed and thought highly of, and it is with sincere regret and profound sorrow that the people of this place view the probability of his leaving us, but as you may no doubt be aware, the Congregation having but 18 members, finds it hard work to maintain itself and it is therefore out of our power to increase our own expenses and pay Mr. Cohen anything commensurate to his value. Signed: Isaac T. Hart, President11 While Henry Cohen was attracted by the prospect of moving to what was a thriving city of 22,000 with about 1,000 Jews and a synagogue of 175 families, he found it emotionally difficult to say goodbye to the community that had so warmly embraced him. A portion of his farewell sermon indicates the depth of his feelings:

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As I stand here tonight to address you for the last time, a strange and indescribable feeling overwhelms me . . . when I gaze into the mysterious future with all its uncertainties a faint cold fear runs through my veins that almost freezes up the heart of life. My memory conjures up most pleasant recollections of the past three years and a deep sense of gratitude swells my heart. The imagination conceives the sad picture of separation from very dear friends. He spoke of the satisfaction he received from teaching Judaism, and uniting couples in marriage; but he could not resist a parting shot: Should I tell you how my heart sank from disappointment, when I preached or read the service to empty pews who were my listeners, when I prayed for Sabbath rest and my members were absent . . . oblivious of their sacred obligations . . . No, I will not recall tonight those disappointments . . . I might seem unintentionally ungrateful for the unwavering confidence you have placed in me, for the many honors you have conferred upon me . . . and for the wishes you have expressed for my future welfare. Then he indicated how Woodville had affected him: I came here . . . young and inexperienced . . . I found out that the broad liberalism of America had changed even the Religious world, and while I always kept [within] the bounds of Judaism, I was perfectly willing to enter into the spirit of the times, providing my new found knowledge did not clash against the portals of principle . . . I always tried to do my duty; sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed, sometimes I was right and sometimes I erred . . . but I confidently carry with me the hope that you will never cease to view [my errors] with indulgence and consign them to oblivion . . . I have been guided by lofty aspirations and I trust that my efforts have not been altogether fruitless . . . As long as I live I shall look back with pleasure upon my career in your midst . . . I must take leave not only in my official

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capacity . . . but a friend from many dear friends . . . “Fare thee well and if forever, Still forever fare thee well.”12 After moving to Galveston in 1888, Rabbi Cohen stayed in touch with his Woodville friends. He even wrote a poetic version of the Lord’s Prayer, which, he several times explained to me, reflected the kaddish (said by mourners and also to divide portions of the service) as well as other early rabbinic sentiments regarding gratitude for the bread that God brings forth from the earth and God’s forgiveness. Compare the opening lines of the kaddish with those of the Lord’s Prayer: “May the great name [of God] be magnified and hallowed in this world . . . and may His kingdom come . . .” So when Rabbi Cohen’s poem, “A Christian Call,” was published November 8, 1899, in the Woodville Courier, surely he considered it to be a prayer not only consistent with but also based upon the Judaism of the first century ce: Our Father, who is high to heaven Let praise unto Thy name be given, In majesty Thy kingdom come, Forevermore Thy will be done Upon the earth from pole to pole As though in Heaven, by ev’ry soul: Give us this day our daily bread, With blessings from the fountain head: Forgive our sins, as we forgive The sins of those with whom we live: From all temptation let us turn, The paths of righteousness to learn: And from corruption set us free, That all our thoughts might rise to Thee: Dominion, praise and glory thine, Exalted by thy power divine!13 In 1895, Beth Israel’s synagogue was destroyed by fire. A new temple was dedicated in July of the same year. In the 1904 “Exposition Edition” of the Woodville Republican, fifty-six civic and business leaders were profiled. Of these, at least twelve were Jewish. Soon, howev-

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er, there was a Jewish exodus from the rural South; in part, this was due to structural changes in agriculture and the effect of the boll weevil. In 1995, a museum in Woodville displayed an exhibit with the following title: “Jewish Life in Wilkinson County, 1820–1920: Views of a Vanished Community.” The Woodville community, so welcoming toward Rabbi Cohen when he first arrived in 1885, did not forget him. Many years later, in 1952, the son of a Woodville family, not Jewish, stopped by our home in Houston, where Rabbi Cohen was then living. He had never met the Rabbi but had heard much about his work on behalf of Christians and Jews in Mississippi before the turn of the century. The kind words of the stranger who recalled another world were the final tribute paid to Henry Cohen before his death in 1952.

The Rabbi’s children, Harry and Ruth, at the seashore.

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hen, in the spring of 1888, Henry Cohen first spoke to the B’nai Israel congregation in Galveston, he still had a slight stutter. Some congregants objected to having a rabbi with such an impediment. The president of the congregation, Leo Levi, was more impressed by what the rabbi had to say than how he said it. Also, Rabbi Cohen’s reputation as teacher, preacher, and pastor, well loved by Jew and Gentile alike, preceded him. Mr. Levi silenced the critics by saying, “He’ll get over it, and if he doesn’t, we’ll get used to it.”1 The Rabbi no longer wore his top hat now that he was in Texas, though for decades he kept it as a “remembrance of things past.” A photo from this period indicates that his demeanor was confident; penetrating eyes were set over a small and neat handlebar mustache. His hairline had just begun to recede. From 1888 to 1900, Rabbi Cohen planted his roots in the sandy soil of the island. The very fact that Galveston was located on an island off the Texas coast had an impact on its history, its culture, and perhaps the personalities of its citizens. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the island was a convenient harbor for the pirate Jean Lafitte. I was raised believing that pirate treasure was still buried somewhere near West Beach. The town itself came into being in 1836, the same year that Texas gained its independence from Mexico

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and became a republic. One of the lesser known battles of the Civil War, the Battle of Galveston, as natives called it, took place in October 1862, when the Union fleet attacked and conquered the city after overcoming slight resistance. Only three months later Confederate forces under General Magruder recaptured the island. Anticipating the coming armed conflict, my grandmother’s family left for Houston, fifty miles to the northwest. Mollie Levy, destined to become the Rabbi’s bride, was born in Houston on January 8, 1862. The Jewish community in Galveston can be traced back to 1852, when the Jewish citizens established a cemetery association. By 1856, religious services were being held in private homes. In 1866, the Hebrew Benevolent Society was formed to care for the cemetery and to dispense charity to those in need. In 1868, Congregation B’nai Israel was organized and received its charter. Henry Cohen was its fourth rabbi.2 The 1870’s was a decade of growth and prosperity. Galveston became a major port, second on the Gulf of Mexico only to New Orleans. Its wharves were filled with sheds for cotton that was shipped to many lands. Fortunes were made in the cotton industry and banking. The commercial activity was centered on the Strand, which overlooked Galveston Bay. Ornate mansions displaying newly gained wealth were built. Several wealthy Galvestonians were generous, giving funds for the building of a library, schools, hospitals, an orphan’s home, and twenty-one churches. Some of the newer citizens who had come from Central and Western Europe brought their aesthetic tastes with them, and the Tremont Opera house was opened in 1872. Galvestonians came to see themselves as an island of culture off the more mundane mainland of Texas. Oleanders imported from the West Indies, with their pink, red, and white blossoms, spread throughout the island, while palm trees stood like sentinels watching the bustling activity. Henry Cohen quickly fell in love with the city, and was, decades later, to pen a poem of praise: “O Galveston, thou art a peer among world cities!” But Galveston was not Henry’s first love. She was Mollie Levy, whose family returned to Galveston from Houston immediately after the Civil War. According to family lore, Mollie was one of the young women who sat in the congregation and giggled when the new rabbi stuttered. Once she met the dynamic Henry Cohen, she stopped her

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giggling and found him fascinating, with his tales from London, Africa, and Jamaica. They were married in Galveston on March 6, 1889, by Dr. Edward Chapman of Temple Emanu-el in Dallas. Henry’s London family were not able to attend the wedding. Perhaps it was their absence that moved him to write a poem titled “My Mother’s Portrait,” published in the Memphis Jewish Spectator on June 18, 1889: Shall I see thee? Ah, who knoweth? Shall I clasp thee once again? Oh, my mother, dearest parent! Guiding star o’er my life’s main. Mollie not only cared for Henry but also took care of him. She managed his finances, an essential task as he would give so freely of his funds to those in need. She scolded him when the ashes from his cigar would fall on his black suit. She did not object when he used his stiff white cuffs to record the pastoral rounds he had to make each day. Mollie was the perfect hostess to the people of every faith who would come to their home for help. Her portrait expressed the dignity befitting a rabbi’s wife. Dreamy eyes belied her sharp wit. She could pull back her long hair into a tight bun or allow it to rest in soft curls atop her head. But Mollie was more than a hausfrau. She had a bright mind and a biting sense of humor. My cousin (and Rabbi Cohen’s only other grandson), David Frisch, ten years my senior, enjoyed telling the story about a prominent Orthodox lady who once told Mollie that as the rabbi’s wife, she should be more careful in her observance of the dietary laws and other traditions. One Shabbat afternoon the lady came to call. As David told the story, “Footsteps on the porch, but no knock or ring. Grandma peeked through the window to see who it was, and her face lit up . . . She tiptoed into the front parlor, within an arm’s length of the lady, and waited motionless with a beatific smile for what seemed an eternity—still no knock or ring. When the footsteps finally receded down the long flight of stairs, she laughed and said, “If she’s too frum (pious) to ring a bell on Shabbos, I’m certainly too frum to open a door.” The Rabbi’s sense of humor was expressed through practical jokes.

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Soon after Henry and Mollie were married, Henry learned that his wife was supplementing their modest income by selling off her wedding trousseau. He persuaded a friend to impersonate the sheriff and to serve a summons on Mollie for “selling second hand clothes without a license.”3 Then there was a lady friend of the family who was a houseguest of the Cohens. In the morning she awoke to find in her bed a broomstick dressed as a man. The young couple first lived in a modest, rectangular two-story wooden frame house on 20th and K. On July 4, 1890, Mollie gave birth to a daughter, Ruth. When Ruth was still an infant, Henry took mother and daughter to London to see his parents. This would be the last time he would see David and Josephine. Henry’s mother would die in 1896; his father, in 1901. Despite the great geographic distance between them, Henry felt close to his parents. His deep faith in the afterlife brought him comfort. As he wrote to them on their fiftieth wedding anniversary: Hush! No sighing, we will linger in the borderland above, Where no separation cometh, where no strife can mar our love Where the fifty years of this life passed upon earth’s heavy clod Will appear as but a moment in the golden courts of God!4 By 1893, the family had moved into a white frame house on 24th and I, which one entered by ascending a stairway of twelve steps with vines coiled around its banister, leading to a front porch with shutters to the left of the door. On October 3, 1893, Mollie gave birth to a son, Harry Isaac, who would become my father. Etched in my mind is a stunning photo of Harry and Ruth. Harry appears to be about seven, wide-eyed with a look of wonder, light brown curly hair falling on his forehead under a beach hat, his hand clutching a pail, the kind used for collecting sand and shells. Ruth, about ten, is a beautiful child wearing a white taffeta dress, long dark locks falling to her shoulders, holding a bouquet of flowers, her face showing a knowing smile. I can only imagine how Ruth and Harry must have felt growing up in the Cohen household. I would guess: love laced with laughter. For Henry Cohen, the charismatic cleric, around children could be a clown. He would make a sharp pop by pulling his finger out of his mouth, or ripping a handkerchief noisily as he sneezed in it, or

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pretending to argue and angrily snapping a plate in two. (Imagine saving a torn handkerchief or cracked plate for such purposes.) He would pretend to swallow a fork and cough it up again, and find shiny pennies in the sand, claiming they were Jean Lafitte’s treasure.5 From a young age, Ruth and Harry heard their father sing while their mother accompanied on the piano the lilting songs of Gilbert and Sullivan. They no doubt learned the patter songs and could “quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in matters categorical.” Of the lyrical melodies, Henry’s favorite was from The Mikado: “The sun whose rays are all ablaze in ever-living glory.” Behind all the laughter and lyrics was love. My father remembers his father reading to Ruth and himself the warm words of Lewis Carroll, at the end of Alice through the Looking Glass: Children three that nestle near Eager eye and willing ear, Pleased a simple tale to hear. The decade before the 1900 Storm was Rabbi Cohen’s most productive period as an author. His articles and essays were published in newspapers and journals. Among his earliest was “Energy,” published in the Texas Journal of Education in 1890. He wrote of “the vast amount of good work that can be accomplished by ‘energy.’ The lives of many of our great men bear witness that this one quality has not only raised them from poverty to affluence, but has very often placed in their hands the means of benefiting their fellowmen.”6 Surely the Rabbi needed boundless energy as, in addition to being teacher, preacher, and pastor to his congregation, he became an itinerant rabbi to smaller Jewish communities from Nacogdoches on the east to Brownsville in the southern tip of the state. Still he found time to edit a book of Talmudic sayings.7 Among his several monographs, the most revealing was National Loyalty: A Jewish Characteristic. It may be no coincidence that this pamphlet was published in 1894, the year that Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was arrested in Paris and falsely accused of being a spy who provided vital intelligence to the German army. The monograph reflects the view widely held that every people (nation or race) has one or more inherent traits, an inner spirit, or Volkgeist. For the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-

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Am, the essence of the Jewish nation was a sense of morality and a commitment to justice. But Henry Cohen did not consider the Jews to be a nation. Reflecting the principles of Classical Reform Judaism, he held that the Jew is distinguished by his religion: “Jew is analogous to Christian, Mahometan or Brahmin, but not to American, Englishman or German.” One of the strongest characteristics of Jews is love of country . . . With us, loyalty to the Government is inherent. We have always been advocates of law and order, and have invariably been deferential to the national policy, notwithstanding that in some countries our civil disabilities have made our lot hard to bear . . . The natural bent of the Jewish mind is towards freedom and liberty; therefore, a republic appeals to Israel’s sense of loyalty and justice in a far greater degree than a monarchy.8 Rabbi Cohen believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that proving Jewish loyalty was a necessary antidote to the lies of antiSemites who condemned Jews for being disloyal to the government, aliens with their own particular agenda. Half a century later this thesis seemed to be contradicted by the experience of German Jewry under the Nazis. Despite demonstrated loyalty to the German nation, despite the Anti-Defamation League’s reminder that 100,000 Jews had served bravely in the German army during the First World War, despite the assimilation of Jews into German cultural life and their many contributions to the arts and sciences, Hitler turned the concept of Volkgeist on its head and charged that the spirit of the Jewish “race” was unadulterated evil, that Jews were inherently disloyal and were engaged in a conspiracy to dominate the world.9 No publications proving Jewish loyalty in the past could sway the Nazi hate machine that would make a mockery of the romanticized German spirit of Goethe and Schiller and murder 6 million Jews. One might wonder if Rabbi Cohen ever changed his view that the answer to anti-Semitism was to convince the Gentile world of our national loyalty. I am convinced that the events of the 1930’s did persuade him that all the protests of Jewish patriotism would have no effect on one who is deeply anti-Semitic. The grounds for my con-

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viction is a clear memory of a conversation I had with my grandfather probably around 1940. He related to me an obscure midrash that offered quite a different perspective on anti-Jewish hatred: A Roman emperor was walking down the road with one of his guards and a Jew passed by. The Jew said to the Emperor, “Shalom Aleichem, Peace be unto you.” The Emperor was furious. “You, a lowly Jew, dare give a greeting to the Emperor of Rome.” Then to the guard: “Off with his head!” A Jew who had just witnessed the scene passed by and made sure not to say, “Peace be unto you.” The Emperor stopped the Jew and bellowed: “How dare you, a Jew, pass your Emperor without greeting him! Off with his head.” The guard pointed out to the Emperor his inconsistency. The Emperor growled: “Who is to tell me how to deal with my enemies!” The point of the midrash (which my grandfather more than once repeated to me) is that anti-Semitism is fundamentally irrational. A bigot is not going to be swayed by rational argument or by a marshaling of facts. Whether the fundamental cause of anti-Semitism is psychological, sociological, political, or economic, the remedy will not be found by reasoning or by Jews adjusting their behavior to please others. On the other hand, the folks in Galveston were not in the grip of a deep-rooted prejudice. Some may have been suspicious of newcomers. So Rabbi Cohen believed it would be helpful not only to write about national loyalty but also to demonstrate that Jews were not strangers to Texas; indeed, Jews played a significant role in Texas history. He wrote three monographs on Texas Jewry: The Settlement of the Jews in Texas (1884), “The Jews in Texas” (1895), and “Henry Castro, Pioneer and Colonist” (1896).10 The first Jew of whom any record has been preserved was Samuel Isaacs, who moved to Texas in 1821, with Stephen Austin’s first colony of 300. He received a grant of land in Ft. Bend County, and served in the Texas army from 1836 through 1837. For this service he was given another 320 acres in Polk County. The first permanent settlement of Jews was established in Velasco, south of Galveston. The most important Jewish pioneer in Texas was Adolphus Sterne. Born

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1801, in Cologne, Germany, Sterne left the country to escape military service (so much for national loyalty!) and landed in New Orleans. He moved to Texas in 1824. Described as an “adventurous rollicking young fellow, full of fun and delighting in the dangerous life which then prevailed in this state,”11 Sterne became proficient in many languages, including Native American dialects. After joining an early rebellion against the Mexican government, he was captured and sentenced to be shot, but was given amnesty at the last moment. Because he had to take an oath of allegiance to the Mexican government, he was not able to join in the fight for Texas independence. But his sympathy was with the settlers. After Texas became a republic, Sterne, now an attorney, served in both the upper and lower houses of the Texas legislature. “Once . . . when the house had been bored with long-winded harangues over some inconsequential matters, he arose and delivered a very solemn address, of a few minutes length, in Choctaw. The effect . . . awoke the sleepers and relieved the monotony, bringing the members back to business.”12 Among the Rabbi’s favorite pioneers was Henry Castro, a Jew of Marrano background from France who negotiated a contract with President Sam Houston and established a colony west of Medina. President Houston appointed Castro as Consul General to France. Castro had problems with the French government, which was developing colonies of its own in Algiers. However, between 1841 and 1846, he did manage to bring about the migration of 5,000 French Jews who settled a dangerous area between San Antonio and the Rio Grande. According to a contemporary, during his surveying tour, Castro would retire to the forest “for the purpose of binding his phylacteries (tefillin).”13 Cohen also wrote two other monographs on Jewish pioneers: “A Modern Maccabean” (about a soldier named Fronthall who fought for the Confederacy) and “A Brave Frontiersman,” about a pioneer who showed great courage in defending settlers against American Indians and who was known only as “the little Jew” until Rabbi Cohen identified him as S. Schlesinger.14 From 1888 to 1900, Rabbi Cohen translated poems and stories, such as the French story “Galeb Jekarim” and the German poem “Tourist and Cicerone,” by Ludwig Frankel. He also translated from the German Nahida Remy’s “Prayer in Bible and Talmud.” He wrote

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other articles (“Mathematics,” “Three Years in Africa,” and “Distribution of Alphabets”), as well as six poems: “To the Late Emma Lazarus,” “Lines on Reading the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam,” “Chanucah—Feast of Lights,” “Sa’id bin Sa’id,” “Judaica,” and “Threnody” (a response to pogroms in Russia). He also presented an analysis of the history behind the horrors taking place in Russia to the International Order of B’nai B’rith: “The Evolution of Jewish Disability.”15 This is a remarkable output of scholarly writing over a twelve-year period, especially considering that the Rabbi was at the same time so actively engaged as rabbi of B’nai Israel, itinerant preacher, and emissary to the Christian community. During this period, Henry Cohen was becoming known to and admired by the people of Galveston not because of his literary output but because of his deeds of love and justice. He developed excellent relations with several of the Christian clergy. His closest friend was a lanky young priest named Father Jim Kirwin. Rabbi Cohen remembered what Kirwin said to him when they first met: “You have to believe it all, or none of it, like your boys. The rest of them, who believe a little of this and a little of that, will find themselves running out of the money. It’s a fifty-fifty bet, either you or us.”16 But theological differences never interfered with their friendship. They were united by their love of their fellow human beings. In 1896, prominent Catholic cleric Cardinal Satolli visited Galveston. There are two versions of their meeting. According to the more popular story, Rabbi Cohen attended the banquet held in the cardinal’s honor and was asked to say the blessing before the meal. The Rabbi delivered a grace in Latin. The cardinal responded by offering a blessing in Hebrew.17 According to the Galveston Daily News, Cardinal Satolli invited the rabbi, the only non-Catholic at the banquet, to deliver the benediction. The Rabbi did so in English and Latin, “giving the magnificat in Hebrew, following which with a short speech to which the Cardinal responded and reached his hand across the table to the rabbi to show his personal esteem.”18 Then there was the time a prominent Protestant clergyman came to town. Rev. Edward Everett Hale was naturally invited to the home of Rabbi Cohen. The one room in the house of which the Rabbi was particularly proud was his study. The reason: hundreds of books recently imported from book dealers from London to Frankfort to New York.

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After all, how could he continue with his scholarly endeavors and stay in touch with current literature without books that dealt with his concerns, from Kipling’s perspective on India to books on Jewish life and lore? He arranged his volumes carefully so Rev. Hale could see the breadth of his reading. Rev. Hale sipped his tea, looked around and said, “Young man, you have too many books.”19 Soon after Hale’s visit, the Rabbi read in the morning paper, the Galveston Daily News, that there had been a fire upstate that had destroyed the store of a “Hebrew merchant.” Rabbi Cohen made no comment. A few weeks later there was another article that told of another fire. That’s what the Rabbi was waiting for. He grabbed the paper and stormed into the office of the editor, a fine gentleman named Maj. Lowe. He showed him the article and demanded to know: “What is that merchant’s religion?” The Major pleaded ignorance and wondered why the Rabbi wanted to know. The Rabbi explained that the editor had seen fit to indicate the religion of the merchant whose store had been burned down a few weeks ago. Why did he mention the religion of the merchant who was Jewish, but not the religious affiliation of the non-Jewish merchant? The editor was embarrassed. He understood. Or did he? Merchant and Jew may go together in some minds. Was that the bias behind the inconsistency? At any rate, Maj. Lowe promised that such discriminatory journalism would never happen again in the Galveston Daily News.20 It is possible that the Rabbi’s sensitivity to antiSemitism was influenced by reports of pogroms—attacks against Jews in Russia—beginning in 1881 and culminating in the massacre at Kishineff in 1903. Meanwhile, Rabbi Cohen was dealing with the daily issues that come up in any congregation, such as who determines the ritual that will be followed. This matter was settled at B’nai Israel in 1897, when the Board of Trustees voted to replace the traditional shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah with the sound of the organ. Rabbi Cohen refused to relinquish so central a tradition as the shofar, whose sound is meant to stir one’s conscience. The board recognized the Rabbi’s authority.21 In a similar skirmish, the Rabbi—despite the protest of an influential congregant—insisted that the ability to read and understand liturgical Hebrew should be an essential part of the religious school curriculum. How else could one fully participate in Sabbath

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worship?22 The board showed their appreciation for their young rabbi by granting him a two-month vacation during the summer. In his early years Rabbi Cohen would take the family to the Crazy Wells Hotel in Mineral Wells, where he enjoyed the natural mineral springs and baths. In the 1920’s, the Rabbi and Mollie would go to the Hotel Boulderado in Boulder, Colorado. (Among my earliest memories is being there with both the Cohen family and my mother’s parents, from Beaumont.) As the dawn of a new century approached, Henry Cohen was pleased that he had come to Galveston. After twelve years, he felt deeply rooted in his new home. He loved his family. He loved his congregation. He loved Galveston. He loved Texas. He thought he would stay a while.

The rabbinage at 1920 Broadway.

