EXCLUSIVE to the SJHS!! Read the
Author's comments
I'm a Washingtonian, a
D.C. native who grew up in a region where Jews are 10% of the populace and
synagogues seem to sprout around the corner and across the street from one
another. Rabbis come and go. When dinner-table conversation turns to rabbis, my
parents have jibes for them all: This one has a "God complex," that
one's sermons put you to sleep, a third rabbi seems aloof, and a fourth has a
spouse who won't walk into a temple!
When I journeyed
south-southwest to Texas, a region less than 1% Jewish, I stepped through the
looking glass. Throughout Texas, rabbis are icons, worshipped for their Biblical
wisdom, prophetic stands on civil rights, consensus-building skills across the
community, and their colorful, albeit quirky, personalities. (Yes, with my
journalist’s eye, I spotted a fair share of imperfections.) When a Methodist
informed me that Rabbi Alex Klein had been the most influential soul in her
life, I wanted to know more. When she added that Lubbock's art museum had named
a room in memory of "her" rabbi, I knew there was a book in this
phenomenon.
--Hollace Ava Weiner,
author
Jewish Stars in Texas
Read the The Rambler Review of Jewish
Stars in Texas
Hollace Weiner's Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work (Texas A &
M Press, 1999) is a well-written, well-researched popular history which should
attract scholars and general readers alike. By focusing on the lives and
careers of rabbis in the Lone Star state from the late nineteenth to the
midtwentieth century, Hollace Weiner addresses a variety of important issues in
American Jewish history. With a vivid prose style and much humor, she also tells
a series of highly entertaining stories. These Texas rabbis were
a varied lot. Some were feisty leaders who battled everything from
hurricanes to bigoted social attitudes to factions within their own
congregations. Others were smooth "mixers" who soothed internal
conflicts and served as "ethnic brokers" by ably representing the
small Jewish minority to a larger Texas society. With admirable honesty
and insight, Weiner resists the temptation to turn these remarkable individuals
into saints or heroes. Instead, she provides compelling portraits of
flesh-and-blood people with plenty of human foibles mixed in with their high
ideals and noble deeds.
Weiner's honesty extends to her handling of controversial issues
that arose during the rabbis' careers. An especially revealing thread running
through the book concerns a phenomenon that many American Jews would prefer to
forget: the fierce battles over Zionism that occurred within the Reform movement
at mid-century. The surprisingly lukewarm response of some rabbis to the
resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s is contrasted with the much stronger
anti-Klan stand taken by others. The ambivalence of Texas Jews regarding
race relations crops up in several chapters. Her discussion of such
controversies is sensitive, balanced and straightforward.
But the heart and soul of the book concerns somewhat
idiosyncratic turn that Jewish life took under the influence of the Texas
environment. Frontier conditions, the larger-than-life Texas ethos, and
the conjunction of Southern and Western styles created a Texas Jewish culture
that was at once robust and proud, assimilatory and circumspect.
Compromise and contradiction, improvisation and tenacity were the order of the
day. Rabbis aspiring to lead their frontier flocks had to exhibit both
strong leadership and great adaptability. That so many of them did manage
to combine these qualities, yet in such different ways, makes for a story that
anyone interested in American Jewish history-and not just Texans-will find
fascinating.
--Deborah Weiner, reviewer
The Rambler, Volume II, Issue 2
|
