Texas Jewish Historical Society holds quarterly meeting in McAllen, honoring Jewish life in RGV, Mexico
The RGV’s Jewish community held events in January, February, marking Holocaust Remembrance.
The Jewish people have immensely contributed to the economic and cultural life of virtually every modern society. The Rio Grande Valley is one of them.
The founder of the storied and RGV household name, Lacks Furniture or Lacks Tire & Supply, for example, was a refugee from the old Russian empire, coming to America as a young man in 1914, just as the first imperialist world war was getting underway. He’d find his final refuge in the Valley in 1934, as Sam Lack and his lifelong spouse, Bea Haas, made their way to McAllen from Tulsa. With a $2,000 loan from his mother, he launched the company a year later.
The pioneer spirit didn’t end with business, as they were among the founding families of the Valley’s second Synagogue in Mercedes, in the mid 1930s. He became the first Vice President for Temple Emanuel McAllen, which was constitutionally founded in December 1948 and opened its doors March 20, 1949, serving two terms as President. Lack was named the first ‘Man of the Year’ by the McAllen Chamber of Commerce in 1955, at the height of the thinly veiled antisemitic ‘McCarthy era,’ and earned innumerable awards and recognitions until his passing in 1988.
Stories like that of Mr. and Mrs. Lack were just one among the many Jewish family histories discussed and honored by the Texas Jewish Historical Society from January 26-28 in McAllen. The weekend of events was preceded by a presentation on Holocaust remembrance, hosted by the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, in coordination with Temple Emmanuel, at the McAllen Public Library, Jan. 24.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated by the UN General Assembly, is set for Jan. 27, the day the last and most horrific Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, was liberated at the end of the second imperialist world war in January 1945. The week and month of the holiday is generally observed as a time of remembrance.
Recalling the consequences of flourishing antisemitism continued Feb. 15-17 with the Mcallen International Museum of Art and Science launching a 3-day interactive exhibit titled “Hate Ends Now,” which simulated a boxcar wherein attendees viewed a projected presentation by two boxcar transportation resisters and survivors describing their experience and memories.
The late Rabbi, Jimmy Kessler (1948-2022), founded TJHS in 1980. Told by a Texas history teacher in his youth, after he and fellow Jewish students received failing grades for missing a test on Yom Kippur, that Jews didn’t play any important role in the state’s founding as well as his rabbinical instructors insisting effectively the same point, a spark kindled inside Kessler to launch a historic society documenting and preserving Jewish life in Texas. Serving as its first president, Kessler led an organization that today has dozens and hundreds of members from across the state and the country, including a board of trustees and acting officers, one of whom resides in Brownsville.
Currently led by President Joan Linares of Baytown, TJHS hosted an exciting and dynamic series of Jewish history events in McAllen, put together by members Lynda Furgatch, Marilyn Lippman and Anita Feigenbaum. TJHS’ quarterly meeting in the RGV was historic in itself as the organization had not convened in McAllen since 1998. The weekend included joining Temple Emanuel for their weekly Shabbat services where over a dozen framed historic narratives were displayed, including the Lacks’.
Another notable RGV, Jewish history chronicle displayed in picture frames at Temple Emanuel was that of Isadore and Julia Moritz, admittedly showing my bias as a journalist and former Brownsville Herald staff writer. Born in San Antonio in 1882 to German and French immigrants, Isadore answered the call to write and become a newspaperman. He started out in San Marcos and then later wrote for the San Antonio Light, joining the Brownsville Herald in 1906 to cover the beginning of Panama Canal construction. Moritz later moved to Mercedes where he launched the second English language paper in the RGV, the Mercedes Enterprise, which is still in existence. Marrying and settling down with Julia Bullock of Brownsville in 1913, he purchased The Monitor and moved to McAllen in 1915.