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he officers of B’nai Israel decided that their rabbi deserved a new home, befitting his growing stature in the community and the needs of his family. By the summer of 1898, the congregation had built a “rabbinage” at 1920 Broadway, its elevated front porch overlooking the esplanade that divided Broadway and was lined with colorful oleanders and palm trees. A streetcar track ran the length of the esplanade. In the evenings, from the porch one could watch the “pretty car” pass by, with its multicolored lights and its passengers, some of whom were taking the ride just for fun. The house itself, built of sturdy wood that was painted gray, was raised twelve feet off the ground to protect the first floor from flooding. After all, in October 1871, the island had been hit by a severe storm that flooded almost the entire city.1 Its wooden shutters looked out on the flowers planted around the base of the building; I remember hydrangeas. On the first floor was a long hall. To the right as one entered were four rooms: the parlor, where the upright piano stood; the library/study, lined with books; the dining room; and the kitchen. To the left were two bedrooms and a large bathroom. Simply describing the house unleashes more memories. It was in the study that I became acquainted with British literature. That’s where I first met Kipling, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold. My grandfather’s favorites became my own. He particularly enjoyed read-

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ing Robert Southey’s great anti-war poem, “The Battle of Blenheim.” After young Peterkin finds a skull beside the rivulet, Old Kaspar explains to his grandson and granddaughter Wilhelmine that it was the skull of some poor fellow who had been “slain in that great victory. Wilhelmine looks up with wonder waiting eyes” and asks: “Now tell us all about the war And what they fought each other for . . .” “It was the English,” Kaspar cried, “Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for I could not well make out; But everybody said,” quoth he, “That ’twas a famous victory.” As a reminder that there are some just wars, a large off-white statue of Judah Maccabee, sword and shield in hand, stood watching. On the second floor of the house were a small room for the maid and four large rooms, all empty except for the bookshelves that lined the walls from top to bottom. I would imagine that the shelves were gradually added after 1900, as the rabbi’s library expanded. By the 1940’s, there were thousands of volumes, testimony to my grandfather’s insatiable curiosity and his evident refusal to throw any books away. What remains with me—I hid in the maid’s room to avoid the visitors below—is the musty odor. As the citizens of Galveston came to know the Rabbi, they went to 1920 Broadway with increasing frequency; it became known as the place to go if you needed help. My parents wrote that an Englishman who stuttered went there because he had heard that the Rabbi had conquered his own speech impediment. Rabbi Cohen told him to come back with some pebbles. During several visits, he practiced speaking with pebbles in his mouth until the stutter was gone.2 In the 1920’s discharged prisoners would go to 1920 Broadway looking for help finding a job. The Rabbi would, at times, be able to find a congregant who was willing to hire the ex-convict on the condition that he would report regularly to the Rabbi. The Rabbi’s home away from home, Congregation B’nai Israel, was located at 22nd and Avenue I. Built in 1870, it had undergone a

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renovation just before the Rabbi arrived in Galveston. Its brick facade was now covered with white stucco. The building gleamed in the summer sun, its Moorish arches topped with a triangular rooftop which contained a symbolic rendering of the Ten Commandments and pointed toward heaven.3 Within the building was the sanctuary. I recall burgundy pulpit chairs and an imposing ark that contained the Torah scrolls. Below was a finished basement where the Ladies Auxiliary, organized in 1887, could meet to take care of the building, its vestments, and property. There was also the Harmony Club, whose prime purpose was to bring together members of the congregation to enjoy each other’s company. The B’nai B’rith Lodge was organized in 1874. Its watchword was “Benevolence, Brotherly Love, Harmony,” and it established a literary circle “for mental culture.” There was also a small Orthodox congregation which had its own mutual aid society. Henry Cohen included this information about the synagogue in his contribution to Clarence Ousley’s anthology, Galveston in Nineteen Hundred.4 As described by Ousley, editor of the Galveston Tribune, Galveston in the late summer of 1900 was a beautiful, flourishing city, brimming with busy people, commerce, flora, and a generous heart. Here is the way he described it in September 1900: A city of 38,000 happy and busy people . . . of splendid homes and broad clean streets; a city of oleanders and roses and palms; a city of the finest churches, school buildings and benevolent institutions in the South; a thriving port with many ocean-going ships at anchor . . . a seaside resort, with hundreds of bathers at play in the safest and most delightful surf in the world; a city of great wealth and large charity.5 Almost a century later, Erik Larson, in his remarkable and vivid history Isaac’s Storm, would add: “The city exhibited a rare harmony of spirit. Blacks, whites, Jews, and immigrants lived and worked side by side with an astonishing degree of mutual tolerance.”6 With apologies to Robert Browning: God was in heaven and all seemed right with the world. Larson has written a compelling account of the storm as seen through the eyes of Isaac Monroe Cline, who arrived in Galveston in

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1893 in order to open the Texas Section of the U.S. Weather Bureau. He did his job well and was commended by the government inspector: “There’s not a man in the service who does more real work than he . . . [he] has great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country, as it is now.”7 The summer of 1900 had been one of the hottest on record. After a steamy Friday, September 7, there was a sudden cooling, welcome to Galvestonians but a warning sign to Isaac. That night he heard the thud of high ocean waves crashing on the beach. Isaac was aware that a tropical storm had just drenched Cuba. But there was confusion among the experts as to the storm’s course. The U.S. Weather Bureau had a man in Cuba who gave assurance that there was no need for Americans to worry about the storm. In sharp contrast, Cuba’s own weather observers warned that the storm would become more intense and might travel northwest, toward southeast Texas. They were ignored by the U.S. Weather Bureau. Saturday morning, September 8, the sky over Galveston was clear and there was but a soft breeze. Rabbi Cohen was preparing for Shabbat services. When Isaac Cline went down to the beach, he noticed larger and larger crests of waves. Most unusual was that despite a brisk north wind that normally moved the tide out to sea, the surf and tide were actually rising. Still, remembering that Galveston had weathered a storm in 1891, Isaac was not worried. Mid-morning he walked down the Strand and told merchants that he expected minor flooding. They had better raise their goods. The city’s newspapers, lulled by the U.S. Weather Bureau, played down the prospect of a severe storm. In fact, the Galveston Daily News that morning boasted about the new census reports. In the past decade there had been a 30 percent growth rate, the highest of any city in the South. The next ten years promised greater growth. Even when the storm came ashore, there was no sense of imminent danger. “The enraged sea drew adults by the hundreds,” to stand and watch.8 Then came a more ominous sign: water was coming into town from the bay. The island lay between the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. This meant that it was “as if Galveston were a gigantic ship sinking beneath the sea.”9 Rabbi Cohen, having concluded his Shabbat morning service, immediately sensed the grave danger. He returned home, rushed

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upstairs, and gathered blankets and umbrellas, which he gave to Galvestonians who had no protection. Mollie found some apples and gave them to children who were playing in the esplanade. The water rose, flooding Broadway. The Rabbi brought the children into the front parlor of the house and told his wife to play something on the piano. “Play what?” She turned to the nearest music book. It was Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. To distract the children, Rabbi Cohen sang in a loud voice: “Prithee, pretty maiden, will you marry me. Hey, but I’m doleful, willow, willow, way-lee.”10 The waters continued to rise. The Rabbi moved his family next door to the Lee family’s house. It seemed sturdier. He and Mr. Lee bored a hole in the floor to prevent the house from being carried off its foundations. Huddled together, the Cohen and Lee families survived. (A member of the Texas Jewish Historical Society recently asked me to verify a different version. His great-grandfather, he said, “was a fireman and he swears that he rescued your grandfather the night of the storm.” I could neither confirm nor deny.) By mid-afternoon, Isaac realized that “an awful disaster was upon us.” All communications with the mainland were cut off by four p.m. There would be no further communication ’til 7:30 the next evening. At 6:30 Saturday evening, the water rose four feet in four seconds. Downtown, pieces of wood and steel sped like shrapnel through the air, which was gusting at an estimated velocity of 150 to 200 miles per hour. Then came reports of casualties and the first corpses. In Isaac’s home fifty terrified men, women, and children were packed into one room. His younger brother Joseph wanted to try their chances elsewhere, perhaps find a stronger building. Isaac insisted on staying, but the house could not withstand the battering of wind and water. They were all swept away. Amazingly, Isaac, his three daughters, and his brother survived. Sadly, his wife, Cora, did not. “Throughout Galveston, men and women stepped from their homes to find corpses on their doorsteps.” Galvestonians on Sunday morning began to realize the scope of the catastrophe. Hundreds, no, thousands of bodies. What to do with them? A Central Relief Committee was organized to govern the city. Rabbi Cohen was one of its sixteen members. It was decided that they would take the bodies out to sea, tying them with weights so they would be buried in the ocean’s depths. Horrifically, many of the bodies would reappear.

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Cremation was a relatively new idea in the United States and was contrary to both Catholic and Jewish tradition. But in this emergency, Father Kirwin and Rabbi Cohen gave their permission for some of the bodies to be cremated. The Rabbi’s main concern, however, was the hospitals. He somehow found a wagon, two mules, and medical supplies. He headed toward the hospitals. Someone put a pistol in his pocket, just in case. He never used it. He did go about the city distributing food and giving comfort to those who had lost homes and loved ones. He was the first to reach the hospitals with food. At the foot of 23rd Street, he supervised the hospital tents, kitchen tents, and dining room.11 When finally he was able to get to his synagogue, he was surprised to find that miraculously the building was intact except for one of the stained glass windows, from which Abraham’s foot had been neatly amputated. B’nai Israel would become the sanctuary where four Protestant churches held services until they were able to rebuild. Of Rabbi Cohen’s role it was written eight years after the storm, on the occasion of his twentieth year in Galveston, He was among the first and always among the foremost, both at the start and finish looking after the wants of all those that were in the worst distress and deprivation, and with him no hours were thought too long or service too onerous to be carried upon his shoulders. His personal endurance was the only limit that environed him at such a trying time as he passed through. There were others, but he was always in the foremost van.12 The people of Galveston did not panic. Looting was at a minimum. Saloons were closed. Most Galvestonians were simply awestruck at the scope of the disaster: half of the residential sections of the city were gone. Estimates of dead began at 6,000 and soon reached 8,000 to 10,000, approximately a fourth of the citizens of Galveston.13 The U.S. Army sent in units to set up tents for the homeless. The Red Cross, led by Clara Barton, was there to meet emergency needs. Cohen aided Barton in bringing the elderly ladies of the Home for Indigent Colored People down from near the steeple to the ground floor, where he gave them a tent.14 William Randolph Hearst led a campaign through his chain of newspapers to raise funds for the schoolchildren of Galveston. As often happens

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with such disasters, the people themselves became closer to each other. Victims helped other victims. Rabbi Cohen felt himself even more strongly identified with his fellow Galvestonians, and they came to consider him as their rabbi. The major achievement of the reconstruction was the building of a seawall, seventeen feet above the beach behind granite boulders. The altitude of the entire city was raised: “In a monumental effort, legions of workmen using manual screw jacks lifted two thousand buildings, even a cathedral, then filled the resulting canyon with eleven million pounds of fill.”15 The task was not completed until 1910, but the effect was to prevent such a disaster from ever occurring again. The storm of 1915 was repulsed by the seawall and the flooding was minor: proof to Galvestonians that they were headed toward an even brighter future. Even before the seawall was completed, the confidence of leading citizens was unshakable: “Galveston will rise to the full attainment of the splendid destiny which nature and commerce have fixed as her portions . . . Stronger than wind or wave is the tide of commerce.”16 The Central Relief Committee evolved into a new form of city government, a municipality run by a Commission, an idea that spread to cities beyond Texas. In the short term, Galveston arose from the storm with buildings restored and businesses resumed, but in the long term, Galveston would see a gradual exodus of some of her wealthier citizens. To the northwest, the city fathers of Houston hit on the idea of a ship channel that would connect Houston with the Gulf of Mexico. It was an exaggeration for Larson to state that Galveston became “a beach town for Houston.” The isle city eventually grew to 50,000, and it became again a vital community, with its cotton warehouses, its retail stores, and its cultural events. By the 1930’s, however, Galveston had been eclipsed by its neighbor to the northwest, whose population had risen to 300,000 citizens. The impact of this decline on the life and career of Rabbi Cohen was major. Houston expanded; Galveston did not, and the Jewish community remained relatively small. This left the Rabbi with the choice of making a “career move” and finding a larger synagogue, or staying in Galveston, where he felt he belonged. We know that Henry Cohen became “the man who stayed in Texas.” The twentieth century would reveal the reasons why.

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he Rabbi was called “Dr. Cohen” by the people of Galveston. Patients often asked to have him in the operating room along with their physicians, and he was pleased to oblige. So it was only natural that he would be asked to speak to the students at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston. He was a healer, and he did not make a sharp distinction between healing body and soul. The Rabbi was fascinated by the many references to mental and physical health in the Talmud; consulting a book on this topic by German scholar Bergel Hershon, he titled his 1901 lecture, “The Hygiene and Medicine of the Talmud.” His purpose was to “convey an idea of the importance in which medico-sanitation was held [during the Talmudic period, 100 bce to 450 ce]” and to present “the Talmudic concepts of dietetics, anatomy, physiology, surgery and therapeutics.” Dr. Cohen believed in the widely held view that most of the dietary laws were originally intended to protect people’s health and physical well-being. This was the explanation advanced by the great medieval philosopher/physician Maimonides. But twentieth-century scholarship would reject this theory of the origin of kashrut. For example, it is now known through archaeological discovery that the prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (later interpreted as forbidding the mixing of meat and milk dishes) was the biblical Israelite’s reaction against the

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Canaanite custom of doing just that in the hope of having a more bountiful harvest. Rabbi Cohen cited references in the Talmud to jaundice, colic, gastritis, and nosebleed. The Talmudic rabbis claimed that memory loss could be caused by eating olives but could be restored by continued use of olive oil. Other memory restoratives were “bread baked upon coals, eggs without salt, and wine” (Horayot 13: b). Cohen characterized as an instance of oral surgery the incident when Rabbi Ishmael provided a bride with a gold tooth (Nedarim 66: a, b). The rabbis also considered garlic to be quite healthy as “it nourishes, warms inwardly, brightens the complexion, increases virility and destroys cancer.” I was so surprised by the reference to cancer that I sought out the passage in Baba Kama 82: a. The Hebrew reads: “V’horaig kinim sheba’b’nai may-ayim.” The Soncino translation is “kills parasites in the bowels.”1 The Rabbi was not suggesting that Talmudic medicine is valid today. The lecture did aim to demonstrate that Jews have always been quite concerned with health, an insight with which fans of Woody Allen would surely agree. In his personal life, Rabbi Cohen observed what some call “biblical kosher”: refraining from pork and shellfish. But he had no objection when Mollie made crab gumbo for the rest of the family. He claimed that his dietary restrictions were not a matter of religion but simply a personal family tradition that he wished to continue. Rabbi Cohen remained involved with the medical school and its students throughout his rabbinate. He was particularly upset when a qualified student was not admitted because he lacked the money for tuition. He took it upon himself to develop the school’s first loan fund. It was surprisingly easy to administer. Galvestonians were continually giving the Rabbi contributions to be used however he saw fit to help those in need. Rabbi Cohen would interview the aspiring student, and after being convinced that he truly needed the financial help, would give him a loan without interest. The only record was a small notebook that Mrs. Cohen kept in her armoire. Most of the students, once they became established, returned the loan. No one except the Rabbi knew who the donors were. Meanwhile, Mollie kept a careful vigil over all family finances; had she not done so, the Rabbi might well have been so generous that there would not have been sufficient funds to meet the family’s basic needs.

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In the early 1940’s, Houston physician Dr. Louis H. Green recalls, Rabbi Cohen would visit each of the seven medical school fraternities about every six weeks. Although dedicated to the study of medicine, Louis Green was also a pianist and sorely missed having an instrument on which to play. When Rabbi Cohen asked if there was anything the students needed, one of Louis’ classmates told him that they could use a piano. As Dr. Green recalls, “Lo and behold, a piano was brought over from the Balinese Room” (an elegant casino with the best food in town). Rabbi Cohen continued making his regular rounds of the hospitals, the shut-ins, and the orphan’s home, all the while simply being available in the late afternoons for people in need who knew they could find help at 1920 Broadway. But there was nothing normal about the situations in which the Rabbi found himself. There was, for example, a much publicized incident involving the two heavyweight boxers, Joe Choynski, son of Polish Jewish immigrants, and young Jack Johnson, Galveston-born son of African American slaves. Choynski was “the first Jewish American athlete to win an international reputation as an athlete.” Although he never weighed more than 175 pounds, Choynski packed such a powerful punch that heavyweight title holders refused to face him. By 1901, Choynski was known as an “old warhorse” and was sent to Galveston to demonstrate that the twenty-two-year-old Johnson still had much to learn about boxing. Even though boxing was illegal in the state of Texas, the two pugilists staged an exhibition bout in Harmony Hall on February 25, 1901. Texas Ranger Captain J. A. Brooks was sent to arrest them. Having arrived before the fight, Brooks watched them through the third round, when Choynski knocked out Johnson. After enjoying the fight, the captain arrested the two men and put them in jail. Choynski demanded to see not a lawyer but Rabbi Cohen. He protested to the Rabbi that the bail, set at $5,000 for each man, was unreasonably high. The Rabbi met with Henry Thomas, sheriff of Galveston County, and proposed that the men be allowed to spend their nights outside of jail. The Rabbi would make sure that the boxers returned to jail in the morning. Sheriff Thomas agreed, and each night Johnson went to his home and Choynski, to his hotel. According to Johnson’s memoirs, “We would come back to the jail

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and stay there all day.” The zealous Texas attorney general appealed to Governor Sayres in Austin, demanding to know what he was going to do about this situation; the governor opted to leave the matter up to the good people of Galveston. The local sports fans, hearing of the arrangement, furnished the fighters’ cell with equipment for a make-shift gym. Choynski and Johnson spent the days working out and sparring, to the delight of the fans, who would come to watch. Choynski was convinced that the young Black boxer had the makings of a champion. (Indeed, Jackson would win the heavyweight title in 1908.) Eventually, there was a trial. In his testimony, Choynski stated that he came to Galveston “to demonstrate the science of boxing” and that he did not knock out Johnson. “He laid down.” On March 8, the grand jury dismissed the case. Sheriff Thomas advised the men to leave town before the attorney general could find a new charge. Choynski went home to his family in La Grange, Illinois, and Johnson hopped a freight headed for Denver.2 The Choynski-Johnson incident was well covered in the Galveston Daily News. But there was another bit of boxing that was recorded for the first time in The Man Who Stayed in Texas. One evening the Rabbi and his family were visiting friends when two large men banged on the door and demanded to see the Rabbi. When Rabbi Cohen came out, he recognized them as two Jews he had met in the jail, both of whom had been arrested for stealing. The Rabbi saw to it that the charges were dropped, once they returned the money, on the condition that they would leave town. The Rabbi’s children overheard the men shout angrily at their father. Moving closer, they saw one man clench his fist and threaten: “Give us some money, or else.” Rabbi Cohen, all of five foot one, knocked one man down the stairs with an upper cut to the chin. Then both ran away. The Rabbi turned to his children and said: “Sorry you had to see this but those men were a bad lot.”3 I would have considered this story to be unbelievable had not my own father witnessed it. He told of this incident with a seriousness that suggests it was burned deeply into his consciousness. It was different from the way he spoke of the Choynski-Johnson incident, which appealed to his sense of humor. Turning from boxing to bordellos, there are no fewer than three stories that have been told about Henry Cohen and prostitutes. In Galveston, the “red-light district” could be found on Post Office

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Street. One of the young women working the street suddenly became ill and died. Her last wish was to have a decent Christian funeral. Why the Madam who ran the establishment where the deceased had lived went to Rabbi Cohen is not known. As the tale has been told, the Rabbi did not ask if a Christian minister had been sought. He simply went out to the cemetery and, in the presence of a large crowd from Post Office Street, conducted the service. He chose several passages from the New Testament, the Lord’s Prayer probably among them.4 After all, it is based on the kaddish. Then there is the tale told of a girl being held against her will in the red-light district. Mounting his bicycle (which was the Rabbi’s mode of travel early in the twentieth century), he pedaled to the brothel, barged in the front door, brushed past the best-known Madam in town, marched upstairs, and found the half-nude girl. Her clothes had been taken so she would not run away. The Rabbi wrapped her in a blanket and took her out of the bordello. He marched through downtown Galveston, guiding the bicycle with one hand and holding the girl with the other. Stopping at a clothing store, he ordered the startled saleslady: “Fit her out from head to foot.” Then he took the girl back to her home and eventually found her a job.5 The third story sounds a bit like a variation of the second. My source is a sermon given in 1930 by the scholarly Rabbi William Braude, a younger contemporary of Rabbi Cohen. He wrote that at one time Galveston had been a stopover point in a brisk White slave trade. Rabbi Cohen found one unfortunate woman who had been forced into prostitution. He could find no place for her to live safely. So he put her up in his own home, not as a maid or servant but as a respected boarder. She lived there for six months despite the protests of several shocked congregants. In 1902, Rabbi Cohen was given the honor of delivering the Shabbat eve lecture for the Central Conference of American Rabbis at their convention in New Orleans.6 He spoke about the history of “Reformed Judaism,” a term not in favor today because it suggests to some that what the Reformers did was make changes that should be considered permanent. Nothing could have been further from Rabbi Cohen’s mind. He told his colleagues: “History has shown that the reform of one age may be the Orthodoxy of the next.” He asserted that what the Talmudic rabbis did for their generations (i.e., interpret

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the law to meet changing conditions) was what the Reformers were doing for modern times. He expressed great respect for “those who follow their convictions in sincerity and in truth, whether those convictions be Orthodox or Reform.” But he observed that many of the new Jewish immigrants were Orthodox in theory only; they did not practice traditional Judaism. He warned that their children would grow up without an appreciation of their heritage. It was the challenge of Reform to meet the religious needs of this second generation, or, as he put it: to “gather the flock before the sheep have scattered.” He appealed to his colleagues to give much greater support to the Hebrew Union College, which, he wrote, would give us “enlightened teachers and preachers . . . text books for our schools, prayer books for our synagogues and reading matter for our homes.” He concluded that “Judaism contains all the elements of Universal religion . . . One God, who promises a far-off, divine event to which the whole creation moves . . . the glorious Messianic time in which righteousness will prevail in all the earth.” The optimistic view of history evolving toward a messianic age was challenged by what was happening to Jews in Russia, particularly in the Ukraine, during the first decade of the twentieth century. After the assassination of the relatively tolerant Czar Alexander II in 1881, the government-controlled press blamed the murder on a secret Jewish conspiracy. The only conspiracy, however, was that of the new czar, Alexander III, with local officials in the Pale of Settlement, where most Jews lived. The new czar promulgated the May Laws, which forbade the Jews from settling anew in any rural area of Russia. Villagers were given the authority to expel those Jews they considered undesirable. The consequence was that thousands of Jews were forced out of the shtetl and into Russian towns and cities, where they were confined to areas resembling the ghettos in Central Europe. These Jews lived in even worse poverty, 40 percent being completely dependent on charity. In 1894, Alexander III died and was succeeded by Nicholas II. A weak man, he was easily influenced by reactionaries around him, from the notorious Pobedonostsev to his wife, Czarina Alix. This ruling elite had to face a restless proletariat which embraced revolutionary ideologies, particularly that of Karl Marx as interpreted by Lenin. Members of the Russian bureaucracy were assassinated. So, a scape-

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goat had to be found to distract the peasants and workers from their real oppressors. In 1902, Nicholas turned the Ministry of Interior over to Wenzel Von Plehve, a Baltic German. A cool bureaucrat with no scruples, Von Plehve developed techniques to turn the Russian workers and peasants against their Jewish neighbors. Von Plehve first used his scapegoating technique in the town of Kishineff. There in 1903, the mutilated body of a Russian boy was found. Although the boy’s uncle had confessed to the crime, this did not stop the anti-Semitic newspaper Beesarbetz (the only paper in the province) from hurling the charge of ritual murder against the town’s Jews. They were accused of using the blood of a Christian child for the making of matzot—obviously absurd as the drinking of blood was strictly prohibited by Jewish law. Handbills were distributed urging bloody punishment of the Jews. On Sunday, April 6, 1903, a mob of young men, acting on cue, rushed through the town’s streets attacking and looting Jewish stores and homes. Police stood by and did nothing. Looting soon turned to murder. The following day at 5 p.m., troops were sent in to restore order, but the barbaric work had been done: 1,500 stores and homes had been gutted; forty-five Jews had been killed and eighty-six wounded. Eye-witnesses told of the brains of babies splattered, bellies split open, women’s breasts cut off, men castrated, blinded, and hacked to death.7 There had been pogroms before, but this raised the barbarity to a new level. News of the pogrom at Kishineff spread through the American Jewish community. When Henry Cohen heard of the horror, he knew what he had to do. At the next Shabbat eve service, the synagogue was full. Rabbi Cohen’s exact words are lost to history. But he did tell my parents about his sermon and they captured its spirit: They lived at peace with their neighbors . . . [Then] the populace [was] inflamed by their decadent government; mobs [went] through the streets of Kishineff, murdering men, women and children, pillaging—Ah, we have had pogroms before . . . But this is a different matter . . . organized, carefully planned mass murder. What are we going to do about it? The governments of the civilized world have sent their formal protests . . . the Russian government knows how the world feels about it. In the meantime 2,000 Jewish families are homeless, bereft of their

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means of livelihood—their homes pillaged, burned to the ground. They are starving, with no hope. We must help them. They are our coreligionists. They have no one to turn to but us . . . We must give until we are hurt, until we give up something from our own comfortable sheltered lives, until we know what it is to do without.8 The sermon was the most passionate the Rabbi had given since coming to Galveston. Women took off their jewels. Husbands offered large sums. The Rabbi said that he would not take money “on Shabbos,” but the next day there would be a mass meeting. They should be there. They were. The Rabbi persuaded Galveston’s bishop, Nicholas Gallagher, considered by his parishioners distant and authoritarian, to sign a petition protesting the pogrom.9 The atrocity at Kishineff was followed by other massacres. Russian Jews reacted in different ways. Some joined the Russian Social Democratic Party, led by Lenin, and, like Trotsky, tried to assimilate. Others favored a socialist revolution but insisted on retaining their Jewish identity. These Bundists wanted the Jews to be recognized as a national minority within Russia and demanded their own school system as well as their own representatives in the Duma; some even wanted their own province. A smaller group, centered in the Ukraine, where the violence was most intense, saw no hope for Jews in Russia, but they still wanted to build socialism. Where? In Palestine. Their Jewish nationalism would be controlled by the workers and farmers in kibbutzim. A much larger number—some 2 million Jews from Russia and Poland—gave up on Russia and turned to America, a land where they could be free from oppression, free to build a new life in what some called “the golden medina.” These Jews poured into the poorer neighborhoods of the East Coast cities: Philadelphia, Baltimore, but especially the East Side of New York. Of those 2 million, about 10,000 found their way to the port of Galveston—but that is another chapter, a new phase in the life of Henry Cohen. While pogroms were becoming more deadly and more frequent in Russia, Rabbi Cohen was ever on the alert for potential antiSemitism in Galveston. He saw that potential in the teaching of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in Ball High School. The character

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of Shylock, while given a human dimension by Shakespeare (“When they prick us, do we not bleed?”), could easily be viewed by high school students as the stereotypical Jew who must have his “pound of flesh” by manipulating his Christian neighbors. On May 16, 1906, the Rabbi wrote to Dr. Hopkins, superintendent of schools: It is the province of the school superintendent to arrange the curriculum so as to contain the very best matter in every line of thought, hence The Merchant of Venice is a favorite classic. But inasmuch as the rearing of children democratically, tolerantly and without prejudice is, or should be an integral part of elementary education, I think it well that the dramatic idea underlying The Merchant of Venice should be sacrificed to the general entente cordiale which should exist between pupil and fellow-pupil. It seems to me that if I were a Christian, seated with my Jewish schoolmates side by side upon a bench in a public schoolroom, and hearing Antonio’s attack upon Shylock, I could not help contrasting the differences in race and religion between them and myself; and having regard to what I was then learning, I would feel that my Jewish fellow-pupils were descendants of unloving, grasping progenitors and my inferiors in character. Let the instructor be as fair-minded as he can, let him be ever so just, he cannot explain away the spleen that is apparent in Shakespeare’s great creation.10 To my knowledge, there is no record of the superintendent’s response. Given Rabbi Cohen’s argument and reputation, I would guess that the students in 1907 were reading Julius Caesar or some other Shakespearean classic. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the members of the synagogue twice showed their appreciation of their rabbi. On June 1, 1903, they presented him with a beautiful silver service set “as a token of their affection and appreciation of his labors as their Minister for the past fifteen years.” On May 15, 1904, Cohen was “elected Rabbi of this congregation during the term of his life at will.” Also during that decade, Cohen removed his head covering and asked his congregants to do the same.11

The Rabbi (second from left) during the Galveston Movement.

CH A P T ER 7

“Through the Gateway of Galveston”

A

fter the pogroms which followed the assassination of Alexander iii in 1881, wealthy German Jews in New York were, according to Bernard Marinbach’s definitive history of the Galveston Movement, “embarrassed” by having so many Jews living in the squalor of the East Side.1 In 1883, the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society was organized to disperse Jewish immigrants to rural areas. Its work was taken over by the United Hebrew Charities, which, by 1890, had dispersed 3,440 Jews and returned to Europe 7,534, apparently because they were not considered employable. So, according to Marinbach, when most Americans favored immigration, organized American Jewry was restrictionist.2 But the shock of the more destructive pogroms in 1903 shook the conscience of American Jewish leaders, who then became champions of liberal immigration laws. Of these leaders, Jacob M. Schiff, successful investment banker and generous philanthropist, became the most active anti-restrictionist. He believed that if a significant portion of Jews could be settled in the Southwest and Midwest, where employment was more readily available than in the urban ghettos of the East coast, then the restrictionists would no longer be able to argue convincingly that immigration costs American jobs. Some saw dispersion as a means of decreasing anti-Jewish sentiment, which was believed to be caused, in part,

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by the “embarrassing” urban Jewish ghettos. So, David Bressler, general manager of the Industrial Removal Office, in 1904 tried to convince Jews who had arrived at Ellis Island to “go West, young mensch.” They wouldn’t go. The only answer, said Schiff, was rerouting. To reroute the Russian Jews from the East Coast to the hinterland required the cooperation of Hilfsverein des Deutschen Juden, the major German Jewish relief organization, which was coordinating the exodus of Jews from Russia via Hamburg and Bremen. Support was also sought from British Jewish author Israel Zangwill, even though Zangwill’s Jewish Territorial Organization ( ito) had as its goal finding a region where the Jews could establish an autonomous entity. (Zangwill did not believe that Palestine was a practical solution, and Schiff feared that Jewish autonomy anywhere would cast doubt on Jewish patriotism everywhere.) Zangwill did agree to work with Schiff, perhaps because his attempt to establish a Jewish nation in Uganda had failed and ito needed to do something to help Jewish victims of persecution. But where to send the Jews? Among the ports suggested were Charleston, New Orleans, and Galveston. The Jews of Charleston were not interested in welcoming Jews from Russia.3 New Orleans was so large a city that many immigrants might have decided to stay there. (Can you imagine a Bourbon Street ghetto?) Galveston was ideal: too small to offer economic opportunities that would tempt immigrants to stay there, and close to the West, with railroad lines going through Texas to the Midwest and Southwest. And, of course, Rabbi Henry Cohen, whose energetic humanitarianism was not unknown to Schiff. Jacob Schiff was the sole donor for what became known as the Galveston Movement. He was prepared to provide $500,000. He wrote to Zangwill in October 1906 that he would consider the plan a success if 20,000 to 25,000 Jews could be moved from New York and settled in the hinterland; surely, others would follow them. David Bressler of the Industrial Removal Office sent his assistant, a highly qualified social worker, Morris Waldman, to Galveston to become general agent of the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau. It was responsible to the Galveston Committee, made up of Schiff, Bressler, Waldman, Cyrus Sulzberger, and other prominent German Jews, as well as Rabbi Cohen.

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Waldman developed a very close relationship with the Rabbi, who tried to persuade him to live in his home. Waldman compromised and had meals almost every day with the Cohen family. He later wrote about Henry Cohen: He was “the Rabbi” not only to his own congregation or even to the wider Jewish community, he was “the Rabbi” to the whole city. Indeed, he was “the Rabbi” to a good part of Texas and the Southwest . . . It was the day of bicycles, and as I think of the dynamic little Rabbi now, I have a picture of him flitting to and fro on his “wheel,” doing his countless chores, usually errands of mercy . . . When people were in trouble, white or black, Jew or Gentile, aristocrat or plebeian, it was “the Rabbi” who was first consulted. He was the Social Service Bureau of the community . . . indeed, I might nearly say the Federation. And his wisdom was excelled only by his sympathy and understanding.4 After one year in Galveston, Waldman accepted the position as head of New York City’s United Hebrew Charities. He was succeeded as general agent of the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau (jiib) by Louis Ginsberg (for one year) and then by Henry Berman. Meanwhile, in Kiev, Zangwill’s ito established the Jewish Emigration Society, led by Dr. David Jochelmann, who spread the word among Russian Jews that there would be greater opportunity in America if one entered through the port of Galveston. But to enter through Galveston, he stressed, one had to be able-bodied and either have a needed skill or be a laborer. Waldman secured the cooperation of B’nai Brith lodges throughout the Midwest and Southwest, which formed committees that informed the jiib just what kind of occupations were available in their communities. The very first boatload arrived in Galveston on July 1, 1907. The S.S. Cassel had left Bremen for Baltimore and Galveston with 1,500 passengers, among them eighty-seven Jews. On arriving in Galveston, after passing the medical examination, the Jewish immigrants were taken to the JIIB headquarters, where they were met by Mr. Waldman, Rabbi Cohen, and H. A. Landes, the mayor of Galveston. Rabbi Cohen, speaking in Yiddish, told them about the United States and its democratic ideals. He then introduced the

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mayor and translated his greeting into Yiddish. The mayor said: “You have come to a great country. With industry and economy all of you will meet with success. Obey the laws and try to make good citizens.” He then shook each immigrant’s hand. One of the immigrants, a former schoolteacher, responded in halting English, with the assistance of the Rabbi. His words were reported by the Galveston Daily News: We are overwhelmed that the ruler of the city should greet us. We have never been spoken to by the officials of our country except in terms of harshness, and although we have heard of the great land of freedom, it is very hard to realize that we are permitted to grasp the hand of the great man. We will do all we can to make good citizens.5 In the Rabbi’s account of the same scene, written the following year, he wrote that the immigrant added: “There may be a time when the American people will need us, and then we will serve them with our blood.”6 In the same pamphlet, Rabbi Cohen described the process of orientation for the immigrants. After the medical exam, they were taken to the jiib office, where they received long-awaited mail and were able to bathe and have a wholesome kosher meal. They were given the opportunity to write home and to read Yiddish newspapers, were interviewed, and then were able to choose to go to one of the communities in which their skills were needed. They were then given their railroad tickets, supper, and an apportionment of food sufficient to last for the entire journey. Some left on the night train; others spent the night in Galveston but left the following day. Telegrams were sent to the communities which would receive the immigrants, so they could be met at the station.7 From July 1907 through September 1914, approximately 10,000 Jewish immigrants entered the United States through Galveston. They were sent to twenty-one cities in Missouri and Minnesota (the two states that received the largest number), as well as cities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Fewer than 300 remained in Galveston. The movement did not always flow smoothly. Some immigrants had been promised by the Jewish Emigration Society in Kiev that they would be able to earn more money than was actually possible in

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their host cities. Other immigrants told the Jewish Emigration Society that they had certain skills which they did not possess, in order to secure passage to Galveston. Among the occupations listed were tailors, carpenters, boot makers, locksmiths, metal workers, bakers, painters, and butchers. Some were admitted as “unskilled laborers,” others as salesmen, clerks, and bookkeepers. A persistent problem was the miserable conditions on board ship for the twentyfour-day journey: overcrowding, lack of adequate food distribution, improper medical care, and, most deplorable, abuse of passengers by some anti-Semitic members of the German crew.8 After welcoming 833 immigrants by the end of 1907, the movement was brought to a virtual halt in 1908 by an economic depression that affected the entire nation and drastically reduced the opportunities open to immigrants. With better economic news, the movement resumed its normal functioning after March 1909. At times the immigrants needed special help, having arrived barefoot and shirtless. Adequate clothing was purchased either by the JIIB or by Rabbi Cohen, from his own limited funds. On two occasions, couples arrived lacking the legal documents proving that they were married, so Rabbi Cohen married them again. According to the memoirs of a Polish rabbi, Ziskind Gurwitz, Rabbi Cohen intervened when he was being detained by immigration officials. After Gurwitz explained to Cohen that he was a certified shochet and had had funds transferred to an American bank, Rabbi Cohen spoke to the officials and Gurwitz was allowed to go to the jiib for a kosher meal.9 As the movement continued into 1910, restrictionists charged that the new immigrants were changing “the racial complexion of America” and were undercutting American workers by accepting lower wages. These objections stirred Schiff and other American Jewish leaders to organize a lobbying campaign against the restrictionists. Thus, while on Ellis Islan, the Commissioner of Immigration was erecting obstacles to limit immigration (e.g., each immigrant had to have $25), in Galveston, Rabbi Cohen, through his friendship with the local inspector, E. D. Holman, was arranging for the immigrants to bypass the Board of Special Inquiry, which could order deportations. Instead, they would be sent directly to the jiib headquarters. But when the Commissioner General of Immigration, Daniel Keefe, learned of Holman’s “liberal” attitude, he replaced him with a restrictionist, Alfred Hampton.10 He began to deport some immigrants

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because they had “poor physique” or because he deemed them “likely to become public charges.” The Jewish community was far from united in support of the Galveston Movement. Two influential Jewish papers in New York, the Yiddishes Taggenblatt and the Morgen Journal, ran editorials against the movement. The Jewish masses, it was argued in the former paper, should immigrate to places where they are naturally inclined to settle, rather than be “led” or “transported” to destinations chosen for them by the German Jewish leaders.11 Another Jewish critic of the Galveston Movement was Rabbi George Fox of Fort Worth. He complained that despite the policy against single women traveling alone, several did slip through and became prostitutes in Fort Worth.12 Even in Galveston, there was some resistance. The movement was strongly supported by the members of Rabbi Cohen’s congregation at B’nai Israel and by the Orthodox Young Men’s Hebrew Association (ymha) Synagogue, made up of Russian Jews, but a second Orthodox congregation (Bikur Cholim Society), composed of Jews from Galicia, objected, perhaps because of the unwarranted fear that many immigrants would remain in Galveston and become a threat to their livelihood. Their leader, a Mr. S. Lipman, went so far as to send literature to the Commissioner General of Immigration suggesting that the Jewish Emigration Society was actively recruiting immigrants to leave Russia and come to Galveston. This kind of recruiting was illegal. Schiff forcefully replied that the immigrants would be leaving Russia in any case, and that the jiib had remained faithful to its purpose (sanctioned by the national commissioner, Franklin Pierce) to divert Jewish immigrants from the Northeast to the Southwest and Midwest.13 Schiff also had problems with Israel Zangwill. So that the Jewish immigrants would not become public charges (and so be subject to deportation), Schiff insisted that Zangwill instruct the JES not to send Jews who had been peddlers, shopkeepers, or clerks, for they would end up in low-paying manual jobs demanding physical labor for which they were not suited. Zangwill was indignant. The philosophy of the ito was to send a cross section of the Jewish people. He grudgingly complied with Schiff’s request, but tension remained between the two Jewish leaders. In 1911, 1,400 immigrants were admitted, the largest number so far. But in October of that year, a seventeen-year-old immigrant girl

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was raped by another immigrant. The jiib did not report the assault to immigration authorities, but the victim herself did. Inspector Hampton was furious and ruled that immigrants would no longer be sent to the jiib. Rabbi Cohen, who had been pressing for closer supervision of immigrants by the jiib, resigned from the jiib for some or all of these reasons: to protest Hampton’s ruling, to demonstrate to the jiib that more supervision was needed, and to indicate that he simply did not have the funds to provide help for the most needy immigrants. Hampton, who greatly admired the Rabbi, appealed to him to withdraw his resignation, as did Schiff and Bressler. In the end, Rabbi Cohen chose to remain, and he received from Schiff $600 per year to spend at his discretion. Bressler came to Galveston to resolve the problem with Hampton, and the work of the movement continued.14 Then came the infamous “hernia epidemic.” Suddenly, in July 1913, eight cases of hernia were discovered by the medical inspector, Dr. Behrenberg. Not only were these immigrants deported, but none of their relatives were allowed to come to America. Hernia cases were found in Galveston at six times the rate that they were being found in Philadelphia, and ten times the rate in New York. Zangwill wrote Bressler that “your doctor has a morbid flair for hernia.” Bressler defended the local doctor, suggesting that the reasons for the increase in hernia cases were that Dr. Behrenberg took his job so seriously and because the smaller number of immigrants entering Galveston allowed time for more thorough examinations.15 But the fatal blow to the Galveston Movement came when Woodrow Wilson, with the ardent support of the restrictionist labor movement, was elected president. Schiff, whose Washington contacts were all Republican, lost much of his influence. Ironically, the restrictionists came to power in 1913, the very year that saw the largest number of Jewish immigrants come through Galveston: 3,000. The following year there was a drastic decline, to an average of 162 for the first three months. Schiff called a special meeting of the Galveston Committee on April 17, 1914. He proposed ending the Galveston Movement, noting that the actual number of Jews immigrating through Galveston thus far—9,000—was far short of his original goal of 20,000 to 25,000; moreover, in view of the prevailing political climate, it was unlikely that the goal would be reached in the foreseeable future. Given that Schiff was the sole donor, the commit-

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tee reluctantly but unanimously voted to shut down the movement. Schiff had spent $235,000 of the projected $500,000, but he did not regret his efforts nor those of the agencies involved. By the time the movement officially ended, on October 1, 1914, approximately 10,000 Jews had come from Russia through Galveston on 100 boats. Almost all had settled in the Southwest and Midwest. Surely they would attract other Jews. They would also strengthen the Jewish communities where they had found homes. Marinbach points out that the scattering of Jews throughout the United States made it possible for Judaism to be accepted as one of America’s three great religious traditions.16 For Rabbi Cohen, though, success was measured not by numbers but by the enormous impact that the movement had on each individual Jew who was able to begin life anew in a land where there truly was opportunity. The Rabbi’s focus on the individual and his ability to relate to the immigrants on a personal level was noted by Meigs Frost, a star reporter for the Galveston Daily News who covered the rise and demise of the movement. In 1936, after Frost had moved on to New Orleans, he recalled that when Rabbi Cohen was meeting with the immigrants, no one would have known that he was a rabbi: he was dressed in “a baggy black alpaca coat, baggier gray striped trousers, a sagging weather-stained hard straw hat.” Once, thus dressed, he entered the steerage area of a boat and began questioning a tall, broad-shouldered, big-chested, heavy-bearded Jewish immigrant. The man snarled at the Rabbi in Yiddish: “What is that to you?” “I beg your pardon,” said the Rabbi, and moved on to a circle of other immigrants. While the Rabbi was discussing their problems with them, the man who had snarled at him barged into the crowd, fell to his knees, and kissed the Rabbi’s feet, beseeching his pardon. He had had no idea that the man in the baggy clothes was the Rabbi of Galveston. The Rabbi helped the man to his feet and said, “I understand. You were worried. But this is unseemly. Now, let’s get you straightened out.”17 Rabbi Cohen’s impact on one family was conveyed to me in a letter from Milton Harelik, whose father, Haskel, landed in Galveston in 1909 at the age of nineteen. Haskel spoke eloquently to Milton of how Rabbi Cohen, talking in Yiddish, made him feel “at home.” In 1913, Haskell married Milton’s mother, Matley, with whom he had

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traveled from Russia in 1912. They had three sons: Sam, Louis, and Milton. Haskell became a banana peddler and later owned a grocery store and then a dry goods store in Hamilton, seventy miles west of Waco. After serving in the military during the Second World War, Sam and Louis opened stores in Waco and Commanche. Milton inherited the family store in Hamilton. He had three children: the oldest, Mark, wrote a play, “The Immigrant, a Hamilton County Album,” based on his family’s history and performed in many theaters throughout the country. Though his is the only Jewish family remaining in Hamilton, Milton writes that “the city has just recently built a hospital on land that Poppa donated . . . We belong to Agudath Jacob synagogue in Waco . . . I like to think that fate and Rabbi Cohen each combined to steer us to this magic life we lead.” The December 27, 1914, issue of the Galveston Daily News tells the tale of the end of the Galveston Movement. One of the headlines reads: “Personality of Dr. Henry Cohen Uppermost for Hardly an Immigrant Ship Since 1907 has Touched Galveston Port, but What the Rabbi Was as Familiar a Figure as Immigration Officials.” On the same page, along with photos of immigrants with the Rabbi, is a poem, titled “The Human Tide,” by Meigs Frost: Farmers and laborers, old and young Worn with the voyage across the sea; Chattering shrill in their native tongue Bearing their bundles wearily, Penned like cattle the wharves along With only half of their journey done, Over the world comes the shuffling throng, In through the gateway of Galveston . . . Into the melting pot they pour Slav and German and Pole and Jew, Pilgrims all, who have sought a shore Where men are judged by the work they do, And the work is waiting, homes and rest For the Old World toilers, every one, Drawn by the lure of the great Southwest In through the gateway of Galveston.

Rabbi Cohen in the early 1900’s.

Rabbi Cohen’s wife, Mollie.

CH A P T ER 8

“Dear Graduates” ON BEING A RABBI

I

n June 1916, Henry Cohen was given the privilege of delivering the Baccalaureate Address to the graduating class at the Hebrew Union College. He spoke to them as “dear graduates,” and while the lecture was given no title, its theme was “on being a rabbi.” Rabbi Cohen reflected on his experiences as Galveston’s rabbi since 1888. From 1907 through 1914, he was deeply involved with the Galveston Movement, but there was much more on his cuff to keep him busy. During that period certain episodes stand out as emblematic of what he meant by being a rabbi. Rabbi Cohen taught by doing. He led by example. When he spoke from the pulpit, his life was his text. In 1908, a youngster named Sam Robinson, after completing his Sunday School studies at B’nai Israel, participated in the Confirmation Service. In most Reform congregations Confirmation is held on the festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and the Israelite’s response: “Naaseh v’nishma” (We will do and we will listen [or pay heed]). Sam Robinson had been brought to Galveston from Russia by his widowed father at the turn of the century, when he was but seven. In Sunday School he not only took to Jewish learning but came to view Henry Cohen as his model and mentor. In Hasidic terms, Henry

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Cohen was his “tzaddik,” the righteous one whose example should be emulated. In the summer of 1907, the Rabbi’s daughter, Ruth, graduated from Ball High School as valedictorian. Sam, also a student at Ball High, was called to the study of the Rabbi. According to Sam’s son, Rabbi Michael Robinson, the conversation went something like this: Rabbi: Sam, you know who was valedictorian this year? Sam: Yes, sir, your daughter, Ruth. Rabbi: Sam, when you graduate, you will be the only Jew in your class. Sam: Yes sir, I know. Rabbi: So then you should also know that you must be valedictorian. Sam: Yes, Rabbi. Motivated by his “tzaddik,” Sam did become valedictorian. He went on to become what his son, Rabbi Robinson, called, “a Henry Cohen Jew.” This meant a Jew who excelled not only in the study of his Jewish heritage but in the pursuit of secular knowledge, from science to the humanities. This meant a Jew who throughout his life was a person of integrity. This meant, in the Talmudic phrase, “being the same on the outside as one was on the inside.”1 This meant a Jew who was persistently committed to justice for Jew and non-Jew alike. Sam Robinson learned these lessons not only by studying Torah but—to borrow a Hasidic phrase—by watching Rabbi Cohen “tie his bootstraps.” Sam grew to maturity and left Galveston, eventually settling down in Asheville, North Carolina, where he taught Sunday School, and as an optometrist became a highly respected citizen of that city, nestled in the foothills of the Smokies. In 1929, when Rabbi Cohen was in Asheville for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, he named Sam’s son, David. Sam transmitted the basic values of Rabbi Cohen to his children, and one of them, Michael, also became “a Henry Cohen Jew,” active and effective in both the Civil Rights and Peace movements. In a sense, Henry Cohen was Michael’s spiritual grandfather. In about 1911, an incident occurred that typifies the rabbinate of Henry Cohen and that has become part of Texas legend. According

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to Rabbi Abraham Cronbach, professor at the Hebrew Union College, there are no fewer than four versions of the story.2 Probably the first written account of the tale can be found in Meigs Frost’s 1936 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune. According to Frost, he witnessed several dramatic events involving the Rabbi during the Galveston Movement, but Rabbi Cohen insisted that he not write about them. More than twenty years later, Frost felt free from the rabbinic restriction and so he wrote: There was another immigrant in Galveston. The immigration authorities ruled that he must be sent back to Europe; nobody but the Commissioner of Immigration or the President of the United States could reverse the ruling. “Will you hold him here until I can see the President?” asked Dr. Cohen. The immigration authority in Galveston agreed to that. Dr. Cohen had about $100 in his pocket. He rode his bicycle down to the Santa Fe station and took the train to Washington, after telephoning his wife from the depot and buying a toothbrush there. From the Washington station he drove straight to the White House; was received by President Taft. Swiftly, in staccato sentences, he outlined the case to the President of the United States. “The man will be shot for political reasons the minute he is sent back to Europe,” said Dr. Cohen. “I give you my personal word he is a worthy man and has committed no crime.” “He can stay here,” said President Taft, “since you vouch for him.” Taft called a secretary reversing the immigration ruling. Then “I’m sorry you were put to so much trouble for one of your co-religionists, Dr. Cohen,” said the President. “Co-religionist, hell!” said the weary rabbi. “The man is an Orthodox Greek Catholic!”3 In 1963, Rabbi Cronbach narrated another version of the story. The man’s name was Demchuk. He was a boiler maker from Russia and had come to Galveston to obtain a job which would enable him to bring to America his starving family, consisting of a wife and four children. When Rabbi Cohen went to Washington, he first pleaded,