Come 1920, Moritz built the first brick building to house the newspaper in the rear of his home, on the corner of Beaumont and Broadway. Selling the sheet in ‘24, about 100 years ago, he purchased the Edinburg Star, sold it, then purchased Willacy County News and moved the family to Raymondville. He sold it in the mid-30s to open a tire store in Harlingen. But the Great Depression wouldn’t spare Moritz, forcing him to close the business and take a desk job at First National Bank where he worked until he retired in 1948, according to the Lack memorial frame at Temple Emanuel. Moritz was also editor at the KRGV Radio Station and reported for the Harlingen Star, according to Mr. Mike Blum who delivered the keynote address over the weekend which will be discussed later in this story.
The following morning, TJHS visited the grave sites of Moritz and Lack in McAllen, among others, at the Temple Emanuel Memorial gardens where members read “resurrections” or remembrances for the two families. Temple Emmanuel’s memorial park also has its origins in the founding of the congregation. Mr. Moe Adams, born in 1899 and founder of Moe Adams Jewelry, which ran until 1980, was instrumental in securing the location of the cemetery as well as the original McAllen Temple on Main St., in the historic downtown area.
Adams approached Mr. Lloyd Bentsen to inquire if he had property for sale. He didn’t but pointed Adams to a property on Ware Rd. that was for sale and offered to bulldoze it for free. Adams tended to the cemetery for 45 years where the first member laid to rest was Mr. Jake Edelstein who, as you may have guessed, was the founder of Edelstein’s Furniture, for those lifelong Valleyites.
Later that afternoon at the Continental Courtyard, TJHS held a panel discussion with four veteran members of McAllen’s Jewish community – Larry Holtzman (who moderated), Larry Fallek, Harriet Kirsh Pozen and Cecilia Shapiro. Homemade pastries by members and local residents laid out at the Courtyard’s conference hall, the panel featured first-hand accounts of Jewish life in McAllen, going as far back as the beginning of the 20th century.
Fallek was born in McAllen, graduated from its high school in 1959 and earned a law degree from UT-Austin in ‘65. After living and working in Washington D.C. for a few years, he and his wife, Patty Edelman, moved back to McAllen in 1970.
Kirsh Pozen, also born in McAllen, graduating from McHi in ‘68, was raised by parents who — she was grateful to say — were introduced by the final panelist, Cecilia Shapiro, who’d later say, in response, that, ‘matchmaking’ was “a Jewish tradition.”
Cecilia “Ceci” Shapiro, born in Lithuania in August of 1924, wafted across the Atlantic as a young girl with her mother to Mexico where her father awaited them. As Shapiro said of her voyage to the western hemisphere, evoking laughter from all in attendance, “It was not the love boat.” After a grueling “third class” boat ride to Mexico, Shapiro and her mother made it to Tampico, from which they headed to Mexico City, where she was raised. Leaving for Indiana to attend high school, Shapiro would also spend a little time in Atlantic City with relatives.
Her passport expiring only days before graduating high school, Shapiro moved back to Mexico where she landed a job teaching English, at a childcare center, to first graders. She brilliantly explained, in her European accent dashed with a touch of Mexican Spanish, that she learned some “very important” life lessons, such as “how to lie.” She told a story about the time when she reported a young boy to the principal’s office for spitting on another child during class. Shapiro was shocked when her boss bluntly told her that the problematic child’s parents are important people who help pay for the child center. Cecilia got the message.
“Como se porto Pepito?” “How did Pepito behave?” she would be asked of the parental dignitaries, upon picking up the aforementioned, ‘Pepito.’ “Oh, very, very well!” Shapiro would reply with a big smile.
Asked by the panel discussion leader, Holtzman, what brought their families to the area, Fallek answered that his parents, being born in San Antonio and St. Louis, moved to Harlingen after living in San Antonio for a time, to join an uncle who launched a mercantile business in Mercedes, and then opened several more stores across Hidalgo County over the years.