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in vain, at the Department of Labor. Then, aided by his congressman, he gained access to President Taft. The president said: “I’m sorry this had to happen, Rabbi Cohen. But allow me to say that I certainly admire the way you Jews help each other—traveling all the way here from Galveston, Texas, when a member of your faith is in trouble.” The Rabbi replied: “Member of my faith! This man is not a Jew. He’s a Greek-Catholic!” The president was so impressed by the fact that the Rabbi had come such a distance for one who was not Jewish, that he rang for his secretary and remanded the order of deportation. Demchuk eventually found a job in a boiler factory and brought his family from Russia.4 My cousin, David Frisch, who passed away at the age of seventythree in 1991, was skeptical of the veracity of the story. I believed every word. After I became rabbi emeritus, I decided to settle the argument once and for all. So I went to the Library of Congress in Washington to get the facts. Unfortunately the papers did not include a daily appointment book during Taft’s presidential years. But I did find some interesting correspondence between Taft and Rabbi Cohen. The Rabbi sent a letter of congratulations to President and Mrs. Taft on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. (That’s the only time to my knowledge that Rabbi Cohen sent a congratulatory message to any president for a family simchah.)5 More significant, the president’s half-brother, Charles, on whom the president depended for advice and financial support, was accused of profiting from a land grab in Alaska because of insider information. The president was viewed by some as benefiting from the transaction. Taft was stung by this attack on his reputation, and on June 17, 1911, he wrote to Rabbi Cohen that he was not involved in any way with the transaction. Rabbi Cohen responded that he recognized immediately that the accusation in the local paper was “a canard.” He concluded by assuring the president’s personal secretary: “We have always felt that the high standard of integrity manifested by Mr. Taft warrants our thorough confidence in his personal unassailability.”6 I found it quite significant that the president of the United States would write the Rabbi of Galveston defending his own integrity, and that the Rabbi would assure the president that he never doubted his moral character. This suggests to me that there had to be a connec-

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tion between the two men. This exchange may well be considered circumstantial evidence that a humane President Taft could very well have facilitated what today we would call political asylum for a Russian refugee—though I have my doubts about the details of the story. A colleague has suggested that my obsession with “the facts” is unwarranted. The deeper meaning of the story is the truth of a rabbi who would take extraordinary measures to help a fellow human being, whatever his/her faith. There was one wrong that the Rabbi was not able to right. In 1913, in Marietta, Georgia, a watchman in the National Pencil Company discovered the body of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been brutally murdered. Her name was Mary Phagan, and she worked at the factory, which was managed by a Jew from New York, Leo Frank. Even though numerous witnesses corroborated Frank’s statement that he was at home with his family when the murder occurred, rumors circulated about “Jewish lust of Gentile women,” and Frank was arrested. The very day of his indictment, Jim Conley, an African American sweeper/handyman and an ex-convict recently dismissed from the pencil factory, confessed to the murder in writing. Conley later changed his testimony and claimed that Frank had dictated the confession in exchange for $200. The jury chose to believe Conley. The trial occurred in an atmosphere of anti-Semitic hysteria stirred up by Tom Watson, a populist. Despite the efforts of a firstrate team of attorneys from New York (or perhaps because they were New Yorkers), Frank was given the death sentence. Rabbi Cohen had been following the case closely and twice wrote to Frank offering hope that justice would ultimately prevail. Frank replied to the Rabbi in words that show remarkable faith: This . . . I know, “the Truth is on the march!” The clouds that have surrounded me must give way to rays of the light of God’s eternal truth. I am of good courage for God has been my strength and my comfort. The forces of error and evil cannot withstand the phalanx of God’s eternal truth.7 Frank’s faith seemed to be warranted, when Governor Slaton commuted the death sentence to life in prison. Surely, eventually the truth would be believed. But the anti-Semitic crowd became infuriat-

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ed at the commutation. Watson called mass rallies to protest, and the governor was burned in effigy. (His action would cost him the next election.) In 1915, Frank, who had been taken to a prison in Midgeville for safekeeping, had his throat slashed by a fellow prisoner. After emergency surgery, he recovered from the wound. One month later twenty-five men stormed into the prison’s hospital, seized Frank, and brought him outside, where he was lynched by the mob. He reportedly met his death “with courage and silence.”8 The lynching of Leo Frank sent shock waves throughout American Jewry, particularly in the South, where Jews were so proud of their excellent relations with their Gentile neighbors. This pride was made clear to me when, as a rabbinical student, I was sent to Huntsville, Alabama, to conduct High Holyday services. The day before Rosh Hashanah the president of the congregation and I were setting the Torah scroll to open at the reading for the day. We were shocked to find that the scroll was held together not by the usual leather strap or cord but by a brassiere. The president’s response to this desecration was immediate: “This was done by one of our kids. No Gentile would do such a thing. We get along very well with our Christian neighbors.” Evidently, despite the dispersion of Jews from urban centers in the Northeast, the virus of anti-Semitism could still run rampant, particularly when economic conditions produced anger and frustration among poor Americans, who would then look for a scapegoat. It is interesting that Frank rather than Conley was chosen for the victim’s role. Why the Jew rather than the African American, especially given the racism that resulted in so many lynchings of African Americans in the South? Perhaps because Frank was identified with the antiSemites’ sick fantasy of a conspiracy of rich Jewish capitalists—an ominous sign of darker days to come. Even in Galveston, a city known for its tolerance, an anti-Semitic incident was brought to the attention of Rabbi Cohen. In December 1915, the Rabbi was made aware that a Ball High School student, Migel Krulewich, had twice undergone hazing that had anti-Semitic overtones. The Rabbi immediately wrote the principal: If boys want a vent to their animal spirits, let them play baseball, football, or any other game they wish. Hazing such as obtains at the Ball School, has, as you see, degenerated into

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spite work, in which the mob spirit came to the fore . . . thru it all, the spirit of animus against the Jew was manifested. That however, was not as bad as the fact that when he was taken into your room, the boys gathered outside the window, shouting “Give us the Jew,” “We want the sheeny,” “Down with the Jews,” etc. etc. Whatever notice you took of the matter the first day was futile, for on the second day, the “horse-play” occurred again, and after Mr. Krulewich, the father of the boy interfered, a number of “rahs” were given for the “Kike.” I have never thought that the public school would be the cradle of such mob spirit as condemned Frank to the gallows.9 Rabbi Cohen, at his own initiative, was given permission to address the student body. There is no record of his remarks, but one can imagine that he minced no words. Even as the Galveston Movement was becoming history, Rabbi Cohen was called upon to be of help to another group of refugees, United States citizens who were fleeing Mexico. When President Wilson refused to recognize the military regime of General Huerta, who, in turn, refused to recognize the flag of the United States, marines landed in Vera Cruz and 600 United States citizens rushed home through the port of Galveston. Throughout 1914–1915, at the request of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the Rabbi administered a relief fund of $75,000 provided by the Red Cross. Now a veteran welfare worker, he was making such decisions as whether or not to purchase 25,000 pounds of Manchurian lima beans which a Louisiana company wanted “to move [at] a cheap price, in order to get out from them before the next crop begins to come in.” It is not known if the Rabbi came to the aid of the Lake Charles wholesaler, but it is known that he helped hundreds of American citizens in distress. To cite one instance: The Rabbi was instrumental in securing the release of a Mr. Richardson from a firing squad. The details are obscure, but when Mr. Richardson returned to the United States via Galveston, he went directly to the Rabbi and thanked him for his life.10 Rabbi Cohen’s humanitarian work became known not only throughout Texas but throughout the nation. The journalist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce found his way to 1920 Broadway when he was in Galveston. There he dined with the Rabbi and his family. Bierce was impressed by a rabbi who literally lived the universalist words he

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preached. The two men exchanged publications. Cohen gave Bierce a copy of his collection, Talmudic Sayings, and Bierce gave the Rabbi a copy of his pamphlet, Write It Right. The author inscribed the pamphlet to his favorite rabbi with the following couplet: As those who hunger are not those invited to the feast, This morsel of instruction comes to one who needs it least. Before leaving for Mexico, where he disappeared and died, probably in 1914, fighting for revolutionaries, Bierce left to the University of California a small collection of those books he most valued, among them, Talmudic Sayings, by Rabbi Henry Cohen.11 Prior to America’s entry into the First World War, Rabbi Cohen found it necessary to intervene on behalf of at least one soldier in a crisis situation. Stationed in Brownsville, at the southern tip of the Rio Grande Valley, was a Private Sam Steinberg who had made pregnant a twenty-year-old woman whom he had promised to marry. On November 2, 1915, the Rabbi wrote to his commanding officer: The coming child should have a legal father, and all concerned believe that under the circumstances Steinberg should marry the woman . . . Is it not in your power to discharge the man from his military obligations in order to [do] . . . the least that he can; namely marrying the girl he has ruined. As an officer and a gentleman, you will, I am sure, help me to further this. Yours faithfully . . .12 Private Steinberg was given a furlough, during which Rabbi Cohen officiated at his marriage ceremony. As Steinberg had not been discharged from his army service, the Rabbi wrote to a higher authority, Col. Hatch, Commander of the Fourth Infantry, in Brownsville: His [Steinberg’s] wife is in no condition to earn a living, and neither of them have any money. Steinberg’s wages will not support his wife, even if he sent the whole of it to her, while as a civilian he could earn a living for himself and Mrs. Steinberg. Is it not possible to obtain his discharge? I am under the impres-

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sion that Washington would take these circumstances into consideration.13 The colonel responded that the War Department did allow a soldier to purchase his discharge under certain conditions. He indicated to Rabbi Cohen the proper procedure. There is no written record of the outcome. Given the Rabbi’s reputation, I tend to believe that Private Steinberg, in all likelihood, became a civilian. How the marriage worked out is anybody’s guess. The following year, in June 1916, Rabbi Cohen delivered the Baccalaureate Address to the newly ordained rabbis at the Hebrew Union College. Among them was James Heller, son of Henry Cohen’s friend Max Heller, who was a rabbi in New Orleans. There were eleven students in the class, the largest class in the history of the College that had been established by Isaac Mayer Wise in 1875. On the eve of his country’s entry into World War I, in a speech addressed to “Dear Graduates,” Rabbi Cohen reflected on what “being a rabbi” should mean: Now more than ever is needed the student of religion in its practical application; now more that ever is the day of the idealist . . . Israel by its history . . . is destined through its chosen teachers [who] will lift their voice, to be a great factor in the preservation of permanent peace. Rabbi Cohen warned the graduates not to enter the rabbinate for materialistic reasons: Other callings and professions are chosen and followed for the comfort that may accrue to the material side of life . . . [But] woe to the rabbi whose choice of his profession is based on the belief that his life’s work will give him ease and comfort, social preferment or more than a living for himself and his nearest household! The rabbi is at all times the cynosure of all eyes, a lawful object of criticism, whether he serve his community for one year or for thirty. Despite the limits of the vocation, he said,

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Of reward there is much! The consciousness of duty well done; the devotion of one’s people and because of that love and devotion, a tendency and a willingness to follow the teachings of the spiritual guide to the greater glory of the cause and to the exaltation of the Jewish name; a general spirit of helpfulness in the community with its concomitant excellent results . . . If there have been pains there are gains; lefum tsaara agra (according to the distress is the reward). Rabbi Cohen put his greatest emphasis on the role of rabbi as teacher, through Sunday School, sermons, and, above all, through example. “The religious classes . . . are more than often a reflex of the rabbi’s personality. His ardent affection for his faith and his unfailing pride in Judaism calls forth like sentiments in his pupils.” In an old New Yorker cartoon, one seminarian turns to another and asks: “You mean we have to love our neighbor even though we don’t like him?” Rabbi Cohen’s response: No more than we can all love one another in the intimate sense of the word can we be even friendly, each with the other, in the intimate sense of the word! “Love thy neighbor as thyself” explains the condition. Affection is not here considered, the implication is righteous interest. Now, I am positive that when a rabbi is interested in his flock, half the struggle for their welfare is accomplished. Reflecting his own experience at 1920 Broadway, he told the class: “The rabbi’s open house encourages more than the acquaintanceship of casual visiting, and by way of the worn path to his office there will be smoothed over many a congregational problem. It was said of a lamented Southern rabbi, and inscribed upon his tombstone, ‘A man always to be found when wanted, and always to be trusted when found!’” Many rabbis, then as now, are disappointed if they must remain in smaller communities. Rabbi Cohen’s response: If contentment is a virtue, the virtue is enhanced a thousandfold when the rabbi, particularly the young rabbi, is content to

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remain in a small city and to visit, in circuit, towns and hamlets, faithfully to minister to the needs of his people, seeking that promotion only to which he is entitled by his ability and actual work . . . All sociological service finds in him a ready help according to his ability, and social conditions otherwise give him a distinct place. This intimate relationship between priest and people may not obtain to as great an extent in populous enters as it does in towns, but even in large cities the Jewish leader is from time to time called upon to exercise these very functions—and he would not be found wanting. This was not mere rhetoric. When a rabbi was needed in a small community that had no rabbi (e.g., Victoria, Texas), Henry Cohen was there. Finally, Rabbi Cohen sounded as though he was referring to religious trends in the 1990’s: But above all, the Jewish pulpit must stand for spirituality. Lectures in their place, but sermons—spiritual outpourings— always! Book reviews, topical subjects in due season, calls to social welfare as occasion demands, the tocsin against political abuses—these may be in place, and who shall deny the pulpit a voice for the upkeep of educational and charitable institutions? Above all else, however, the rabbi must minister to the heartbroken and sorrow-laden; he must cheer the bruised of spirit and encourage the weary; he must bring God’s comfort to the bereaved and console the failures in life’s battles. His clarion call to duty must be lifted in no uncertain voice, drawing on the wisdom of the ages and the trials and triumphs of his people to serve the purpose of a spiritual renascence.14 This was vintage Henry Cohen before the United States entered the First World War. Rabbi as teacher, as example, as pastor—he was greatly appreciated by his congregation. The synagogue honored him again after twenty and twenty-five years of service.15 But it was not until after 1917 that Henry Cohen would emerge as the voice of moral protest against social injustice, as the prophet who spoke truth to power.

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From the Kaiser to the Klan

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n June 1916, when Rabbi Cohen was urging newly ordained rabbis “to be a great factor in the preservation of permanent peace,” he was reflecting the spirit of the times. While Britain and France were locked in the bloody battles of the First World War with Germany, then ruled by Kaiser William II, both Republican Charles Evan Hughes and Democrat Woodrow Wilson were campaigning on a peace platform. Wilson had tried to negotiate between the warring nations and achieve a “peace without victory.” He seemed to regard the war as a conflict of commercial powers over the spoils of empire. But after Wilson won the election and began his second term in office, Germany launched a submarine campaign that resulted in the sinking of six American vessels, three of them carrying Americans, many of whom drowned at sea. The president believed that America had to respond by force. Some historians suggest that American investors had a stake in an Anglo-French victory. The conventional wisdom came to be that there was more to fear from the victory of the German imperial government, which would then expand its empire, than from the British, whose empire had already expanded. After the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Wilson told the American people that this was a war to end all wars, a war to make the world safe for democracy.1

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Rabbi Cohen, believing the justification, became one of many civic and religious leaders who gave brief speeches informing and inspiring the public to support the war effort, to buy Liberty Bonds. The day after America entered the war, the Rabbi’s son, Harry, volunteered. He was sent to France with “Blackjack” Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force. Harry would later joke that during the war, he was at the front—the front of the Hotel Continental in Paris. What was no joke was the influenza epidemic that affected many American soldiers, including Harry, and that was years later to be considered the origin of the Parkinson’s disease that forced him into early retirement and made his last twenty years frustrating and painful for himself and his family. Rabbi Cohen was proud of his son’s patriotism, as was evident in photos of the two posing together, the young lieutenant and the admiring father. The Rabbi learned that there was no provision for Jewish chaplains in the United States Navy. He urged Congress to pass and the president to sign the Naval Chaplain Bill. President Wilson, recognizing the Rabbi’s role, sent him the pen with which he had signed the legislation. Rabbi Cohen also functioned as unofficial chaplain to the Jewish soldiers at Fort Crockett in Galveston. Reminiscing about the war, the Rabbi told his son and daughter-inlaw that he once received a visit from a soldier named Mandel who was stationed at Camp Logan in Houston. Rabbi Cohen recognized him as one of the immigrants who had come to the United States through the Galveston Movement. It was Mandel who had to remind the rabbi that he had arrived on the S.S. Cassel and was the same man who had responded to the mayor’s greeting: “A time may come when your country will need us; we will not hesitate to serve you with our blood.”2 On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, Rabbi Cohen expressed his optimistic hope for the future in a poem, “The Harvest,” published in the Galveston Daily News: What hath not been on earth indeed shall be From evil good shall come eternally! The seeds of war were sown in ruthless wrath Behold! The peace shall bring its aftermath.

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Our children’s heirs shall live in bonds secure; No battle cry be theirs, nor sword’s allure We found ourselves, and now we know our might, We fear not, for the war hath brought us light. In pain we learned to love our brother men, No place on earth for strife barbarian For human conscience hath its quickening, All men shall bless the day of reckoning!3 While America was fighting to defend democracy abroad, antidemocratic elements had begun to arise within the United States. The Ku Klux Klan, which was first formed during the Reconstruction era to use intimidation and violence to prevent newly freed Blacks from gaining significant political power, experienced a revival in 1915. In the atmosphere that surrounded the lynching of Leo Frank and the release of D. W. Griffith’s racist The Birth of a Nation, a small group of men went to Stone Mountain in Atlanta and proclaimed the rebirth of the Klan. In the 1920’s, the Klan broadened its attack to include not just Blacks but Catholics, Jews, and the general immorality it claimed was rampant and which could be curbed by the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages. By 1921, the state with the largest number of Klan members (875,000) was Michigan. It was during this time that Henry Ford came to believe that wealthy Jewish bankers and Jewish Communists were undermining all that was good in America. This venom was spewed forth in Ford’s publication, The Dearborn Independent.4 Many Jews, including the Rabbi, refused to buy Fords. The Klan came to Texas as part of a United Confederate Veterans Parade in Houston on October 9, 1920. Featured in the parade was William Joseph Simmons of Atlanta, the Imperial Wizard of the secret society, given a charter by the state of Georgia as the “Invisible Empire, Knights of Ku Klux Klan, Inc.” George Kimbro, former Harris County deputy sheriff, became the State Kleagle, and Houston became the base of statewide Klan operations. In Houston, Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly was published with hateful articles bearing

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such titles as “Kikes and Katholics.”5 In Texas, more than in other states, the Klan carried out vigilante punishment against those who violated its strict moral code. Klan members flogged a Goose Creek couple who had committed adultery and tarred and feathered J. S. Paul of Beaumont for performing an abortion. In 1920, the Texas Klan led the nation with ten lynchings.6 In 1921, Rabbi Cohen learned that touring Texas was a vaudeville act that showed Jews kissing money. (If this was not Klan related, it was certainly in the spirit of the hate group.) The Rabbi vigorously protested, and the offending scene was eliminated from the act.7 In 1922, Hiram Evans of Dallas became the Imperial Wizard. At a mass meeting of 75,000, Evans accused the Jews of “racial and religious antipathy unrelenting and unabating.” Jews were condemned for their racialism, bolshevism, and financial conspiracy. Evans changed tactics as he instructed Klan members to cut back on their unpopular vigilante activity so that the Klan might enter the political arena. There were initial successes. Klan candidate Earle Mayfield was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1922. By 1923, at least a third of the Texas legislators were Klansmen or Klan sympathizers. The Klan was posing as protector of fundamentalist Protestantism: “the living Christ is a Klansman’s criterion of character.” But this distortion of Christianity did not fool the majority of Texas voters, who in 1924 gave Miriam “Ma” Ferguson a decisive victory over Klan candidate Felix Robertson. In 1926, Dan Moody was elected governor. Moody, as the state’s district attorney, had successfully prosecuted Klansman Murray Jackson for the brutal beating of Robert Burleson for the “crime” of having sexual relations with a widow. In 1927, Governor Moody could proclaim: “The Klan in Texas is as dead as a doornail.”8 Among all the cities of Texas, Galveston was unique in that it did not become a center of significant Klan activity. A Klavern was established on November 18, 1920, and its dues were collected by William Moody III, son of one of Galveston’s most powerful and wealthy families. The Klan did stage an initiation ceremony on September 3, 1922, with two crosses blazing with electric lights on either end of a fenced-in field. Still, the KKK made no real progress in Galveston. Among the reasons for such minimal Klan activity in Galveston was the high regard with which Galvestonians viewed Rabbi Cohen and Father Kirwin, hometown heroes, especially since their work to

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revive the city after the Storm of 1900. Through the influence of Cohen and Kirwin, the Klan was denied a permit to march through the city. Father Kirwin and Father Marius Chataignoon threatened to bring a cadre of parishioners to break up any such event with tear gas.9 Because of the efforts of Rabbi Cohen, the pro-Klan film Birth of a Nation was not shown in Galveston. The Klan was also vigorously opposed by the Galveston press, particularly the afternoon paper, the Tribune, which happened to be published by Harry, the Rabbi’s son. Another reason given for the Klan’s lack of success in Galveston was that Galveston had remained relatively stable in population, compared with large population growth in Houston and Dallas— growth that resulted in greater numbers of frustrated citizens.10 Finally, Galveston had always taken a certain pride in being “insular,” remaining somewhat apart from the mainland culture. One example: the drive for Prohibition met with little sympathy in Galveston, where one could always buy drinks in easily accessible private clubs. The tale most widely told about Rabbi Cohen during this period dealt with a Christian preacher from North Texas who had given a sermon denouncing Jews, saying that they brought prejudice on themselves and that they should mend their ways. This same preacher happened to be attending a dinner held in honor of the Rabbi’s friend from Scotland, Sir Harry Lauder, the vaudeville vocalist who often came to perform in Galveston and who could always count on the Rabbi to provide him with the finest Scotch whiskey. The Rabbi, who was the featured speaker, observed the presence of the antiSemitic preacher and spontaneously denounced all forms of prejudice, asserting that Jews were no better or worse than members of other religious groups. His words were spontaneous, and there is no written record. However, this was probably the occasion when the Rabbi made his oft-repeated statement: “To me there is no such thing as Episcopalian scarlet fever, Catholic arthritis, or Jewish mumps.”11 By 1925, the Klan had reached its peak and began its steady decline. Then Jews felt sufficiently secure to use a common Jewish tactic, retaliation by humor: On a train in West Texas a large Klansman sat next to a little Jew. He offered the Jew a ham sandwich. The Jew refused. He then offered him some wine. “Kosher?” asked the Jew. “Hell, no,” said the Klansman. Again the Jew refused. The Klansman pulled out a gun and demanded: “Drink this wine.”

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The Jew replied: “Well, as long as I’m trapped, I’ll take the sandwich too.”12 Somerset Maugham once said that there were no people whose “sense of humor made such cruel fun of its own race.”13 This particular joke managed to make fun simultaneously of both the Jew and the Klansman. Any satisfaction the Rabbi may have felt with the decline of the Klan was tempered by a personal tragedy. Even as the Klan was in decline, in 1926, the Rabbi lost his closest friend, Father Jim Kirwin. The two had been partners in their battle against prejudice and intolerance for more than twenty-five years. The Rabbi’s son, Harry, wrote in the Galveston Tribune: “Suffice it to say that was the saddest day in the Rabbi’s life . . . when bareheaded with unconcealed tears flowing down his cheek, he followed behind the bier of his dearest friend through the streets of a city they had loved and served so well.” Eight years after Father Kirwin’s death, Harry I. Cohen, my father, kept the priest’s memory alive in a beautiful tribute published in the Catholic periodical America, July 31, 1934. In the conclusion, he related an incident that occurred when the Klan was holding a parade in Houston: Yet the most courageous act which he [Kirwin] performed, and the one that had the most far-reaching consequences, was his refusal to salute an American flag flying on the corner of Main and McKinney in Houston, the raising of which the Klan had sponsored. “That flag,” said Father Kirwin, “has a dirty spot on it.”14 The following year, 1927, gave the Jewish community another reason for relief and even laughter. Henry Ford had been sued by Aaron Sapiro, an organizer of farm cooperatives. In Ford’s Dearborn Independent there appeared an article asserting that “the Jew is not an agriculturalist . . . only land that produces gold from the mine, and land that produces rents” is of relevance to him. The Dearborn Independent accused Sapiro of being part of a Jewish conspiracy to take control of America’s precious farmland.15 Ford was advised by his attorneys to issue a public apology and to cease publication of any article that might be offensive to Jews. The prominent Jewish attorney Louis Marshall wrote the apology. Ford, without even reading it,

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signed.16 Soon thereafter a vaudeville duo, the Happiness Boys, recorded on a Victor label a song sung with a Yiddish accent, “Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me.”17 The Rabbi’s son, Harry, considered the record a bit of history to be treasured. He must have played it for his father on the Victrola in the parlor. One can imagine the Rabbi smiling with grim satisfaction as he heard the chorus: Oh, I was sad and I was blue But now I’m just as good as you Since Henry Ford apologized to me That’s why you threw away your little Chevrolet And bought yourself a Ford coupe I told the superintendent that the Dearborn Independent Doesn’t have to hang up where it use to be. Rabbi Cohen and many other Americans ceased their boycott of the Ford Motor Company. From the Klan to a Ford coupe—the 1920’s saw the rise and decline of anti-Semitism. But the virus was not dead.

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Prison Reform THE RABBI AND THE CONVICT

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mong the remarkable qualities of Rabbi Henry Cohen was his ability to deal with a variety of issues and responsibilities simultaneously. During the 1920’s, he was fighting the Klan, meeting the spiritual needs of his congregants, and—most significantly—leading the battle for prison reform in Texas. Before the First World War, he had, on occasion, helped a former convict find a job so that he could fulfill a productive function in society. In 1917, the Rabbi was chairman of a state commission on the aftercare of prisoners. At a state conference in Austin he pleaded: What chance has a pardoned or released prisoner? He leaves the walls feeling disgraced and dishonored. The state gives him often-times only a second-hand suit of clothes, prison-made shoes that every detective can discern a block away, a ticket to the city or town from which he was convicted, and the munificent sum of $5! How in the name of heaven can he start life all over again? He is in a new world, oftentimes without a friend, no one to help him, no one to cheer him, no one to encourage him.1

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The Rabbi deplored the sometimes cruel treatment of prisoners, who were still being whipped into obedience. Rabbi Cohen wrote in 1917: For upwards of a quarter-century, I have asked friendless men, incarcerated in the State penitentiaries, to come to Galveston on their discharge. My plan is to find work for them—work that they can do best—and persuade them to report to me weekly . . . Occasionally, I select an altruistically inclined individual in whose care I place the man—and, if necessary, I pay the man’s living expenses, he believing that he is earning his wage, until such time as he can be put on the payroll. After a year of supervision, I am willing to allow the newly made men to leave town if it be to their advantage, and from the numerous letters I receive from them or their employers, I am satisfied with the effort.2 Speeches at conferences, no matter how eloquent, would not bring public opinion behind prison reform. Many Texans objected to any reform that might be considered “coddling” the prisoner. Marcellus Foster, editor of the Houston Chronicle and a supporter of reform, told the Rabbi that he had encountered more indifference to the fight for prison reform than any other social program his paper had sponsored. To counter such adverse opinion, the Rabbi called in speakers such as penologist Frank Tannenbaum, who came Galveston to argue for changes in the system.3 In 1921, at an address before an open forum in Dallas, Rabbi Cohen returned to his most pressing concern: the plight of the released prisoner. He informed his audience that in Galveston eleven former convicts now “move in business and professional circles.” He claimed that 80 percent of those discharged from jail and supervised by a relief organization “go straight.” His arguments were based on economic self-interest and morality: There are 25,000 men released annually from state prisons. Statistics have been collected that show 1200 men (who were supervised) found jobs [that] earned $800,000 in one year. It cost only $25 to $50 a piece to get them jobs and establish them in communities, yet the state spent three million dollars a year

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keeping them in prison, without teaching them a thing to do on their release. People of the United States spent 750 million dollars on face powder and cosmetics last year. They spent 500 million dollars on chewing gum. Ice cream and soda water cost 350 million dollars more and three billion dollars were spent on the movies. Only one billion was spent on all educational work, and practically nothing, compared with the above vast sums, went for the correction of conditions that now make a man released from prison feel, as many a heartless warden tells him, “It won’t be long til you’re back.” There were many questions from the audience. Among them: “How can we raise a man’s morale in prison so as to remove the ‘down and out complex’?” The Rabbi replied: “That should be begun in prison. An expert psychologist should work on prisoners and should analyze every man. Some cases are mental defects, fit subjects for hospital care. Others are normal. Some deviate slightly from normality. Each should be treated differently.” A socialist in the audience asked: “Should there not be a reorganization of the social system so as to provide jobs, not only for released prisoners, but also for the vast numbers of unemployed?” The Rabbi responded: My friend, there should also be a millennium when every man should be perfect, but that time, I fear is not at hand. So we must do the best we can with what we have. Part of your question is serious, though. About the scarcity of jobs. My organization in Galveston deprives no man of a job, we pay his salary to the employer who pays it to him. This is to save the prisoner’s self-respect. And in most instances, the employer comes to us, and says that the man has made good and he has a legitimate place for him in his establishment.4 Rabbi Cohen’s humanitarian work, from the Galveston Movement to prison reform, had earned him a high place in the esteem of his Reform Jewish colleagues. The year the Rabbi spoke at the open forum in Dallas, 1921, was the same year that the Hebrew Union

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College lost its president, the outstanding theologian Kaufmann Kohler. The board of the College was searching for a successor. Its president, Carl Pritz, wrote Rabbi Cohen, asking if he would be willing to be considered for the position. The Rabbi replied by mail: he appreciated the honor of being asked, but he must decline, because “among other reasons, I have not the adequate scholarship to be the successor of Dr. Kohler.”5 To his many colleagues, he may have been the model for rabbi as pastor and as prophetic advocate of social morality. But, despite his writings on Texas Jewish history and the Talmud, he recognized his academic limitations. Rabbi Cohen was not, however, shy about exhorting his colleagues to fulfill the rabbi’s role as critic of social evils. In an address to the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1922, he insisted that where a political or economic situation becomes a moral issue, the pulpit must thunder forth . . . the temple should permit the greatest latitude to its rabbi. It should be “free” to the discussion of all sociological questions, whether running counter to preconceived opinions or not . . . It should welcome every phase of the problems that harass humanity, and it should contribute to the amelioration of all conditions that affect the body politic. As things now stand, many congregations consider religion as entirely separated from life—instead of insisting, once and for all that life and religion are inseparably bound, and that this bond has its warrant in all Jewish history and literature—whether found in the bible, Talmud, commentaries, responsa or general Jewish lore—early or late.6 Rabbi Cohen’s words were so effective because those who heard them, colleagues or congregants, knew that he lived by them. They knew, for example, that he was the most persistent of those who lobbied to raise the age of consent in the state of Texas from twelve to eighteen years. They knew that in 1924, he was instrumental in raising funds for a survey of prison conditions to be undertaken by the Texas Committee for Prisons and Prison Labor. (In thirty minutes he raised a significant sum from three Galveston businessmen.) The survey revealed deplorable conditions: the sick were often ignored, and there were deaths due to neglect and overwork. Also, prison farms

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located in river bottoms were regularly flooded, resulting in the loss of crops and livestock. A 1925 bill calling for the reorganization of the prison system passed the state legislature but was vetoed by Governor “Ma” Ferguson.7 In 1926, after the election of Governor Moody, the prison reform campaign was given new impetus. A campaign to arouse public interest was launched. In Galveston the Tribune editorial exhorted: “Last Call for Prison Reform,” and urged citizens to vote for legislators who would pass a bill mandating a reorganization of the prison system. A bill was passed authorizing the governor to appoint a state prison board to oversee the reorganization. Rabbi Cohen was one of the eight members on the board. Despite a lack of funds, the board managed to organize some educational and recreational activities in the prison communities. However, these communities lacked the facilities necessary for the segregation of the various types of inmates. Consequently, differential treatment, so basic to rehabilitation, was impossible. Legislation to provide the funding was needed. To support such legislation, Rabbi Cohen addressed a joint session of the Texas Legislature. In committee, the Rabbi was criticized by a legislator for allowing the state board to make extravagant purchases. He cited eyeglasses made for a prisoner, as an unnecessary luxury. The Rabbi replied that an optometrist friend had received no fee for examining the prisoner, and the lenses were purchased at cost. When the legislator became caustic and insulting, Governor Moody arose and told the critic: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Instead of criticizing Dr. Cohen, you should get down on your knees and thank God we have a man like him in the state of Texas.”8 Finally, in 1929, I. J. Holbrook’s excellent reform bill was passed. At long last, Texas had the framework for a modern and humane prison system. In 1930, the Rabbi, the battle having been won, resigned from the state board. But he continued his activities on behalf of released prisoners by serving on the local county parole board. In 1936, Rabbi Cohen spoke to the First Southwestern States Probation and Parole Conference, held in Galveston: I advocated a position-finding bureau as a part of our penitentiary system, to secure employment for prisoners before their discharge, but, for economic and other reasons, the plan fell

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thorough. The present system of Volunteer County Parole Boards, advocated by our young Governor, James V. Allred, has taken the place of the idea of the bureau; and it is a better more workable plan . . . The dream of rehabilitation has become a realized fact.9 During the more than twenty years when the Rabbi was working for prison reform, he became well known as an advocate for prisoners, and in that role received much correspondence from concerned citizens who wrote to him about both particular cases and more general issues, such as racism. In July 1927, one I. Rosenbaum of Dallas wrote to the Rabbi: You will pardon me for taking the liberty of suggesting to you a certain element in the penitentiary who, in my opinion, have not been given a fair deal and who have no friends to look to their interest; namely, the Negro. I have reference to those Negroes who have been given very long terms for slight offenses . . . In Dallas about two years ago two Negroes were sent up for five years, one for stealing a few cheap folding chairs from an unlocked church and the other for stealing some chickens. During the same term of court two white men were given five years suspended sentences, each, who committed murder on the highway.10 There is no written record of Rabbi Cohen’s response. Unfortunately, the Rabbi seems to have retained every letter written to him, but he very rarely kept a carbon copy of his response. Consequently, one can only speculate as to how the many cases brought to his attention were resolved. Knowing the Rabbi’s concern for people of every race and creed, I am confident that at the very least, he protested such discrimination in sentencing. A few months later, Rabbi Cohen received a poignant letter from an inmate at the Texas State Prison in Huntsville. This was a case involving alleged child abuse. I am a cripple, my right arm is off at my shoulder . . . I was sentenced at Corsicana, Texas, April 23rd, 1924; charged with

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incest and rape on my daughter. After my daughter seen what she done to me in making her first statement to the court, she then went before the open court later, after I was convicted, and made a full confession that I was not guilty of the charge and told the Court the name of the man that got her to make the false statement against me, to bring about my conviction . . . I have 6 little children, 4 girls and 2 boys, and they in different homes scattered about, they need my help very much . . . I wish I could see you and have a personal talk . . . My sentence was 25 years . . . my wife has been dead for several years . . . I hope to hear from you soon.11 Once again, there is no written record of the Rabbi’s response, but I have no doubt that he responded in the spirit of his sense of justice and compassion. Some stories that told about the length the Rabbi would go to right a wrong in the judicial system have become part of Texas lore. There was the case of a juvenile who was flogged in a state institution. Rabbi Cohen knew the boy would be better off with his parents, so he went to the judge to ask for his release. The judge refused. The Rabbi locked the door to the judge’s office and lectured him: “Remember how many times we picked you up out of the gutter. Of all people, you should give that boy a second chance.” The judge released the boy into the custody of the Rabbi.12 Then there was the case of a Turkish Jew who had been unjustly incarcerated in a mental hospital. Rabbi Cohen facilitated his release into the care of the Jewish community of El Paso.13 Another story told about Rabbi Cohen concerned a rumor that a man named Sydney Porter had been wrongfully convicted. The Rabbi investigated and became convinced that the rumor was a fact. He made an appeal to the governor on the man’s behalf. Months passed. Apparently the appeal had been in vain. Then, one morning there was a knock at the Rabbi’s door. In came a man, satchel in hand, who asked: “Are you Rabbi Cohen?” When Cohen answered that he was, the man fell on his knees and cried: “I am Sydney Porter. I can’t do anything now to pay you for what you’ve done for me. But I’m a writer. I’ll write things to help your people.” He then rushed from the house.”14

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Sydney Porter wrote hundreds of short stories under the name of O. Henry. My parents did not include this tale in The Man Who Stayed in Texas. Rabbi Cohen could not be certain of the man’s name, although Mollie insisted that he was Sydney Porter. No one has ever found a story that O. Henry wrote to help the Jewish people. I include this story not to argue for its authenticity. I would classify it as a legend. But then what are such legends but the tributes paid by generations to those men and women whom they most admire? One tale recently told to me concerns a fundamentalist Christian preacher who was trying to convert Rabbi Cohen. A woman in his congregation asked the preacher, “Do you mean that despite all his good deeds, Rabbi Cohen will go to hell if he does not accept Christ?” The preacher answered in the affirmative. “Then,” said his congregant, “I would rather go to hell with Rabbi Cohen than to heaven with you.” One need not accept as literal truth every tale told about the Rabbi to recognize that he was a major force in promoting and helping to achieve prison reform in the state of Texas. There are more than enough documents to demonstrate that he devoted enormous energy to this cause, which was so dear to his heart. One can only speculate as to how he would view the Texas prison system in the twenty-first century. It now leads the nation in the number of prisoner executions. But then, each era has its own issues. “Where a political or economic situation becomes a moral issue, the pulpit must thunder forth!” Rabbi Cohen did more than thunder. His words became his works, and he became a model particularly for the Reform rabbis of America. As a tribute to Rabbi Cohen, on the occasion of his fortieth year as the rabbi of B’nai Israel, the Henry Cohen Community House was dedicated adjacent to the synagogue itself. I remember the Community House well, as that is where I attended Sunday School during ten impressionable years. I was also impressed by words that my grandfather often quoted from the poem “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham: He drew a circle and left me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle and took him in.15

Rabbi Henry Cohen with his two grandchildren, David Frisch (age fourteen), who became a nuclear physicist, and Henry Cohen 11 (age four), who became a rabbi.

The Rabbi in his study.

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he two decades that included the Depression and the Second World War were, for the Cohen family, “the best of times and the worst of times.” My sources for this last phase of Henry Cohen’s rabbinate include not only written records (e.g., biographies, letters) but also my own memories. Even during the 1920’s, when Rabbi Cohen was preoccupied with the Klan and prison reform, there was always time for family. His children, Ruth and Harry, grew to maturity and gave their parents much nachas (satisfaction). Ruth had become a warm, articulate young woman with a talent for music. It was said that when she walked into a room, attention centered on her. I imagine her as quietly charismatic. In 1916, at the age of twenty-five, she married Ephraim Frisch, a young rabbi. After graduating from the Hebrew Union College, he served as the rabbi in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1912, he moved to a synagogue in Far Rockaway on Long Island. It was in New York that he met Ruth, who was studying piano in the Damrosch Conservatory. They were married August 17, 1916. In 1923, Temple Beth El in San Antonio was looking for a rabbi. The Anti-Defamation League urged the temple board to choose a rabbi who would speak out on social issues. That was my “Uncle Eph”: he accepted the pulpit, and did he ever speak out! After their

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son, David, was born, the family made frequent visits to the Cohen home in Galveston. There they had wonderful times.1 Suddenly and sadly, Ruth became ill with Hodgkin’s disease. She left San Antonio to live her last months with her parents. Eph and David would come to visit, but she asked them not to come too frequently because their visits made her tearful. Ruth Cohen Frisch died on August 6, 1934, at the age of forty-four. For Rabbi Cohen, this was the darkest of times, surely the greatest tragedy he would experience in his long life. But he did find solace in faith, that very same faith in the after-life which he so fervently preached as a young rabbi in Woodville. He freely spoke of this faith. In a eulogy he delivered in 1940, he confided to the family of mourners: I cannot but think that I had a forty-four-year-old daughter taken suddenly, while she was of use to her husband and to the community. I believe that nothing is haphazard, there must be a plan, which we cannot understand when we see young people leave us. Given the power to create a human being in the first place, it must surely be within that same power to cause that human being to live on in any sphere that the Creator wishes. There is a time when we were not, and then we are; and if there is a power to call people into life, surely there must be that same power which causes them to live on in any sphere which the Creator wishes. So I think that in God’s own time and in His own way, we shall be brought together again. We speak of it a great deal and know so little of it.2 Both the Rabbi and Ruth found comfort in the book of Job, who was so sorely tried by God. Despite all their suffering, Rabbi Cohen was able to say with Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him . . . I know that my Redeemer liveth.” After Ruth died, Rabbi Frisch returned to San Antonio and became even more outspoken in his advocacy of social justice. On June 29, 1937, labor union leaders led laid-off workers to protest outside of the Works Progress Administration. When they went on a sitdown strike, they were ejected by the police, who then ransacked union headquarters. Infuriated at the violation of civil liberties, Rabbi Frisch wrote an angry article to the press. Even though Governor

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Allred had decried the police action, when Rabbi Frisch’s article was published in the press, the board members of the congregation were furious, fearful that their Rabbi had embarrassed the Jewish community. Rabbi Frisch was upset that the press carried only a portion of his article, so he had it published in a pamphlet and sent to all the members of his congregation. More fuel was added to the fire. He continued his advocacy of social justice, warning that a community that tolerated substandard wages would reap “a harvest of industrial strife.” Temple board members became even more fearful that their rabbi would create the impression that Jews are communists. The following year, Rabbi Frisch was hospitalized in New York, for anxiety disorder. After his recovery, he returned to resume his role as rabbi of Beth El, but he did go back to New York a few times for convalescence. The temple board claimed that he could no longer perform his rabbinic duties. Also, they did not want such a firebrand as their rabbi, and he was “retired.” His supporters to this day admire his courage and commitment. His critics insist that the problem was not primarily his message but his outspoken and tactless way of expressing his indignation at injustice.3 Comparisons with his father-in-law, Rabbi Cohen, were inevitable. On occasion, Rabbi Cohen was actually more radical than his son-in-law in his social protest from the pulpit. One Rosh Hashanah, he proclaimed that the meaning of the shofar’s clarion call is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” If this golden rule “means anything, it prefigures equal opportunity for all: altruistically expressed, ‘from everyone according to his ability; to everyone according to his needs.’ This divine heritage of ours must challenge our outraged social conscience.”4 The Galveston Rabbi was quoting Karl Marx’s vision of “a higher phase of Communist society.” (The Rabbi would become well known for saying that he would as soon preach on a text from Confucius as the Talmud, if the truth is there.)5 Rabbi Cohen aroused some criticism for his role as president of the Galveston Open Forum, established in 1928, to “allow free and full discussion at all times” of the vital social and intellectual issues of the day. Speakers included the leader of socialism in America, Norman Thomas, and the left-wing writer Max Eastman. Rabbi Cohen was accused of being a Communist because he encouraged the expression of such “atheistic” and “radical” views. He responded:

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“If any religion, which has been taught to a person over a lifetime, can be shaken by an hour’s talk over the platform by a man whose belief is different, then that religion is not worth anything.”6 Despite Rabbi Cohen’s challenging words and deeds, he was— unlike his son-in-law—never threatened with dismissal. One obvious difference was the Rabbi’s relatively longer tenure in Galveston; he had many years during which to build a solid relationship with both his congregants and the wider community. Some suggest that Rabbi Cohen was more tactful than Rabbi Frisch; yet Rabbi Cohen’s words—for example, characterizing the shofar’s call as an affirmation of Marx’s utopian vision—would seem to be anything but tactful. (Cohen may not have been aware that Marx identified Judaism with bourgeois capitalism, to be overthrown by the proletariat.)7 Another possible reason why Rabbi Cohen’s activities were tolerated is that his major contribution to social justice—his campaign for prison reform—was looked upon favorably as a humanitarian endeavor, rather than as political radicalism (even though some grumbled about coddling prisoners). In contrast, Rabbi Frisch’s social activism focused on helping organized labor, which was seen—especially by the business community, which was well represented on temple boards—as a serious economic threat. Taking a humanitarian stand was viewed by some as more acceptable than applying moral values to divisive economic issues. The Rabbi’s son, Harry, was—like Ruth—a source of great pride. Harry attended the University of Texas briefly, but he left to work in the advertising department of the New York Times, where he learned about newspaper publishing under the supervision of Louis Wiley. He voluntarily joined the American Expeditionary Force the day after the United States entered the First World War. After the war he remained in the Army Reserve as a Captain in the Coast Artillery. Eventually he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the war, Harry returned to Galveston and became the very young publisher of the afternoon paper, the Galveston Tribune. Harry, who was my father, had the keenest wit in the family. He told me that if anyone in Galveston accused the Jews of killing Christ, he would reply: “It wasn’t the Galveston Jews. It was the Houston Jews.” Birthdays and anniversaries in the Cohen household were times

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for literary creativity. On March 6, 1922, on the occasion of his parents’ thirty-third wedding anniversary, Harry put out a mock edition of the Tribune with the headline “Snappy Celebration at Rabbinage.” In his satiric articles he quoted the Rabbi as saying, “I have only my son to thank for my success in Galveston. Without a horrible example how could I have preached so many hundred sermons.” He alleged that his father wanted to make Purim and Hanukkah major holidays and to observe Yom Kippur for two days. He also observed that Ruth Cohen Frisch had come to the celebration with her boy genius, David, “who discovered the Einstein theory.”8 (David was to become a renowned nuclear physicist who worked with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.) On October 5, 1926, at the age of thirty-three, Harry married Anne Nathan, of Beaumont. Annie had graduated from the University of Texas as an English major and would become the coauthor with her husband of The Man Who Stayed in Texas, a loving biography of Rabbi Cohen. The couple moved to Houston, where I was born on November 6, 1927. Harry worked for the Houston Poster Advertising Company. When he was forty-four, the same age that his sister was when she died, Harry developed the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. As the disease progressed, he had to retire. This gave him the opportunity to collaborate with my mother, Anne, whom everyone called “Annie,” on his father’s biography, which was published by Whittlesey House, a division of McGraw-Hill, in 1941. Harry fought valiantly against Parkinson’s, playing catch with me when he was able. A lover of jazz and a former drummer with Benny Paskowitz and his Island City Blue-Blowers, he would devote hours listening to his amazing collection of records from the late twenties to the mid-thirties. His favorite song was “Basin Street Blues.” He enjoyed his mint juleps and brandy, and would hold forth on how, when making the julep, to be careful not to bruise the mint. I typed, at his dictation, a memoir of his years in the army, “Old Soldier’s Home.” I saved the letters he wrote me when I was attending the University of Texas and the Hebrew Union College and had them published as “H-I-C, Colonel Cohen’s Letters to His Son.” His sense of humor helped him cope with this difficult time in his life. My mother concealed her sadness. I did not realize at the time the depth of their pain. We continued going to Galveston on weekends, and

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being with the family and the “Galveston crowd” did lift my parents’ spirits. Harry Isaac Cohen passed away at the age of sixty-two, on July 11, 1956, four years after the death of Rabbi Cohen. At least, the Rabbi did not have to bury another child. The last fifteen years of Rabbi Cohen’s active rabbinate (1935–1950) made a deep impression on me, from age seven to twenty-two. I have often been asked to share those impressions, and so I will. The reader may recall that in the Prologue I wrote that in my psyche were two Henry Cohens: Grandpa, and Rabbi Cohen, the hero of many stories I loved hearing as a child. My impressions naturally encompass both Henry Cohens. Earliest impression: shouts when he was sleeping, as though he was having a nightmare. (This occurred rarely, but I have wondered what so disturbed him.) The beam of his flashlight against the hall wall at about five in the morning, as he went to the kitchen to make coffee for himself and Mollie. While my parents socialized with their friends, I would spend hours with Russell, Grandpa’s African American chauffeur, who was hired because the congregation could not trust Rabbi Cohen behind the wheel of his Desoto. He had too many calls to make and appointments to keep, written on his cuff. Russell and I would talk about whatever was on my mind, and we would play catch on the esplanade in front of the house. When Grandpa Cohen went on his rounds, I would often tag along, watching him bring cheer to the children in the Orphan’s Home and the patients in the hospitals. I remember when he visited a law student who knew a few Latin phrases. Grandpa offered to bring him his own edition of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The young man politely declined the offer, but seemed to enjoy a brief lecture on Spinoza and the Amsterdam Jewish community.9 On returning to 1920 Broadway, I would sit on the porch and watch people of all ages ascend the steps to bring the Rabbi their problems or perhaps simply to see the man. It was not until 1938 that I realized how important a celebrity my grandfather was. Then it was, on April 27, that I was among the approximately 5,000 admirers who jammed the city auditorium to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary as rabbi of B’nai Israel and his seventy-fifth birthday. The event was organized by a friend, I. H. Kempner. The invocation was given by Rabbi Joseph Rauch, of

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Louisville, who had come to Galveston to help Rabbi Cohen organize his library. A choir sang excerpts from Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Only in retrospect did I appreciate how appropriate was the selection, Elijah being the prophet who fled to Mt. Horeb (Sinai), where he heard the Lord in a “still small voice” and returned to Ahab’s court to speak truth to power. The mayor of Galveston, Adrian Levy, a close friend of the Rabbi and member of B’nai Israel, welcomed the throng, speaking from his heart. An address was given by Judge Joseph C. Hutcheson, of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Hutcheson knew the Rabbi well from earlier years when he was a federal judge sitting in Galveston and Houston. He, too, spoke from his heart: No really philanthropic, no really humanitarian cause has ever called upon him without response. But it is not by his support of causes as causes that his measure may be taken. The very institutionalism, the self-exploitation, the red tape and officialdom which too often characterize them, troubles his democratic, individualistic soul . . . He is at his best when striking through the narrowing limitations of a technical legal justice; he appeals to the fountainhead of mercy pointing out that equal justice is no rigid rule, it is the constant, the perpetual disposition to rend each his due. The judge was followed by Rabbi Jonah Wise, son of Isaac M. Wise, the architect of Reform Judaism in America. Rabbi Jonah Wise, who had come from New York for the occasion, compared Henry Cohen to those great men who in the Apocrypha instruct people to deal kindly and live peacefully with one another. Then George Cohen, son of Robert I. Cohen, one of the Rabbi’s earliest and dearest friends and supporters, presented an honorarium to the Rabbi, not to be used for philanthropic purposes but for the Rabbi’s own needs and enjoyment. Rabbi Cohen responded with brief remarks, as he was overcome by the outpouring of praise. He said: “There is another side to the picture. If I have accomplished anything at all, it is because I had good clay when I came here to Galveston and Texas. It is not difficult for the sculptor when he has good material.”10 In the program were printed many tributes. From Rabbi Stephen