Kirsh Pozen’s father was born in Poland in 1905 and came to the U.S. in 1918. Her mother was also Polish. By the time her grandparents tried making it to the U.S., as those who made it here first then worked to bring relatives, Jewish immigration quotas had been filled, but “Mexico opened their doors to the Jews,” K.P. stated with conviction and pride. Her mother being unable to get married at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel in Austin because she wasn’t an American citizen, “although she did all her shopping in McAllen,” married instead at the home of Cecilia (“at the time”) Borovski in McAllen.
Kirsh Pozen affectionately recalled a thriving Jewish community in Mexico City and Monterrey, joining a Jewish youth group in the northern, mountainous, scenic Mexican city. “I spent a lot of my life in McAllen, but I would go back and forth to Monterrey, where my grandparents lived, and then when I turned 15, I would go to Mexico City because my aunts both had married and lived in Mexico City. So here I was, this girl from McAllen . . . and I would go to this very sophisticated place with museums and theaters and everything, and lots of Jews. I was in a Jewish youth group in Monterrey.”
Considering if she was Mexican, American, or Jewish, Kirsh Pozen contently reconciled that she’s happily “all three.”
Borovski-Shapiro made it to McAllen after moving to Reynosa where she lived with her first husband, “a man named Borovski who had a big store in Reynosa,” but who later passed away and was buried in Monterrey, she said. After a time of being single, Cecilia moved to McAllen, and met a refugee, Irving Shapiro, who’d been an inmate at a concentration camp in Hitler’s Europe, as many young men from Europe living in the Valley were, she recalled.
The discussion continued, covering questions about the old Temple in Mercedes, where Cecilia said she met Rachael Wolff-Moritz, daughter of Isadore, the newspaperman from earlier. The moderator mentioned how at the cemetery, it was mentioned that Julia Moritz’ father was in New Orleans, at the time of the civil war, and was conscripted into the confederacy, taking part in the “last battle” of the war which ended with a union retreat (a post-war skirmish in the most desolate part of the South which was of course followed by a capitulation and surrender by the remaining confederate forces), in Brownsville’s Palmito Ranch, famously taking place years after the Union Army’s decisive victory.
The panelists wrapped up the first portion of the discussion by addressing Jewish youth education in the region during their childhoods, describing Sunday school with some of the founding members of the Mercedes synagogue. Kirsh Pozen described the disappointment of not being able to have a Bat Mitzvah, as they tended to be reserved for boys/men, although she’d later have one at a temple in Austin.
McAllen native and longtime Valley political activist, candidate, organizer and campaign strategist, Rosalie Weisfeld, was in the audience and made the first comment. She gleefully thanked Kirsh Pozen for her speaking up for the right of women and girls to have bat Mitzvahs.
“What I wanted to say was thank you because I didn’t know you wanted a Bat Mitzvah so badly, Harriet! I wanted a Bat Mitzvah, and my mother was insistent that I, the eldest of 6 children, should have a Bat Mitzvah. So, Mirna Levine helped me to learn Hebrew, [audience vocalizes grief for the departed, “good old, Mirna,” can be heard] of blessed memory. She’s buried at the cemetery, you may have seen her,” Weisfeld continued. “I want to thank you. You didn’t get to do it, but because of your voice, you gave me the opportunity so that I could have a Bat Mitzvah. I was the first girl to have a Bat Mitzvah,” Weisfeld said, receiving applause from the audience.
Rosalie’s son, an attorney for UTRGV’s medical school, Johnathan Weisfeld-Hinojosa, her uncle, federal defense attorney Sheldon Weisfeld, and her aunt, Sylvia-Gayle Klein of S. Klein Galleries, were also in attendance. Stuart Klein, of blessed memory, passed away in 2021 and was also laid to rest at Temple Emmanuel’s memorial garden. I visited his grave site that morning. He, too, possessed the knack for journalism and launching publications, having once told me about the time he started an underground campus magazine called “Psst!” at the old “Pan American University” as it was called then.
The Weisfeld family is one of the founding families of Temple Emmanuel in McAllen as well as one of the early pioneering families of the city itself. Morris Weisfeld, born April 15 of 1900 in Zakilov, Poland, was one of nine children. An elder sister who’d married and moved to America, worked, and saved to “send for” one of her siblings, as it used to be called. In this case they sent for Morris, “Moshe,” in the old country.
Moshe Weisfeld left behind siblings and family. According to Sheldon Weisfeld, his youngest son, Moshe’s parents, and two siblings who stayed with them in Poland, were killed during the Shoah. Other family members of Moshe were also killed in the Czarist pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe during the late 19th century and early 20th decades before the Nazi holocaust, according to their pictured frame.
Seeking work, as the Depression hit, Weisfeld set for Texas from Chicago with his wife, Pauline, and two young sons, in 1929. Settling in Pharr, where Morris worked at a planing mill, Weisfeld entered the citrus business in 1930 with a $500 loan. Although he passed away in a car accident in 1969, he was posthumously inducted into the Texas Citrus Hall of Fame in 1995. Pauline passed away in May 1996, and was famous for her challahs, according to their frame.
One of the panelists referencing the legacy of the produce industry in the region, as a result of the railroad and irrigation apparatuses entering the area, the aforementioned Sheldon Weisfeld took to the microphone in what would be an interesting little history lesson on RGV citrus history. He said:
“The origin was that, in the 30s, when the Valley opened up with produce, everybody would come from Chicago. So, they didn’t come from Europe, they came from Chicago. There was a produce market in Chicago. The destination from the Valley was to the mid-west. Some would go to New York; California was the other side.
“So, the first one to start was my pops, when he came down to the Valley in ‘29-30. He’d take the citrus, mom would wash it in the washtub, then pop would take it to San Antonio. On Pops’ first load to the market, some African American guys jumped him. They thought, you know, he’s a little guy, blue eyed, blonde hair. Pop was a little, strong guy. He beat the shit out of them.
“So the police came and told him you can’t ever come back to San Antonio ‘cause they’ll kill you next time. So one of his brothers would begin hauling up citrus to San Antonio, which was Uncle Irving, who was married to Tanembaum.
“Teddy Bertuga came down from Chicago…there was Ben Klein who is her father-in-law [pointing to Sylvia-Gayle Klein], he first went to San Benito, then had a little packing shed in Primera. He was the most famous guy for growing cabbage. He knew everything, that was Mr. Klein,” Weisfeld recalled.
Sylvia-Gayle Klein interjected and added that Ben Klein was “with Elmer and Stall for a while before working with Othal Brand,” the former, longtime McAllen mayor. “So later on, the father-in-law of Ken Fox — his wife’s father — was in the container business. What happened in the citrus and the produce was it changed from bushel, wooden crates, into containers. That’s what Mr. Fox’s father-in-law had in St. Louis, so they came down and they’ve been really successful.”
Calvin Wolff, son of Rachael Moritz, was supposed to be on the panel but couldn’t make it. However, he passed along a story to Holtzman about fajitas and their McAllen origins. “Fajita meat for many years was not considered by Cowboys to be a good piece of meat, in those days. The Mexican Americans knew about fajitas. But it was in McAllen where it was promoted first, to be sold to the entire community, by the Rivas family. Rivas Grocery on 18th and Hackberry, they had fajitas on the window and people started to buy fajitas at Rivas Grocery, and of course it spread from there all over. Now it’s like gold to get fajita.
“The Rivas family found their Jewish roots and as many as you know came from Spain to Mexico to escape the what? [Audience answers, “The Inquisition.”] Did the Inquisition follow them to Mexico? [Audience answers, “Yes.”] So, they moved very much down to Northern Mexico, where no one wants to go. There’s the thought that the flour tortilla is like making Matzah. So, the Rivas family found their Jewish roots and converted. The connections are not only from Poland but the escape from Spain. Jewish history is fascinating.”