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Wise of New York City: I had occasion some years ago to give a statement to a newspaper which made inquiry, in which I said that I consider Rabbi Henry Cohen the first Rabbi in America . . . There are men who minister in larger cities to larger communities and perhaps in a more conspicuous way. But there is no man in the American Rabbinate who has rendered more notable and distinguished service to his people and to the city and state of which he is a great part . . . I remember that in the White House President Wilson said to me as he spoke of Rabbi Cohen, “He is one of the greatest citizens of Texas.” From Rabbi Victor Reichert of Cincinnati: Were he a non-Jew I am certain that he would be handed down to posterity as a saint before whom men and women would stand in humble adoration. Galveston, although of relatively small significance among the metropolises of America, has become through the ministry of Henry Cohen the spiritual capital of America. From Clinton Quin, Bishop of the Diocese of Texas: While Dr. Cohen’s ecclesiastical relationship has been identified with your congregation and the people in Galveston, yet his ministry had spread itself over the length and breadth of this State and Nation.11 Although I was only ten, the superlatives left a lasting impression. My Grandpa was like a spiritual superman. When I chose to become a rabbi (was there any other choice?), I was at first uncomfortable, feeling myself under the shadow of an ideal that was impossible to realize. When, as a student, I officiated at my first High Holyday services in Huntsville, Alabama, I wrote home: “Hallelujah! Nobody here has heard of Grandpa.” Even more vivid in my memory is an experience I shared with my grandparents as one dark evening we were walking through the park

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to the theater (either the Martini or the State). (Grandpa liked the broad comedy of Laurel and Hardy.) We were just turning off Broadway to 20th when a rather shriveled man approached us. I was a little frightened. “Rabbi Cohen?” he inquired. “Yes,” responded the Rabbi. “God bless you,” the stranger said, and disappeared. After all the praise, Rabbi Cohen became Grandpa again, although in the family circle we may have treated him with a bit more deference. It was through Grandpa Cohen that I experienced Judaism—a blend of Classical Reform Judaism, my grandfather’s Orthodox upbringing, and the flavor of Texas. Shabbat eve services were held at an early hour so that families could return home for Shabbat dinner with the family. Around the table at 1920 Broadway were my parents, Cousin Nattie (she had a large mole on her chin), at times Uncle Max and Aunt Stella, Grandma Cohen’s brother and sister-in-law, and a friend or two. Mollie may have lit the Shabbat candles. I say, “may,” because I have no memory of her so doing. Unlike my grandfather, Mollie did not have such a warm feeling for Jewish ritual. Grandpa did chant kiddush over the wine. It was not until years later that I learned what the words meant: that we observe the Sabbath because God rested on the seventh day and because we remember the exodus from Egypt when the Israelites gained their freedom and were able to rest on Shabbat. The meal usually began not with gefilte fish followed by chicken soup, but with avocado and grapefruit salad, followed by barley soup. After dessert, Grandpa chanted the blessing. We called it “benching” and were restless, waiting to join in the final verses: “migdal y’shu-os malko v’oseh hesed limshicho . . .” Years later I learned the meaning of the words: “He is a tower of salvation to His king and showeth loving kindness to His anointed [i.e., the messiah].” As Reform Jews, we did not believe in the coming of a personal messiah but in a messianic age of peace, to be achieved by people living according to the ideals of love and justice. Who knew? But it was tradition, so we sang along. At least we could join with mind and heart in the conclusion: “O-seh sholom bimromav.” “He who makes peace in the high places/may He make peace for us and for all Israel.” On Hanukkah we celebrated simply: We lit candles and sang

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“Rock of Ages.” No presents. No latkes. No dreidels. Purim was more memorable. Portions of the megillah, the scroll of Esther, were read in the synagogue. But the highlight of the holiday was a “Purim Ball” in the temple auditorium. A few musicians would play a stately song: “We greet thee, Purim, lovely feast that every year brings new increased delight to our abode”—probably a British import. Children would form a line and march around the room, supposedly in time with the music, though there would always be some mavericks who would break out of the line and dash across the room, to their parents’ embarrassment. When I became older, I would flee the scene and hang out in the car with Russell. But I would not miss the singing of my favorite Purim song, perhaps another British import: In Shushan there once lived many thousand years ago A good king named Ahasueras, Now this king was not a Jew So, of course, he never knew What it was on Friday night to sing zemiros [Sabbath songs] Haman, to whom the people bowed Had of all the Jews a bad opinion, And he often used to meet Mordecai out on the street When he used to go to shul to make a minyan. The most memorable tradition of the year was, of course, the family Seder, on the eve of Passover. I approached the holiday with mild anxiety, because, being the only child at the table, I would be called on to read (we never chanted) the Mah Nishtanah (“Why is this night different from all other nights?”). Although I had learned to read Hebrew in Sunday School, I still had to practice for fear that I would make even one mistake. We used the Orthodox Haggadah, which narrates the history of the Israelites from the time of Abraham through the Exodus, interlaced with psalms and songs. As a child, I was not aware that the core idea of the Seder was that we at the table should, by telling the story and eating the ritual foods (matzo, charoset, bitter herb, etc.), identify with the slaves as they gained their freedom. Only years later did I come to appreciate the verse: “It is the obligation that every adam [human being, not only the Jew] to

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feel as though [or she] came out of Egypt.” Once we so identify with the oppressed Israelites, we should experience greater empathy for all victims of oppression, prejudice, and violence in the world today. There are similarities between Passover and Easter: Both are holidays of hope and redemption. But Jews pray for redemption from suffering in this world. Our Christian neighbors rejoice that the resurrection of Jesus offers them the promise of redemption from original sin and salvation in the afterlife. As a child, I was totally ignorant of the meaning of Easter. For me Easter meant that Grandma Cohen would prepare for me multicolored Easter eggs. I know not whether Grandpa approved, but he did not object. Prior to Easter, the family would enjoy the celebration of Mardi Gras. There was a parade down Broadway, and we had the perfect view from the front porch. The highlight of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was for me the blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn). I can still hear my grandfather shouting “Tekiah,” “Teruah,” “Shevarim,” and “Tekiah G’dolah” before the shofar was sounded—at times clear and pure, at times broken or staccato. On Yom Kippur we all knew that Grandpa fasted, and so we marveled that at the Neilah service, as the sun was setting, he would somehow find a new burst of energy, and the service would end on a high note: Adonay hu-ha-elohim, the Lord, He is God!—followed by the shofar’s final blast. Grandpa Cohen would often at the Neilah service tell one of his favorite hasidic stories, “If Not Higher,” by the Yiddish writer Y. L. Peretz: In the village of Nemirov there was a rabbi who, every morning, would disappear and, it was rumored, go to heaven. A skeptic, who wished to expose the superstitions of the townspeople, hid one night beneath the rabbi’s bed so that he might discover where the rabbi actually did go each morning. The skeptic watched in wonder as the saintly man put on the rude garb of a peasant. He followed in awe as the Rabbi of Nemirov proceeded to go from house to house, performing deeds of mercy. In the days to come, whenever the people would say that their rabbi each morning went to heaven, the skeptic would add: “To heaven—if not higher.” When Henry Cohen told the Peretz story, he did not need to elaborate upon its meaning. His life was commentary enough. For many Jewish men, the experience they remember most vividly—for better or for worse—is the service at which they became a Bar Mitzvah (son of the commandment). In 1940, when I turned thirteen,

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there were in Reform synagogues very few Bar Mitzvahs. The rationalist reformers reasoned that a thirteen-year-old was not an adult, nor did he understand Jewish law, nor was he obligated to follow all of Jewish law. (These were the Orthodox concepts behind this important life cycle event.) In its stead, Reform Judaism instituted confirmation, on Shavuot, when young people, after some years of study, could (usually from age fourteen to sixteen) “receive” the Torah and make their own commitment to the Covenant. From the 1950’s the Bar Mitzvah did become part of Reform practice, as did the Bat Mitzvah, for girls. But returning to 1940: being the Rabbi’s grandson, I, of course, became a Bar Mitzvah and was confirmed. According to tradition, the boy reads or chants a passage from that Torah portion assigned for the Shabbat closest to his birthday. My portion was: Noah, the story of the flood (Genesis 6–8). However, my grandfather had me learn and read the Ten Commandments, from Exodus 20. I assume he figured: My grandson will probably never read from the Torah again, so he might as well learn a really significant portion. My main memory from the Bar Mitzvah was being “preached at” not only by my grandfather but by my Uncle Eph Frisch, the controversial rabbi of San Antonio. After the service we moved to the Balinese Room, a famous casino at the end of a pier which the Maceo family ran and made available to the respected citizens of Galveston for special occasions. My confirmation took place in June of 1941. It was, for Galveston, a formal affair: boys in white palm beach jackets and dark trousers, the girls in full, fluffy white gowns. We all had to memorize and take turns reciting the “Jewish Creed.” I did not understand the words, but I recited them with clarity: I know there is a God. He is One and Only One, Indivisible, Eternal, Holy and Perfect. I believe in a future life in which God will deal with man according to His justice, wisdom, and mercy. We do not know how the future life is constituted for Scripture says the secret things belong to the Eternal our God, but we glory in the teachings of our religion that all good and moral men, no matter what their religion will share in the blessings of a future life.

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In the Bible we find all those teachings which, if faithfully carried out, will lead to contentment in this life and to happiness in the life to come. Foremost of these is the Prophet Micah’s great definition of religion with its call to personal and social responsibility: “It hath been told thee, O Man, what is good and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”12 In Sunday School, I do not recall ever talking about God or raising questions about God’s justice, nor did we discuss faith in personal immortality. I do remember my grandfather pointing to the flowers in front of the house at 1920 Broadway and quoting Tennyson’s Flower in the Crannied Wall: Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. At the age of fourteen, I was neither accepting traditional beliefs nor rebelling against them. I think I was not thinking—at least not about theology. It was not until I studied philosophy at the University of Texas that I began to doubt traditional Jewish theology and eventually, after years of reading the writings of Mordecai Kaplan, Milton Steinberg, and Martin Buber, I arrived at my own personal faith. Reciting the creed was followed by a kind of catechism: The Rabbi asking questions of the confirmands, who had already memorized the answers. Each confirmand was expected to choose one rabbinic saying to be written on his/her confirmation certificate. I remember my grandfather’s surprise when I chose Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai’s words: “If you have learned much Torah, ascribe no merit to yourself, for therefore were you created” (Avot 2:10). Perhaps the most positive aspect of the confirmation service was that while the confirmands were reciting their lines, the congregants were mouthing the very same lines, which they had learned when they were growing up Jewish in Galveston. I should add that today in most Reform congre-

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gations there are no such recitations of a creed; often, each confirmand writes his/her own thoughts about what is of positive value in Judaism. So he/she arrives at a personal commitment to the Covenant. After confirmation, I continued to accompany my grandfather to hospitals and observed how he brought hope and cheer. During the early years of the Second World War, I went with him to the Marine Hospital, where he visited a youngster named David McGarvie, perhaps a year older than I. How I envied David! He had joined the British merchant marine and had survived when his ship was torpedoed in the Caribbean. I was proud that my grandfather put me in charge of making David feel welcome during the days after he left the hospital and was preparing to return to his duties. During the 1930’s, Rabbi Cohen was an opponent of bigotry and an advocate of peace. In 1936, speaking to the Rotary Club, he condemned “those that designate Italians, Negroes, Mexicans, Hungarians, and Chinamen as ‘wops,’ ‘niggers,’ ‘greasers,’ ‘bohunks,’ 13 and ‘chinks.’” In that same address he warned that “war in the future will have the appearance of the destruction of the entire civil population rather than a combat for armed men. Is it not time we create a sentiment for peace?” Each Armistice Day he would compose or quote a poem that condemned the use of arms. He opposed the introduction of rotc in Galveston’s Ball High School. In his letter of protest he wrote: “Boys in their early teens . . . should be taught the values of peace achievements rather than the glories of war.” On Armistice Day, 1936, he issued a plea for “peace education” and predicted that “it is for the women of the world to teach the nations to live on friendly sympathetic terms . . . or cease to exist at all.” However, once the evil of Hitler became evident, Rabbi Cohen did ardently support the United States’ entry into the Second World War. My grandfather would take me along to services at Camp Wallace (near Galveston), where he would remind the soldiers of the words of Oliver Cromwell: “Trust in God, but keep your powder dry!” I still can see him huddling close to the radio, listening on short wave to London. One can only imagine what he must have been feeling as he heard the chimes of Big Ben and knew that bombs were falling on the land of his birth.

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After the war, I was with my grandfather at a Rotary Club meeting in the Galvez Hotel, where Dr. James Conant of Harvard described the potential benefits and dangers of atomic energy. After the program, Rabbi Cohen, all of five foot one, stood toe to toe with the professor, who towered well over six feet, and quoted the biblical and Talmudic commentator Rashi’s observation about the bee: “I want neither your honey nor your sting.” He continued to cling to Tennyson’s dream “when the war drums throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.” Yes, there was—and still is?—in my mind those two Henry Cohens: mensch and super-mensch. I would conclude these reminiscences with a verse, pasted in the Rabbi’s home on the wall opposite the toilet. Perhaps a bit sentimental, these lines from the last stanza of “Ike Walton’s Prayer,” by James Whitcomb Riley, suggest the kind of interpersonal relationship valued by Henry Cohen: I pray not that men tremble at My power of place and lordly sway— I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day— Yield me his horny palm to hold And I’ll not pray for gold. The tanned face, garlanded with mirth It hath the kingliest smile on earth; The swart brow, diamonded with sweat Hath never need of coronet And so I reach, dear Lord, to Thee And do beseech Thou givest me The wee cot and the cricket’s chirr, Love, and the glad sweet face of her!

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n September 12, 1949, at the age of eighty-six, Rabbi Cohen announced his retirement. According to the Galveston Daily News of September 14, his retirement would go into effect when his successor was chosen. The Temple board immediately made him rabbi emeritus; they also agreed that he would continue to be paid his annual salary of $7,950 and would be able to live in the rabbinage throughout his lifetime. In October, he and Mollie went to Houston to visit their son, Harry, and his family. There he fell and broke his hip. While Rabbi Cohen was recuperating, Rabbi Leo Stillpass was elected as his successor on January 2, 1950. Rabbi Cohen had served as the congregation’s only rabbi since May 13, 1888: for sixty-one years and seven and a half months. To my knowledge, that is a record for rabbinic longevity in one synagogue. In July 1950, Rabbi and Mrs. Cohen returned to Galveston, where, as rabbi emeritus, he would occasionally officiate at weddings of couples whose families he had known for generations. Sadly, on September 29, 1951, Mollie, his loving wife and partner of sixty-two years, died at the age of eighty-nine. The Rabbi was left alone in the spacious rabbinage that was now filled only with furniture, books, and memories. The Rabbi had already arranged for his library of 12,000 books and papers to be sent to the Barker Library at the University of Texas.

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He considered this appropriate, given his impact not only on Galveston but on the entire state of Texas.1 A video of Rabbi Cohen can be found in the Jewish section of the Institute of Texas Culture in San Antonio. After his wife’s death, Rabbi Cohen left the isle city, never to return, and went to live in our home in Houston. He had loved Galveston (“Thou art a peer among world cities!” he had written). But he bemoaned the commercialization of his neighborhood, which he satirized in a poem in the style of Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha: Fifty years of tranquil living When our Broadway was selected “Residential purposes only.” When there were no filling stations When there were no big garages. Henry Cohen died in Houston on June 12, 1952, at the age of eighty-nine. He had been the active rabbi or rabbi emeritus of B’nai Israel for sixty-four years. The funeral was held in Galveston, attended by an overflow congregation of mourners, many of whose lives he had touched deeply. The memorial service was led by Rabbi Leo Stillpass, Rabbi Cohen’s successor at B’nai Israel, and Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel in Houston. Both rabbis delivered eulogies. Rabbi Stillpass spoke of how Rabbi Cohen had influenced Reform Judaism and the role of the rabbi: Last night I was sitting at a session of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Buffalo, New York . . . when the President made the announcement of the passing of this cherished honorary member . . . There was a shocked silence, a feeling of awesomeness, almost of disbelief, that this legendary but very real figure had passed from the mortal scene. There was a sudden awareness that this moment saw not only the passing of a great man, of a noble Rabbi in Israel, but it marked the end of an era: for to his colleagues Rabbi Cohen was the last of the pioneers, who saw the potentialities of Reform Judaism in America . . . He was a pillar of strength among rabbis . . . a pil-

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lar which served as the foundation of the social service agencies and welfare institutions of Galveston, a pillar in prison reform— a symbol of strength, of determined will to do the right. Rabbi Schachtel spoke of the rabbi as a “prince of God”: Dr. Henry Cohen was the greatest spiritual leader in our generation . . . He wore a crown of a good name, a glorious crown of priesthood as few men have done . . . He was a man who walked humbly with his God—a vigorous soul who touched the lives of those with whom he came in contact. He was not only our rabbi but a rabbi’s rabbi, and we are thankful there was a Henry Cohen in the world. I participated in the service simply by telling the story he so loved, “If Not Higher.” My grandfather was, indeed, like the Rabbi of Nemirov, a man who during his life on earth went to heaven, if not higher. The eulogies were published in the September 1952 issue of The Southwest Jewish Chronicle, along with tributes from the Rt. Rev. Clinton Quin, Bishop of the Diocese of Texas; Rev. Edmund Gibson, Episcopal minister of Galveston; Senators Lyndon Johnson and Tom Connally; Texas rabbis Robert Kahn, David Jacobson, Sidney Wolf, and David Lefkowitz; and President and President-Emeritus, respectively, of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Dr. Nelson Glueck and Dr. Julian Morgenstern. Dr. Morgenstern recalled that generations of Reform rabbinic students considered Rabbi Cohen to be their spiritual and moral model. He wrote: It was significant indeed that, in former days, the period of his maturity and noblest achievement, the students of each Senior class at the Hebrew Union College, when asked which Rabbi they would prefer to bring the baccalaureate message at their graduation and ordination, would invariably respond, “Henry Cohen.” Various considerations . . . permitted this invitation to be extended to him only once. His address on this occasion more than fulfilled expectations.

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Other tributes cited his honorary doctoral degrees, one from the Hebrew Union College (1924) and a second from the Jewish Institute of Religion (1939). In 1948, Rabbi Cohen became the first Jew to receive an honorary doctorate from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. After the Rabbi’s funeral, flags in Galveston and Houston were flown at half-mast. Rabbi Cohen was a beneficent influence on many lives, and that influence continues to this day. For several years after his death, awards were given to students and adults who wrote the best essays about the Rabbi and his deeds. Today a Henry Cohen Humanitarian Award is presented each year to a citizen who has had an exceptionally beneficial impact on human relations in the county. One of the most impressive essays was written by Elise B. Hopkins, who told how the Rabbi had calmed her four-year-old daughter when she was ill: “And this is the little one [said the Rabbi] . . . A princess shouldn’t be crying her eyes out,” he said. He told her that in Hebrew the name Sarah means “little princess.” He told her that often many dreadful things happen to princesses, but they are always rescued. They must never fear, for their rescuers are often disguised. The dragon becomes the prince; the penicillin needle could become the shining sword to free her head from the spell that now made it heavy, swollen and painful . . . [He] told her of the wonderful magic that was in the world today. The hospital was alive with this magic. He himself knew, for wasn’t he held together in a way by a pin! . . . All the time we were in the hospital, Dr. Cohen came every day. To my fouryear-old, he was the man with the magic pin in his side . . . Dr. Cohen took fear from a baby’s heart and helped her save her strength for her fight to save her life.2 Hopkins’ essay is one of many compiled by one of Rabbi Cohen’s successors, Rabbi Stanley Dreyfus, the professor who had taught me liturgy at the Hebrew Union College. The collection, Henry Cohen: Messenger of the Lord, published in 1963, contains “Portrait of a Rabbi,” by myself; “Some Memories of 1920 Broadway,” by my cousin, David Frisch; tributes by Rabbis Victor Reichert and Abraham Cronbach; “An American Ballad,” by Irv Tunick; and a

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selection of Rabbi Cohen’s poems. The Rabbi of B’nai Israel at the turn of the twenty-first century was (and still is) Jimmy Kessler, who has written a fine biography to be read by students in the schools of Galveston, Henry Cohen: The Life of a Frontier Rabbi. Hollace Ava Weiner, a journalist and historian from Fort Worth, has written a thoroughly researched book, Jewish Stars in Texas, published in 1999, which presents insightful portraits of eleven Texas rabbis, among them Henry Cohen in a chapter entitled “The Quintessential Texas Rabbi.” Despite these fine volumes, the life and career of Rabbi Henry Cohen is not known by the vast majority of American rabbis (outside of Texas) nor by either the nationwide Jewish community or the larger population of Americans, who do care about the history of humanitarianism in this nation. That is one reason why this book has been written. To repeat the quote from The Death of a Salesman in the Prologue: “Attention must be paid.” In order fully to appreciate Henry Cohen’s legacy from a historic perspective, one would do well to consider how he both reflected his times and transcended the contemporary currents of belief and ideology. Henry Cohen became a Reform rabbi the very year (1885) that the Pittsburgh Platform was adopted, and thus his beliefs and practices did, in some ways, reflect what has come to be called Classical Reform Judaism (see Chapter 2). While the services in his congregation departed from Orthodox tradition and found spirituality in simplicity, in his home the Rabbi would not eat pork products or shellfish. He used the Orthodox Haggadah, and he chanted the traditional blessing after the Shabbat evening meal. His belief in immortality seemed to reflect the Orthodox concept of t’hiyat ha-metim (resurrection of the dead), as he expressed his faith that he would be “brought together” with his daughter, Ruth, “in God’s own time.” He also retained great respect for Orthodox Jews who truly believed and practiced their faith. Among the principles of Classical Reform Judaism was its opposition to Jewish nationalism, or political Zionism. These reformers considered the Jews to be a religious community and feared that Jewish nationalism would leave American Jews open to the charge of dual loyalty. Rabbi Cohen reflected this view in an undated paragraph found in his papers:

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The large majority of American Jews belonging to the Reform wing of Judaism disassociate themselves from the Zionists and are opposed to Zionism . . . Practically all Jews who ally themselves with Reform Judaism have but one flag—the Stars and Stripes . . . We are American citizens of the Jewish faith, as others are American citizens of the Christian faith.3 In 1937, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted the Columbus Platform, which stated: “We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in [Palestine’s] upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.”4 In 1943, after the CCAR passed a resolution in support of a Jewish army, Rabbi Cohen, believing Jews should enlist in the armies in the land where they lived, joined the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Nevertheless, as a non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency, Rabbi Cohen did favor Jewish settlement in Palestine, and in 1945, he wrote to his friend Judge Hutcheson, then chairman of the American delegation of the Anglo-American Commission on Palestine, urging abrogation of the British White Paper and allowing “unlimited immigration to Palestine for those who wish to settle there.”5 Still, he did not favor the establishment of a Jewish state. He told me and others that he feared that the Arab world would never accept a Jewish state in its midst, and there would inevitably be war after war. But once Israel was established, Rabbi Cohen recalled how in his early years he had raised funds for one of the earliest Zionist movements, Hov’vei Tzion (Lovers of Zion). In the spring of 1951, an Israeli vessel, the Eilat, docked in Galveston. Henry Cohen was proud to be there to greet the captain and the crew. He received a card in Hebrew from the captain thanking him “for participating in the welcoming ceremony . . . It was pleasing to hear . . . how you are loved . . . With respect and the blessings of the state of Israel, Eliezer Chodorov.”6 I am certain Grandpa Cohen would have given enthusiastic approval when I married a sabra whose roots go back four generations in Palestine. Among the contentious issues within American Jewry today is whether or not a rabbi should, under any conditions, officiate at a marriage between a Jew and non-Jew. I have heard rabbis on both