The discussion took an even more interesting turn when an audience member asked if any of the panelists had experienced antisemitism of any kind in the Valley. Larry Fallek answered, “As far as I’m concerned there was none. I think this community was very open, very accepting. And I never experienced any – going back to the late 40s, 50s, early 60s – I never had any experience,” Fallek said proudly of his hometown. He added an interesting corollary.
“I had an experience where a Hispanic friend was discriminated against, but when I asked him about it 40 years later, he didn’t even remember. We were kicked out of the swimming pool at the Casa de Palmas. We used to go swimming there. And one day, I had this friend of mine, and a guy called me out and said, Larry, you can’t be here. I told my father about that. The next day, the man called me and said bring your friend over.
“That friend, George Martinez, became President of Sterling Bank. I think it was one of the biggest banks in Texas, and he’s still a friend,” Fallek concluded.
Kirsh Pozen replied, “I never experienced any antisemitism either, never experienced it. But interestingly, there were two girl private clubs – ‘subdeb’ and ‘tiptop.’ And I always heard ‘tiptop’ was started because the Jewish girls weren’t invited to be in ‘subdeb.’ But, anyway, I was being rushed by ‘subdeb,’ and my girlfriend Sandra Martinez was not being invited. I know that there were girls who were dying, that had to be in ‘subdeb.’ And so, I went and said to them, you know what, I’m going to withdraw my name, so that somebody else can have my place, because I was not going to be in an organization where my girlfriend, Sandra Martinez, could not be,” K.P. said, receiving applause from the audience.
Cecilia replied, “I haven’t experienced any. I live all among them, and they’re all my friends, they’re all my neighbors. I went to the beauty shop the other day and somebody I didn’t know said to me, hello, Mrs. Shapiro. How are you? I said, I’m fine. I said, you don’t know me, verdad? My neighbor’s mother, that’s across the street. She said, they love you a lot. Well, I said, we’re very good neighbors and you got wonderful children. She was happy and I was happy. We have to learn to get along with people. That’s the name of the game! If you want them to respect you, you have to respect them,” receiving mounds of applause from the audience.
So far so good. The Jewish people, being common victims of discrimination themselves, have historically stood with others being victimized, like Mexican Americans living on the border. (My great muckraking hero, I.F. Stone — the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants turned journalist and author, offered a similar example when he refused membership of PEN America in solidarity with a Black friend they refused to allow as Stone’s guest who’d later also go on to become successful, a supreme court justice in a Caribbean country.) This history is important and should be preserved. However, in slivers and nooks, antisemitism can sometimes reside, even in the most progressive and accepting of places like the RGV, particularly in high places of power, which likewise mustn’t be forgotten.
Sheldon Weisfeld understood this, chiming in, “Actually, growing up in Pharr Texas, we were not accepted in the McAllen Country Club. So, that was just my experience.”
As Weisfeld prepared to end his remarks, Larry Fallek quickly replied, “That’s because you were from Pharr,” receiving laughter from the audience.
“Actually, Larry,” Weisfeld responds, “It was because we were Jewish.” Several members in the audience vocalized, “yes,” in agreement with Weisfeld.
“No one in our family was ever let into the country club. The only one, once my brother died, my sister-in-law was invited because Max Lutz was a part of it. So, I’m going to fast forward. 1971, November of ‘71, my brother (Seymour) dies. I start work to take over the packing ship. I get invited to go eat lunch at the country club. I’d never been at the country club. We don’t go inside; we go into where the golfers were, ok?” the audience nodding, acknowledging they’re following him.
“So, I’m sitting there, and there’s two Anglo fellows, sitting over there. And I’m with my group, and I see, you know, I’m looking up, and I see out through the glass, I see two men walking up, two Jewish men who had stores downtown, who were partners, downtown, Mr. Weisberg and Mr. Schlessinger. And you know what the golfers said?” Audience replies, “What?”