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sides of the argument cite Rabbi Cohen as one who favored their particular practice. The facts are these: In his early ministry Rabbi Cohen wrote a letter to the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia expressing his opposition to mixed marriage. He wrote: “The children of such an alliance will be staunch in the tenets of neither of the parents.”7 However, in a questionnaire on intermarriage sent to him during the 1940’s, possibly by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, he gave the following responses: 1. Do you officiate at intermarriages? Yes 2. How many have you performed? Approximately 20 over 59 years. 3. What percent of the marriages you performed were intermarriages? 3 percent. 4. Approximately how many of these couples became temple members? Nearly all. The questionnaire goes on to reveal that nearly all the Galveston intermarried sent their children to his religious school. Only two or three children were sent to non-Jewish religious schools. He had only converted one or two to Judaism. He concluded with a brief statement on his attitude toward intermarriage: “I do not like intermarriage. Occasionally it is necessary. E.g., eloping couples, after living with each other as man and wife (two or three months).”8 It should be noted that in the 1940’s, mixed marriage was much less common than it is today, and it was not perceived as a serious threat to Jewish continuity. Today some Reform rabbis believe that by officiating they are giving sanction to a trend that poses real danger for the Jewish community. Other Reform rabbis believe that their officiating, especially when there is a commitment that any children will be raised as Jews, has the effect of bringing the mixed married closer to the Jewish community and of making much more likely Jewish continuity in those particular families. In any case, Rabbi Cohen insisted that Jewish parents should accept their children’s decision to make their own choice of a lifetime partner. I recall his blunt criticism of a mother who was ready to cut off contact with her son because he was marrying a non-Jew. The Rabbi said something to the effect that Naomi accepted the mar-

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riages of both her sons to Moabites. One of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, on the death of her husband, chose to live with Naomi and said to her, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” In his social and political views, Rabbi Cohen often reflected the trends of his time. During the Depression, as was noted, he asserted that the shofar’s sound expressed the ideal of socialism that was advocated not in Galveston but by some leftist Jews in large urban centers. Before both of the two world wars, he leaned toward pacifism, as did many in the liberal religious community. But like almost all Americans, once the country entered the war, he became convinced that the cause was just and became an ardent supporter. Before turning to the ways that Rabbi Cohen transcended his time, one might observe that among the guests who came to visit and voice their admiration were a number of well-known nonconformists. Clarence Darrow, the brilliant defender of unpopular causes, was a welcome guest at the rabbinage. When in Galveston for a debate on prohibition, Darrow joined the Cohens for dinner. The Rabbi quickly gave him a drink, for the other expected guest was Dr. Clarence Wilson, proponent of prohibition. In his later years, Darrow returned to the rabbinage and listened with satisfaction as the Rabbi spoke to him of his efforts for prison reform.9 Another guest was Maury Maverick, appropriately named as he was a maverick mayor in San Antonio. Yes, the “man who stayed in Texas” often found admirers among nonconformists who questioned the conventional wisdom. But Rabbi Cohen himself stood out in several specific ways, rising above contemporary ideologies and transcending his time. In contemporary terms, he not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk. He not only denounced injustice but was particularly effective in bringing about change, such as the reforms involving the rehabilitation and aftercare of prisoners in the Texas prison system. As Rabbi Stephen Wise remarked, Henry Cohen was somehow able to cut through much of the bureaucracy of government and persuade legislators, judges, and executives to take action for the sake of justice and compassion. Today many of those engaged in social protest have a sense of futility, believing that all they can do to change the establishment is to sign a petition or make a contribution. Henry Cohen demonstrated the potential power of one committed individual. In doing so, he became the model for a cadre of socially committed rab-

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bis from the 1930’s, such as Abraham Cronbach, Jacob Weinstein, and Ephraim Frisch. A second way in which Rabbi Cohen transcended his time was, in his role as pastor, going to extraordinary lengths to help a single soul. His famous trip to Washington on behalf of a Greek-Catholic stowaway is a classic example. As earlier noted, the details of the tale may be questioned, but I do believe that his special connection with President Taft had something to do with the humane results that he achieved. And this was not a single instance. There are so many examples: helping a trapped prostitute escape from a brothel and confronting a judge with his own past to achieve the release of a young offender. Such stories would not exist about the Rabbi unless there was some recognition that he was willing to do what it takes when the cause was just. A third way that Henry Cohen transcended his time was that he personified the commitment to dialogue between those of different faiths long before “dialogue” became the common term for improved interfaith understanding. His closest friend was Father Kirwin, with whom he brought hope to a flooded city and fought the Klan. He intervened on behalf of a Roman Catholic woman, an immigrant from Poland, who was threatened with deportation even though she had married an American.10 I myself witnessed an incident when I was in Galveston that demonstrated not only his willingness to engage in dialogue but also his openness and spontaneity with his Christian neighbors. In his eighties, he was attending a special service at Trinity Episcopal Church, at which the son of his good friend, Rev. Edmund H. Gibson, was to deliver his very first sermon as a clergyman before his father’s congregation. The Rabbi was seated in the rear of the sanctuary. After Robert had spoken, Rabbi Cohen, who was not on the program, to the surprise of the worshippers, made his way down the aisle to the pulpit. He turned to the young man, and, as though no one else was present, assured the cleric that he would do well in his ministry. After concluding his unsolicited remarks, the Rabbi offered a closing prayer and went home for Sunday dinner. A woman later wrote that she had seen Jesus walking with him to the chancel. For Henry Cohen, walking up to the pulpit to encourage the young man was simply the natural thing to do. That afternoon, young Robert Gibson called at the Cohen home. The

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Rabbi greeted him warmly and launched into a lecture on certain mistranslations in the King James version of the Hebrew Bible.11 Stephen Wise was right: he was a kindler of souls. To the degree to which those souls that he kindled touched and kindled other souls, and they still others, Henry Cohen lives through the generations just as surely as effects become causes. As Wordsworth wrote in “AfterThought,” from The River Duddon: Enough, if something from our hands have power To live and act and serve the future hour And if, as toward the silent tomb we go Through love and hope and faith’s transcendent dower We feel that we are greater than we know.

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APPENDIX SELECTED POEMS BY RABBI HENRY COHEN

(From Occasional Lapses into Rhyme, privately published by Rabbi Cohen) My Mother’s Portrait Day for day I sit and ponder, Sleeping, waking, without rest, Thinking of my honored mother, Ever worthy, ever blest. Her portrait hangs direct above me, While I work and while I think: Features that would lose their beauty If described with pen and ink. Gazing on me; yea and smiling, Guiding me in trouble sore Though a picture, how I prize it! Day for day, and more and more! Shall I see thee? Ah, who knoweth?

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Selected Poems

Shall I clasp thee once again? Oh, my mother! dearest parent! Guiding star o’er my life’s main. —Jewish Spectator, Memphis, Tennessee, June 28, 1889

Sa’id Bin Sa’id Sa’id bin Sa’id with mirth was always filled, And joyfully he greeted each new morn; His friend Abdallah lived in sombre gloom, As if all comfort from the world was shorn. They met at mosque, the face of Sa’id beamed, Abdallah frowned at every passerby; “A misanthrope,” said one, “Allah forefend That he should harm me with his evil eye!” Sa’id straightway spoke: “O friend! why is it thus That thou forever look’st so sore displeased?” “The world is vain,” Abdallah quickly said, “And all its people’s morals are diseased!” Thereat Sa’id answered with a tender smile, “Look thou for good, and good thou’lt surely find; The world embrace, and thou wilt be inclined To think much better of thy fellowkind!” —Jewish Messenger, New York, November 8, 1889

Lines on Reading the Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam Destroy not, Omar, our one cherished hope, That Prayer with all man’s wickedness can cope, For if the soul take flight from Holy Thought, Then Goodness will not find an earthly scope!

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Shall not Allah the Great who placed us here, To do His will in reverence and fear, Receive our heartfelt thanks and ardent love, And to our tuneful orisons give ear? If we the wrong in fervency atone, ’Twill surely bring forgiveness from God’s throne; Else must our Dawning days be passed in gloom, And Twilight’s fading hour its sins bemoan. Allah, who marketh, when the sparrow falls, And with His wond’rous Universe appalls, Regardeth supplication from on high, And maketh answer when the faithful calls. —The Menorah Journal, New York, Vol. 19, December 1895

Fulfillment For Flanders’ fields where poppies grow Where Hun and Vandal laid men low, Our hearts beat fast in mem’ry’s train, For hands that we’ll ne’er touch again, And voices that we used to know. But hark! From heaven the trumpets blow, And call to you who knew the foe, “Ye have not served your God in vain In Flanders’ fields!” And we, who suffered not the woe That came upon the world below, Forever hold in lasting strain The fighting brave for freedom slain, And blessings on their sleep bestow In Flanders’ fields. —Galveston Daily News, November 11, 1918

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Disarm! “Disarm! Disarm!” the nations cry, “The world today is all awry, For shot and shell have done their worst And earth is ever war-accurst And millions are led out to die!” Is it not meet to make reply, “The day has come, the hour is nigh, That men should shout with throat aburst, ‘Disarm! Disarm!’” Since we have seen black terror fly, And puny folk their God deny, We pledge our souls with those who durst Proclaim that peace shall e’re be first, And in our hearts the words deep lie, “Disarm! Disarm!” —Galveston Daily News, November 11, 1921

O Galveston! I sing not of material things That make our city; Things that nature for us wrought In years agone, that still with us abide— The harbor, bay and headland, The flowering oleander, and salt cedar. Child of wedded gulf and sandy waste. Nor doth my muse chant later boons, Seeing that their birth was caused By storm and stress—the toll of angry waves. O Galveston! Thou art a peer among world cities! Few thy people and in wealth not great As wealth today is told. But rich insooth, thou art, and doubly rich;

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Richer than the ingot-laden galleons That erstwhile sailed thy pirate main! Thrice rich in deeds of daring, for thou hast not forgot The sad sea’s requiem. Rich in gifts and deeds of right To thy fellowman in peace and war! Thy heart is gold refined and thou dost pour it out For mankind’s weal in peace and war. Thy children work and work and are not overwrought, Because the very good that in them lies Sustains them. (Save for the few Who give not of their pelf nor of themselves For common good, I note not them, For they are dead; unwept, unsung.) O Galveston! Blest art thou! In that Thy sons do not forget thee, Nor withhold their gifts for age and youth, For sick and poor, for learned and dull, For widow and for orphan child, For God and man and e’en brute beast, For farers on the mighty deep, For loving life and heroes dead, for work and play. More blest art thou than others, Yea, above the multitude of towns In this fair land. Blest through those that walk thy streets today, Through those that loved thee yesteryear! —Galveston Daily News, September 18, 1918

Broadway (After Hiawatha) Sitting on the porch this evening Calmly reading Hiawatha, Roused by thund’ring noises ’round me,

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Set me thinking of the past years. Fifty years of tranquil living When our Broadway was selected “Residential purpose only.” When there were no filling stations, When there were no big garages, When no gas was owned by Sinclair, When no gas was owned by Humble, Shell and Gulf and Mag-no-li-a, Texaco and all the others Selling gas and oil productions. Now the street has gone commercial, Fruitstands found at many corners, Groceries and Sears & Roebuck Drugstores, lunch and ice-cream parlors, Intersections all commercial; Firestone is now on Broadway, Buses east and west are running, Buses running to Port Arthur Eke in haste to nearby Beaumont, Trucks in sizes most tremendous, Automobiles dot the houses, Klaxons screeching for their burdens. Blaring are the motorcycles, Shrieking are the fire-sirens, Ambulances running both ways, Broadway is a raging fever! Ah! for Cedar Lawn the peaceful, Sherman, Houston, Ca-du-ce-us, Woodrow, Denver, Bowie, Crockett, So unlike our dear old Broadway! Let me fall again to dreaming Of the old and happy Broadway, Ere the City Fathers’ Zoning, Of the Kingdom of Ponema Of the Land of the Hereafter! —Galveston Tribune, June 19, 1940

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N OT E S

prologue 1. Letter from Rabbi Wise to Pittsburgh journalist Charles Joseph, October 7, 1930, Stephen Wise Papers, American Jewish Historical Society, New York. 2. Letter from Wise to Joseph, undated, Stephen Wise Papers. chapter 1 1. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain: 1656 to 2000, p. 110. 2. David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews, pp. 21–22. 3. Genealogy developed by Kerry Cohen of Sydney, Australia. 4. Anne Nathan and Harry I. Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 90. 5. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, p. 85. 6. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 22. 7. Albert Hyamson, Jews’ College London: 1855–1955, p. 19. 8. Ibid., p. 25. 9. Letters from Sydney Samuel, May 16, 1881, and Lionel Cohen, May 22, 1881, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin. 10. Henry Cohen, “Three Years in Africa,” pp. 142–145, 168–171. Henry’s journey took place over three years, but he actually stayed in

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South Africa for approximately two years, from June 1881 through June 1883. 11. Vivian D. Lipman, in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 10, p. 99. 12. Jewish Chronicle, Nov. 23, 1855, cited in Hyamson, Jews’ College London, p. 25. 13. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, p. 119.

chapter 2 1. Ernest H. de Souza, United Congregation of Israelites, pp. 255–256. (The congregation was first called “Amalgamated.” In 1921, the name was changed to “United.”) 2. Mishna: Abot 1:12. 3. de Souza, United Congregation of Israelites, p. 255–256. 4. Memorandum of Agreement, Aug. 1, 1884, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 5. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 47–55. 6. Letter from Altamont de Cordova, Aug. 18, 1885, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 7. Henry Cohen II, What’s Special about Judaism? p. 254. 8. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 25.

chapter 3 1. Quoted in Leo Turitz and Evelyn Turitz, Jews in Early Mississippi, p. 6. 2. Ibid., viii. 3. Deep South Jewish Voice, April 2003, p. 13. 4. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 56–58. 5. Sermon, undated, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 6. Quoted in Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 60. 7. Lecture, 1886, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 8. The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/hand book/online/articles/view/cc/fcp13.html, p. 2. 9. Ruth Weingarten and Cathy Schechter, Deep in the Heart: The Lives and Legends of Texas Jews, p. 113. 10. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 60. 11. Letter from Isaac T. Hart to Leo Levi, May 1888, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 12. Farewell sermon, 1888, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 13. Stanley Dreyfus, ed., Henry Cohen: Messenger of the Lord, p. 166.

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chapter 4 1. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 73. 2. Clarence E. Ousley, ed., Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, pp. 122–125. See also Jimmy Kessler, Temple B’nai Israel: The History of a BOI, pp. 4–5. 3. David Frisch, “Some Memories of 1920 Broadway,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, pp. 44–45. 4. Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 169. 5. Frisch, “Some Memories of 1920 Broadway,” p. 47. 6. Henry Cohen, “Energy,” pp. 307–308. 7. Henry Cohen, ed., Talmudic Sayings. 8. Henry Cohen, National Loyalty: A Jewish Characteristic, p. 1. 9. Article in ADL Review, October 1930, p. 8. 10. Henry Cohen, The Settlement of the Jews in Texas (1894), “The Jews in Texas” (1895), and “Henry Castro, Pioneer” (1896), Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 11. Cohen, The Settlement of the Jews in Texas, p. 3. 12. Ibid., p. 4. 13. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 92–94. 14. Henry Cohen, A Modern Maccabean and A Brave Frontiersman, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 15. For a full listing of articles, poems, and sources, see Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, pp. 14, 43, 164–169. See also the appendix to the present volume for the text of selected poems by Rabbi Cohen. 16. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 77. 17. Ibid., p. 81. 18. Galveston Daily News, Feb. 25, 1896. 19. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 81. 20. Ibid., pp. 81–83. 21. Kessler, Temple B’nai Israel, pp. 44–45. 22. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 84.

chapter 5 1. Ousley, Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, p. 64. 2. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 123. 3. Howard Barnstone, The Galveston That Was, p. 81. 4. Cohen, “The Jewish Community,” in Ousley, Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, pp. 123–125. 5. Ousley, Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, p. 23. 6. Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm, p. 67.

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7. Ibid., p. 4. 8. Ibid., p. 148. 9. Ibid., p. 149. 10. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 135. 11. Patricia Bixel and Elizabeth Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm, p. 72. 12. Galveston Daily News, Jun. 4, 1908, by C. H. Jones. 13. Larson, Isaac’s Storm, p. 265. 14. Bixel and Turner, Galveston and the 1900 Storm, p. 81. 15. Larson, Isaac’s Storm, p. 265. 16. Ousley, Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, pp. 211, 246.

chapter 6 1. Henry Cohen, “The Hygiene and Medicine of the Talmud,” Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 2. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 155–158. For a more detailed and well documented account, see Geoffrey Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, pp. 36–37. See also Galveston Daily News, Feb. 26, 1901. 3. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 107–108. 4. Ibid., p. 122. 5. Webb Waldron, “The Busiest Man in Town,” p. 38. 6. In author’s personal collection: “Reformed Judaism,” May 9, 1902. 7. Howard M. Sachar, The Course of Modern Jewish History, pp. 243–249. 8. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 164–167. 9. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, p. 67. 10. Letter to Dr. Hopkins, May 16, 1906, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 11. Silver service set in author’s possession. See Kessler, Temple B’nai Israel, p. 45.

chapter 7 1. Bernard Marinbach, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West, p. 2. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., p. 12. 4. Morris Waldman, “The Galveston Movement,” p. 203. 5. Marinbach, Galveston, p. 17. As quoted in the Galveston Daily News, July 2, 1907.

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6. Henry Cohen, “The Galveston Immigration Movement,” June 1, 1908, p. 6. Monograph in author’s possession. 7. Ibid., p. 7. 8. Marinbach, Galveston, p. 29. 9. Ziskind Gurwitz, Memories of Two Generations, pp. 205–208, cited in Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, p. 72. 10. Marinbach, Galveston, pp. 59–60. 11. Yiddishes Taggenblatt, Sept. 14, 1910, p. 4. 12. See Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, p. 73. 13. Marinbach, Galveston, pp. 104–107. 14. Ibid., pp. 131–132. 15. Ibid., p. 158. 16. Ibid., p. 195. 17. Meigs Frost, New Orleans Times Picayune, Dec. 3, 1936.

chapter 8 1. Berakot: 28a. 2. Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, pp. 59–60. 3. Frost, New Orleans Times Picayune. 4. Dreyfus, Henry Cohen. In Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, the name Demchuk is spelled “Lemchuck.” 5. W. H. Taft Papers, Reel 414, Library of Congress. 6. Ibid. See also the Galveston Daily News, July 18, 1911, for clarification on this incident. 7. Quoted in Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 220. 8. Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, pp. 300–306. For a detailed account of the trial, see Harry Golden’s A Little Girl Is Dead. 9. Letter from Henry Cohen, Dec. 6, 1915, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 10. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 222–226. 11. Ibid., pp. 185–186. 12. Letter from Henry Cohen, Nov. 2, 1915, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 13. Letter from Henry Cohen, Dec. 7, 1915, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 14. Henry Cohen, “Baccalaureate Address,” Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 15. Galveston Daily News, June 2, 1908; Galveston Tribune, May 31, 1913.

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chapter 9 1. Charles Beard, The Rise of American Civilization II, p. 613. 2. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 244–245. 3. Henry Cohen, “Occasional Lapses into Rhyme,” privately printed, Jan. 8, 1943, by Rabbi Cohen, in honor of his “dear wife’s” birthday. 4. Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. 5. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, pp. 74–75. 6. Charles C. Alexander, Crusade for Conformity: The Ku Klux Klan in Texas, 1920–1930, pp. 1–76. 7. Correspondence between Leo Greenwood and Henry Cohen, Dec. 17 and 20, 1921, cited in Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, pp. 67, 247. 8. Alexander, Crusade for Conformity. 9. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 254. 10. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, p. 75. 11. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 257. 12. Ibid., p. 261. 13. Quoted in Harry Eilbert, What Is a Jewish Joke? 14. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, p. 76. Quoted from Harry I. Cohen, “Father Kirwin,” America, July 21, 1934. 15. Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 207. 16. Ibid., p. 237. 17. The record is in the author’s possession.

chapter 10 1. Report of Committee on After Care of Prisoners, p. 3, Henry Cohen Papers, Prison Records. Also in Galveston Daily News, Jan. 18, 1917. 2. Quoted in Stanley Dreyfus, “First Citizen of Texas,” pp. 8–9. 3. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 264–265. 4. Henry Cohen, “Convicts Need Aid,” Henry Cohen Papers, Prison Records. See also Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 265–269. 5. Letter from Henry Cohen to Carl Pritz, 1921, Henry Cohen Collection, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati. 6. Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook, Vol. 32, 1922. 7. Henry Cohen II, “Portrait of a Rabbi,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 28. See also Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 271–272. 8. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 276.

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9. Henry Cohen, “Texas County Parole Boards,” Sept. 2, 1936, p. 1, Henry Cohen Papers, Prison Records. See also The Southwest: Proceedings of the First Southwestern States Probation and Parole Conference, p. 11. 10. Letter from I. Rosenbaum, July 8, 1927, Henry Cohen Papers, Prison Records. 11. Letter from James Duke, Oct. 22, 1927, Henry Cohen Papers, Prison Records. 12. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, p. 276. 13. Letter from Ovadia Nathan, May 12, 1936, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 14. Waldron, “The Busiest Man in Town,” p. 38. (Later reprinted in a widely read article in Reader’s Digest, Feb. 1939.) 15. Quoted in Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings, 1927.

chapter 11 1. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, pp. 162–169. 2. Henry Cohen II, “Portrait of a Rabbi,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 21. 3. Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, pp. 173–179. 4. “Greetings for the New Year,” Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. See also Henry Cohen Collection, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, and Karl Marx, Capital, The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx, pp. xi and 7. 5. Webb Waldron, “Rabbi Cohen: First Citizen of Texas,” p. 99. 6. Rosella Horowitz, “A Church Leader: Rabbi Henry Cohen,” pp. 72–74. 7. Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought, p. 530. 8. Document in the author’s possession. 9. Henry Cohen II, “Portrait of a Rabbi,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 20. 10. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 309–312. 11. From the Golden Jubilee program, 1938, Center for American History, University of Texas. 12. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 232–233. 13. Galveston Daily News, Nov. 11, 1936.

chapter 12 1. Galveston Daily News, Sept. 14, 1949, p. 1, and Galveston Tribune, Oct. 12, 1949, p. 1. Galveston Daily News, July 8, 1950, p. 11.

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2. Elise B. Hopkins, “The Man with the Magic Pin,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, pp. 103–104. 3. Undated paragraph, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Writings. 4. Henry Cohen II, What’s Special about Judaism? p. 257. 5. Letter to Judge Hutcheson, 1945, Henry Cohen Collection, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati. 6. Card, Henry Cohen Collection. 7. Quoted in Henry Cohen II, “Portrait of a Rabbi,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 36. 8. Henry Cohen, “Questionnaire on Intermarriage,” Henry Cohen Collection, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati. 9. Nathan and Cohen, The Man Who Stayed in Texas, pp. 296–299. 10. Letter from Henry Cohen, March 17, 1936, Henry Cohen Papers, Personal Correspondence. 11. Henry Cohen II, “Portrait of a Rabbi,” in Dreyfus, Henry Cohen, p. 5.

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GLOSSARY

adam: Hebrew for “man” or “human being.” Ashkenazim: Jews whose ancestors came from Central or Eastern Europe (“Ashkenaz” is Hebrew for “Germany”). Bar Mitzvah: “Son of the Commandment.” According to Jewish law, at the age of thirteen a Jewish boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah and takes upon himself the adult’s responsibility of following the commandments in the Torah as interpreted by the rabbis. For Reform Jews, becoming a Bar Mitzvah may signify leaving behind childhood and entering the years between childhood and maturity. The Bar Mitzvah ceremony originated in the thirteenth century. Bat Mitzvah: “Daughter of the Commandment.” The first Bat Mitzvah ceremony was that of Judith Kaplan, daughter of Mordecai Kaplan, in 1922. Bikur Cholim: Visiting the sick (an important commandment). B’nai Brith: Literally, “Children of the Covenant.” Name of a major Jewish fraternal lodge organized in 1843 by American Jews of German descent. In 1913, it founded the Anti-Defamation League to combat anti-Semitism and other kinds of intolerance. It also established the Hillel foundation for Jewish students in college. Brit Milah: “Covenant of Circumcision.” Ceremony takes place on the eighth day of the male infant’s life.

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charoset: A mixture of apples (or other fruit), chopped nuts, possibly wine and cinnamon, symbolizing the straw and clay which the Israelite slaves used to make bricks in Egypt. Conservative Judaism: A major movement within Judaism that does not accept the Orthodox belief that the entire Torah was revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai but that does assert that Jews are obligated follow Jewish law as interpreted by the Committee on Law and Standards of the Rabbinic Assembly. It originated in the nineteenth century as the “historical school” and flourished in the United States after the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. dreidel: Yiddish term for a top used for playing a game during Hanukkah. frum: Yiddish term for “pious,” strictly observing Jewish law. gefilte: Yiddish for “stuffed,” describes a kind of fish dish often eaten on Shabbat, holidays, and other special occasions. Haggadah: Book read at the Seder on Passover. Literally, Hebrew for “telling” or “narrative.” halakhah: Jewish law as interpreted by the rabbis. Literally, “a way of going.” Hanukkah: Festival of Lights, celebrated for eight days beginning on the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, to commemorate the victory of the Maccabees in their struggle for religious freedom in 167–163 BCE, which culminated in the cleansing and dedication of the Temple. Literally, “Dedication.” Hasidic: Refers to Hasidism, a form of Jewish mysticism that originated in eighteenth-century Russia and whose followers found God not through study but through love, joy, song, and dance. The movement has taken various forms (e.g., the Lubavitcher Hasidim, who combine study, mysticism, and a strict observance of Jewish laws). hazan: Cantor, the person who chants or sings the musical portion of religious services (derived from Hebrew). hazanut: Cantorial chants. Hillel: First-century BCE Jewish teacher. kaddish: A prayer written in Aramaic, praising God and calling for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. Usually associated with mourning. There are variations (e.g., an abbreviated, or “hatzi,” kaddish chanted between portions of the liturgy). kashrut: Jewish dietary laws.

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kibbutzim: Plural of “kibbutz,” a collective of Israeli Jews originally organized on socialist principles that emphasize cooperative living. kiddush: Literally “sanctification”; the prayer chanted over wine on the Sabbath and holidays. latke: A potato pancake eaten on Hanukkah. Mah Nishtanah: The beginning of the four questions usually asked by the youngest child at the Seder. Marrano: A Jew who converts to Christianity but practices Judaism secretly. These secret Jews lived in Spain and Portugal during the fifteenth century. Originally a derogatory term meaning “swine.” matzo: Unleavened bread eaten during Passover. A reminder that the Israelites left Egypt in haste. medina: A district, country, or province. megillah: Scroll, used especially of the Book of Esther, read aloud at Purim. mensch: Yiddish for a good and humane person. Midrash: A body of commentaries on the Torah and other books of the Bible intended to search (“drash”) for the inner meaning and often to teach a moral lesson (200 through 500 c e ). minhag: Customs or religious practices in a particular community. minyan: Quorum required for Jewish communal worship that consists of ten male adults in Orthodox Judaism and usually ten adults of either sex in Conservative and Reform Judaism. Mishna: The section of the Talmud consisting mostly of oral laws and compiled about 200 c e . mohel: One who is trained to circumcise a male infant and to conduct the Brit Milah service. nachas: Yiddish for “great satisfaction.” Neilah: Closing service on Yom Kippur. ner tamid: Eternal light which is expected to shed light over the Ark. It represents the idea that God’s presence and the Jewish people will always be in this world. Orthodox: The traditional movement within Judaism which holds that the entire Torah is from God and its rabbinic interpretations by Orthodox rabbis have divine sanction. Orthodox consider theirs to be the only true form of Judaism.

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Pesach: Hebrew for the festival of Passover, which celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery to freedom. piyyut: Liturgical poem. Purim: Holiday celebrating how Mordecai and Esther thwarted Haman’s plan to kill all the Jews in Persia. Literally, “Lots.” Rashi: Acronym for Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (1040–1105), a major commentator on the Bible and Talmud. Reconstructionism: Movement that began in the 1920’s and that considers Judaism to be a civilization. Its adherents believe that God is not a supernatural Being but may be found within one’s soul and throughout nature. Reconstructionists are not bound by the authority of traditional Jewish law. Reform Judaism: A movement within Judaism that began in nineteenthcentury Germany as “Classical Reform” and that spread to the United States and many other nations. Reform Judaism denies the Orthodox belief that the entire Torah was revealed by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It is also not bound by the authority of the halakha. The Reform movement advocates that Jews study all aspects of Judaism, and on the basis of knowledge, choose which traditions to follow. The Pittsburgh Platform (1885), reflecting Classical Reform, called for the observance of those traditions that “elevate and sanctify” our lives. The Columbus Platform (1937) states that Judaism requires in addition to its moral and spiritual demands the preservation of the Sabbath, the festivals and holy days, and the use of Hebrew and distinctive forms of Jewish music. Rosh Hashanah: The Jewish Religious New Year; the beginning of ten days of penitence culminating in Yom Kippur. sabra: A Jew born in Palestine or Israel; literally “cactus.” Seder: The service and dinner held on the eve of Passover; literally, “order” of the ritual. semichah: Ordination of a rabbi which gives the authority to teach Judaism and interpret Jewish law. Sephardim: Jews whose ancestors came from Spain and North Africa. Shabbos: Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew for Sabbath. Shalom Aleichem: Literally, “peace be unto you.” A Jewish way of greeting. Shavuot: Literally “weeks,” as it falls seven weeks after Passover. It commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai

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and the Israelite’s response: “Naaseh v’nishma” (We will do and we will listen [or pay heed]). shivah: Seven days of mourning beginning the day of the funeral. Literally, “seven.” shochet: Yiddish term for one who is trained in the method of slaughtering according to Jewish law. shofar: The ram’s horn sounded on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. shomrei Shabbat: Keepers of the Sabbath according to Jewish law. shtetl: A small Jewish town or village formerly found in Eastern Europe. shul: Yiddish for “synagogue.” simchah: An occasion of joy (e.g., holiday or other celebration). Talmud: A collection of books giving rabbinic interpretations of Jewish law and the arguments for and against those interpretations. Consists of Mishna and Gamorra; redacted in the fifth century CE. Tanakh: Acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). tefillin: Phylacteries (straps and boxes containing verses from the Torah) wrapped around the arm, fingers, and head to suggest that we should subject our heart’s desires to God’s will and that our senses and faculties should be subjected to God’s service. Tekiah, Teruah, Shevarim, Tekiah G’dolah: Commands indicating the sounds the shofar should make on Rosh Hashanah. teva: Sephardic term for prayer platform. t’hiyat ha-metim: Orthodox concept of resurrection of the dead. Torah: The first five books of the Bible. May be inscribed on a scroll and placed in the Ark. This is the “Written Torah.” The “Oral Torah” is the term used to indicate the interpretations of laws in the Written Torah. trefah: Not kosher, i.e., not fit for eating according to Jewish law. Literally, “torn” (trafe in Yiddish). tzaddik: Righteous and saintly spiritual leader. Volkgeist: German term for inner spirit of a folk or people. yeshiva: Academy for Jewish studies. Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement, a time for fasting and repentance. zemiros: Songs, often sung on the Sabbath.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Charles C. Crusade for Conformity: The Ku Klux Klan in Texas, 1920–1930. Houston: Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, August 1962. Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Barnstone, Howard. The Galveston That Was. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Beard, Charles. The Rise of American Civilization II. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Bixel, Patricia, and Elizabeth Turner. Galveston and the 1900 Storm. Austin: U. of Texas Press, 2000. Cohen, Henry. “Energy.” Texas Journal of Education, June 1890. ———. “Three Years in Africa.” Texas Journal of Education, January 1896. ———. National Loyalty: A Jewish Characteristic. Galveston: H. J. Finch and Co., 1894. ———. “The Hygiene and Medicine of the Talmud.” The University Record, 1901. ———. “The Galveston Movement,” The Jewish Social Service, March 1928. ———. Talmudic Sayings. New York: Bloch, 1894. Cohen, Henry II. What’s Special about Judaism? 4th ed. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2004. de Souza, Ernest H. United Congregation of Israelites. Kingston, Jamaica, 1992.

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Dreyfus, Stanley. “First Citizen of Texas.” The Jewish Chronicle, May 3, 1963. ———, ed. Henry Cohen: Messenger of the Lord. New York: Bloch, 1963. Eilbert, Henry. What Is a Jewish Joke? Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1991. Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Britain: 1656 to 2000. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2002. Feldman, David. Englishmen and Jews. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1994. Golden, Harry. A Little Girl Is Dead. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1965. Henry Cohen Collection. American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati. Henry Cohen Papers. Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin. Horowitz, Rosella. “A Church Leader: Rabbi Henry Cohen.” Unity, March 30, 1931. Hyamson, Albert. Jews’ College, London: 1855–1955. London: Jews’ College, 1955. Kessler, Jimmy. Henry Cohen: The Life of a Frontier Rabbi. Austin, Eakin Press, 1997. ———. Temple B’nai Israel: The History of a BOI. Austin: Nortex Press, 2004. Larson, Erik. Isaac’s Storm. New York: Crown, 1999. Marinbach, Bernard. Galveston: Ellis Island of the West. Albany: suny Press, 1983. Marx, Karl. Capital, The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx, ed. Max Eastman. New York: Random House, 1932. Nathan, Anne, and Harry I. Cohen. The Man Who Stayed in Texas. New York: Whittlesey House, 1941. Ornish, Natalie. Pioneer Jewish Texans. Dallas: Texas Heritage Press, 1989. Ousley, Clarence E., ed. Galveston in Nineteen Hundred. Atlanta: William Chace, 1900. Sachar, Howard M. The Course of Modern Jewish History. New York: World Publ., 1958. ———. A History of the Jews in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Seltzer, Robert. Jewish People, Jewish Thought. New York: Macmillan, 1980. Turitz, Leo, and Evelyn Turitz. Jews in Early Mississippi. Jackson: U. Press of Mississippi, 1983. Vorspan, Albert. Giants of Justice. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1960. Waldman, Morris. “The Galveston Movement.” The Jewish Social Service, March 1928.

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Waldron, Webb. “The Busiest Man in Town.” The Rotarian, Feb. 1939. Ward, Geoffrey. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Weiner, Hollace Ava. Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work. College Station: Texas A & M U. Press, 1999. Weingarten, Ruth, and Cathy Schechter [Rabbi Jimmy Kessler, consulting editor]. Deep in the Heart: The Lives and Legends of Texas Jews. Austin: Eakin Press, 1990. Wohlgelernter, Maurice. Israel Zangwill, A Study. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1964.

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A Adler, Rabbi Nathan, 1, 7 age of consent, 90 Alexander II, Czar, 52 Alexander III, Czar, 52, 57 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 8, 39, 109 Allred, James (Governor), 99 Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites, 11, 12, 13 America, 84 American Council for Judaism, 118 American Expeditionary Force, 100 American Israelite, 22 Anglican church, 2 Anglo-American Commission on Palestine, 118 Anti-Defamation League, 32, 97 anti-Semitism, 32–33, 36, 53, 54–55, 57–58, 61, 71–73; and Ku Klux Klan, 81–85 Arab (ship), 6 Arnold, Matthew, 39 Ashkenazim, 1, 3, 14

B Barker Library (University of Texas), 113 Bar Mitzvah, 107–108 Barrow, Hyam, 13 Barton, Clara, 44 Bat Mitzvah, 108 Battle of Galveston, 28 Beesarbetz, 53 Behrenberg, Dr., 63 ben Zakkai, Rabbi Johanan, 109 Berman, Henry, 59 Beth El. See Temple Beth El Beth Israel, 20 Bierce, Ambrose, 73–74 Bikur Cholim Society, 62 Birth of a Nation, The, 81, 83 B’nai Israel (Galveston), 22, 28, 39, 40–41, 62, 67, 102, 103, 117; B’nai B’rith Lodge of, 41; Harmony Club of, 41; Henry Cohen Community House of, 94; Ladies Auxiliary of, 41; 1900

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storm and, 44; Orthodox congregation of, 41; rabbinage of, 38, 39, 76 Board of Guardians, 3, 4, 5 Board of Special Inquiry, 61 Braude, Rabbi William, 51 “Brave Frontiersman, A,” 34 Bressler, David, 58, 63 British Jewry, 1–2; Board of Deputies of, 2; class and, 3. See also Montefiore, Sir Moses British Royal Academy, 3 British White Paper, 118 Brooks, Captain J. A., 49 Bryan, William Jennings, 73 Buber, Martin, 109 Burleson, Robert, 82 C Capetown, 6 Carroll, Lewis, 31 Castro, Henry, 34 Central Conference of American Rabbis, 90, 118, 119 Central Relief Committee, 45 Chapman, Edward, 29 Chataignoon, Father Marius, 83 Choyinski, Joe, 49–50 Cline, Isaac Monroe, 41 Cohen, David (father of Henry Cohen), 3, 30 Cohen, George, 103 Cohen, Harry Isaac (son of Henry Cohen), 26, 30, 31, 80, 84, 97, 100–102, 113 Cohen, Henry: as advocate for prisoners, 92–94; appreciation of, 55, 77, 94, 102–104; as author, 31, 34–35, 47; birth, 1; Christians and, 22; criticism of, 99–100; death and funeral of,

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25, 114–116; and death of daughter Ruth, 98; dietary laws and, 48; fiftieth anniversary of, 102–104; and Galveston Movement, 57–65; Galveston’s 1900 storm and, 42–45; health/illness of, 47–49; honorary degrees of, 116; and intermarriage, 118–120; and Jamaica, 11–17; library of, 113; marriage of, 21, 29; oratory style, 8, 20–21; and Palestine, 118; and prison reform, 87–94; and prostitution, 50–51; religious diversity and, 16–17; retirement of, 113; schooling of, 3–6; sense of humor of, 29–31; South Africa trip, 5–7; student loans and, 48; stutter of, 20, 27; women’s rights and, 21; and Woodville, Mississippi, 20–25; and World War I, 80; and Zionism, 117–118 Cohen, Rabbi Henry II, 96, 107–111 Cohen, Joseph, 20 Cohen, Josephine (mother of Henry Cohen), 3, 30; children of, 3 Cohen, Lionel, 3, 5, 13 Cohen, Mark (brother of Henry Cohen), 5, 6; South Africa trip, 5–7 Cohen, Mollie Levy (wife of Henry Cohen), 21, 28–29, 66, 94, 102, 113 Cohen, Robert I., 103 Cohen Frisch, Ruth (daughter of Henry Cohen), 21, 26, 30, 31, 97, 98, 101 Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly, 81

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149

Columbus, Christopher, 12 Columbus Platform, 118 Conant, James, 111 Confucius, 99 Conley, Jim, 71 Connally, Tom, 115 Crazy Wells Hotel, 36 Cromwell, Oliver, 110 Cronbach, Rabbi Abraham, 69, 116, 121

Ford Motor Company, 85 Foster, Marcellus, 88 Fox, Rabbi George, 62 France, 34 Frank, Leo, 71, 81 Friedlander, Michael, 4 Frisch, David, 29, 70, 96, 98, 116 Frisch, Rabbi Ephraim, 97, 98–99, 100, 108, 121 Frost, Meigs, 64, 65, 69

D Damrosch Conservatory, 97 Darrow, Clarence, 120 Davis, Moses, 6 Dearborn Independent, The, 81, 84 de Cordova, Altamont, 13 Demchuk, 69–70 Depression, the, 97, 120 de Souza, Ernest Henriques, 12 dietary laws, 47, 48 Disraeli, Benjamin, 5 Dreyfus, Capt. Alfred, 31 Dreyfus, Rabbi Stanley, 116 Duke Street Synagogue, 12

G Gallagher, Nicholas, 54 Galveston, 4, 37; and antiSemitism, 33; Battle of Galveston, 28; 1871 storm, 39; history of, 27–28, 45; Jewish community of, 28; and Jewish immigration, 57–65; 1900 storm, 41–45, 83; population statistics of, 22 Galveston Committee, 63 Galveston Daily News, 35, 36, 50, 60, 64, 65, 80, 113, 125, 126, 127 Galveston in Nineteen Hundred, 41 Galveston Movement, 56, 57–65, 69; criticism of, 62; statistics on, 60, 62, 63–64 Galveston Open Forum, 99 Galveston Tribune, 41, 83, 84, 91, 100, 101, 128 Germany, 2, 32 Gibson, Rev. Edmund, 115, 121 Gibson, Robert, 121–122 Gilbert and Sullivan, 1, 8, 31, 43 Ginsberg, Louis, 59 Glueck, Rabbi Nelson, 115 Great Synagogue, 1 Green, Louis H., 49 Griffith, D. W., 81

E Eastman, Max, 99 Eilat (ship), 118 Einhorn, Rabbi David, 15 Ellis Island, 58, 61 Endelman, Todd, 2, 7 Evalina Rothschild prize, 4 Evans, Hiram, 82 F Ferguson, Miriam “Ma,” 82, 91 First Southwestern States Probation and Parole Conference, 91 Ford, Henry, 81, 84

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Gurwitz, Ziskind, 61 H Haggadah, Orthodox, 117 Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 35 Hampton, Alfred, 61, 63 Hanukkah, 101, 105 Happiness Boys, 85 Harelik, Haskel, 64–65 Harelik, Milton, 64–65 Hart, Isaac T., 22 Hatch, Colonel, 74 Hearst, William Randolph, 44 Hebrew Benevolent Society, 28 Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, 57 Hebrew Union College, 67, 69, 75, 88, 97, 101, 116 Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 115, 116 Heller, Rabbi James, 75 Heller, Rabbi Max, 75 Henry Cohen: Messenger of the Lord, 116 Henry Cohen: The Life of a Frontier Rabbi, 117 Henry Cohen Community House, 94 Henry Cohen Humanitarian Award, 116 hernia epidemic, 63 Hershon, Bergel, 47 Hilfsverein des Deutschen Juden, 58 Historical School of Judaism, 16 Hitler, 32, 110 Holbrook, I. J., 91 Holman, E. D., 61 Home for Indigent Colored People, 44 Hopkins, Elise B., 116 Hotel Boulderado, 37

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Houston, 45 Houston, Sam, 34 Houston Chronicle, 88 Houston Poster Advertising Company, 101 Hov’vei Tzion (Lovers of Zion), 118 Huerta, General (Mexico), 73 Hughes, Charles Evan, 79 Hutcheson, Judge Joseph C., 103, 118 I immigration, Jewish, 57–65; statistics, 60, 62, 63–64 immortality, 117 Industrial Removal Office, 58 Institute of Texas Culture, 114 intermarriage, 118–120 International Order of B’nai B’rith, 35 Isaacs, Samuel, 33 J Jackson, Murray, 82 Jacobs, Henry, 16 Jacobson, Rabbi David, 115 Jamaica, 10, 11–17; Jews and, 12–13 Jastrow, Rabbi Marcus, 16 Jewish Chronicle, 7 Jewish Emigration Society, 59, 60–61, 62 Jewish Exponent, 119 Jewish ghettos, 58 Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau, 58, 59 Jewish Messenger, 124 Jewish nationalism. See Zionism Jewish Spectator, 124 Jewish Stars in Texas, 117

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Jewish Territorial Organization, 58 Jews’ College, 4, 5, 7, 11, 17 Jews’ Hospital, 3 Jochelmann, David, 59 Johnson, Jack, 49–50 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 115 Johnson-Choynski fight, 49–50 K Kahn, Rabbi Robert, 115 Kaplan, Rabbi Mordecai, 109 kashrut. See dietary laws Keefe, Daniel, 61 Kempner, I. H., 102 Kessler, Rabbi Jimmy, 117 Kimbro, George, 81 Kingston (Jamaica) fire, 11 Kipling, Rudyard, 8, 36, 39 Kirwin, Father Jim, 35, 44, 82, 83, 84, 121 Kishineff, 53–54 Kohler, Rabbi Kaufmann, 90 Krulewich, Migel, 72 Ku Klux Klan, 81–85, 121 L labor protests, 98–99 Lafitte, Jean, 27, 31 Landes, H. A., 59 Larson, Erik, 41, 45 Lauder, Sir Harry, 83 Lefkowitz, Rabbi David, 115 Lenin, 52, 54 Levi, Leo, 22 Levy, Adrian, 103 Levy, Mollie. See Cohen, Mollie Levy Lipman, S., 62 London Jewish Chronicle, 4 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 114

151

Lowe, Maj., 36 lynching, 82. See also Frank, Leo M Magruder, General, 28 Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 47 Man Who Stayed in Texas, The, 50, 101 Marcus, Rabbi Jacob, 19 Marinbach, Bernard, 57, 64 Markham, Edwin, 94 Marshall, Louis, 84 Martin, David Wolf, 2 Marx, Karl, 52, 99, 100 Maugham, Somerset, 84 Mayfield, Earle, 82 May Laws, 52 McGarvie, David, 110 Memphis Jewish Spectator, 29 Mendelssohn, Moses, 21 Menorah Journal, The, 125 Mexico, 73 Mexico Relief Fund, 73 Montefiore, Sir Moses, 1, 2 Moody, Dan, 82, 91 Moody III, William, 82 Morgen Journal, 62 Morgenstern, Rabbi Julian, 115 N National Loyalty: A Jewish Characteristic, 31 National Pencil Company, 71 Naval Chaplain Bill, 80 Nazis, 32 New Orleans Times Picayune, 69 New York Times, 100 Nicholas II, Czar, 52 1900 storm (Galveston), 41–45

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O Occasional Lapses into Rhyme, 123 O. Henry. See William Sidney Porter Orphan’s Home, 102 Orthodox Judaism, 11, 16, 41, 117 Orthodox Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) Synagogue, 62 Ousley, Clarence, 41 P Pale of Settlement, 52 Palestine, 118 Parkinson’s disease, 80, 101 Paskowitz, Benny, 101 Passover, 106–107 Paul, J. S., 82 Peretz, Y. L., 107 Phagan, Mary, 71 Pittsburgh Platform, 117 Pobedonostsev, 52 pogroms, 53–54 Porter, William Sydney (O. Henry), 93–94 prison farms, 90–91 prison reform, 87–94 Pritz, Carl, 90 Purim, 101, 106 Q Quin, Rt. Rev. Clinton, 104, 115 R racism, 92, 110 Rapoport, Solomon, 7 Rauch, Rabbi Joseph, 102 Rava (Poland), 3 Recife (Brazil), 12 Reconstructionism, 2 Red Cross, 44, 73

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Reform Judaism, 2, 32, 89, 103, 105, 108, 109, 114, 117, 119; formation of, 15 Reichert, Rabbi Victor, 104, 116 restrictionism, 57, 61–62 Riley, James Whitcomb, 111 Robinson, Rabbi Michael, 68 Robinson, Sam, 67 Rosenbaum, I., 92 Rosh Hashanah, 99, 107 ROTC, 110 Rothschild, Lionel, 2 Russia, 52 Russian Social Democratic Party, 54 S Sabbatha, Capt. Campoe, 13 Samuel, Sydney, 5 Sapiro, Aaron, 84 Satolli, Cardinal, 35 Sayres, Governor, 50 Schachtel, Rabbi Hyman Judah, 114, 115 Schiff, Jacob M., 57, 58, 61, 62, 63 Schlesinger, S., 34 Schwartz, Jacob, 20 Seder, 106–107 Sephardim, 1, 14 Settlement of the Jews in Texas, The, 33 Shaare Shalom (Gates of Peace), 12 Shabbat, 105, 117 shofar, 36, 99, 100, 107, 120 Simmons, William Joseph, 81 Smith, David Abner, 19 Snowden, Philip, 3 social justice, 15 South Africa, 5 Southey, Robert, 40 Southwest Jewish Chronicle, 115

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Spinoza, Baruch, 102 S.S. Cassel (ship), 59, 80 Steinberg, Milton, 109 Steinberg, Rabbi Sam, 74–75 Sterne, Adolphus, 33–34 Stillpass, Rabbi Leo, 113, 114 Storm of 1900. See 1900 storm (Galveston) Sulzberger, Cyrus, 58 T Taft, William Howard, 69, 70, 121 Talmud, the, 47, 90, 99; medical references of, 48 Talmudic rabbis, 51–52 Talmudic Sayings, 7, 74 Tannenbaum, Frank, 88 Temple Beth El (San Antonio), 97, 99 Tennyson. See Alfred, Lord Tennyson Texas Christian University, 116 Texas Committee for Prisons and Prison Labor, 90 Texas Journal of Education, 31 Texas Legislature, 91 Texas State Prison, 92 Thomas, Henry, 49 Thomas, Norman, 99 Tikoczinka, Josephine. See Cohen, Josephine Trotsky, 54 Tunick, Irv, 116 U Ukraine, 52 Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 16 United Hebrew Charities, 57, 59 United States Navy, 80 University of London, 4 University of Texas, 100, 101

153

University of Texas Medical School (Galveston), 47 V Von Plehve, Wenzel, 53 W Waldman, Morris, 58, 59 Watson, Tom, 71, 72 Weiner, Hollace Ava, 117 Weinstein, Rabbi Jacob, 121 West London synagogue, 3 Wilde, Oscar, 5, 8 Wiley, Louis, 100 William II, Kaiser, 79 Wilson, Clarence, 120 Wilson, Woodrow, 63, 73, 79 Wise, Rabbi Isaac Mayer, 15–16, 75, 103 Wise, Rabbi Jonah, 103 Wise, Rabbi Stephen, 104, 120, 122 Woodville, Mississippi, 16, 19–25, 98 Woodville Courier, 24 Woodville Republican, 19, 24 Wordsworth, William, 122 Works Progress Administration, 98 World War I, 75, 77, 79–80, 87, 100, 120 World War II, 97, 110, 120 Write It Right, 74 Y Yiddishes Taggenblatt, 62 Yom Kippur, 101, 107 Z Zangwill, Israel, 4, 58, 59, 62, 63 Zionism, 117–118 Zulus, 6