“Those fucking Jews think they can buy their way in,” Weisfeld relayed, evoking disturbed moans and groans from the audience.
“So, that was in 1971. That’s just a Pharr boy talking,” Weisfeld concludes.
I myself, also raised in Pharr, was speechless, but somehow unsurprised. It’s not unusual to hear stories about Jewish people being barred from joining country clubs, particularly in the decades following the holocaust, and well into the 70s, as Weisfeld corroborates. A few more questions and comments, including some from this reporter, were fielded and the panel concluded.
The eventful day concluded with a tour of the South Texas Museum of History in Edinburg where dozens of TJHS members convened at sundown. After the tour, led by the Museum’s C.E.O. Francisco Guajardo, Ph.D, was a catered dinner that was followed by a keynote address by local real estate giant, former elected official, and past Temple president, Mike Blum.
Before the dinner, Guajardo illuminated the TJHS members with riveting historical notes regarding Jewish people in Mexico, alongside an exciting and educational tour of the ‘Rio Grande Legacy Exhibit,’ which displays and pays homage to the written, as well as the archeological, history of the region.
“By the way, when Escandon, the colonizer, who came in the 1750s and brought 400 families, and then more families would gather and form the first permanent communities along the river, incidentally, Escandon comes a good 200 years after a fellow named Carvajal had been the first mayor of Nuevo Leon. And Carvajal was a Jewish man, his parents were ‘conversos.’ They had ‘converted,’ which is a common story of the Jewish immigrants into the northern part of Mexico,” Guajardo explained while receiving nods of agreement from several TJHS members.
“So, in Monterrey for instance, a lot of the industries were formed by the ‘Zadas’ and the ‘Garzas’ and other Jewish immigrants who were pretty much part of the converso culture, because it was not smart to go around trumpeting your Jewish ancestry or heritage around here, because the Catholic church dominated where it wasn’t dominated by Native people.”
“Speaking of that, there’s a fascinating story that happened in 1788, about the change of a culture, the change of a people,” Guajardo continued. “You have people changing themselves, for self-preservation, but the native people here, there’s this fantastic story. In 1788, in Laredo, where this one Franciscan priest is baptizing all these native people, he lines them up, 25 people… And in one fell swoop, he calls, baptizes them all, “De La Garzas.” [Audience laughter.] And then he goes to the next line. In one fell swoop they all become, “Gonzales.”
“So, imagine the erasure of a culture, of an identity, of a people. When we bring kids in, just about every single kid that comes in from local elementary schools, they look indigenous. And yet, none of us knows – indigenous from what? From what tribe? Which is, I think, very, very similar to the Jewish history in la frontera. I traced my ancestry. In 1688, Josef Guajardo [placing emphasis on ‘Josef’] came from Spain,” the museum director thought-provokingly concluded with great suspense.
The tour went on to cover the fascinating history of the RGV and its role during the civil war and the underground railroad.
After the tour, TJHS event organizer, Lynda Furgatch, introduced “the grand finale’s” keynote speaker, Mike Blum, former president of Temple Emmanuel, past president of the International Museum of Arts and Sciences in McAllen, member of the commission on Social Action of Reformed Judaism, engaged with the Religious Action of Reformed Judaism (RAC) and RAC-Texas, former chair of the social action committee of the temple, and “was a key link between the RAC and Catholic Charities’ work to serve migrant families entering the region.”
Blum began his presentation with a gesture, demonstrating his deep connections with TJHS, by displaying on the screen a TJHS article published in 2000, by Vicky Vogal, memorializing his mother who’d just passed away and who was a member of the organization, titled, “Growing up in downtown Houston,” which Blum found in their archives while preparing his remarks.
“I’m part of you, by virtue of this [pointing to the screen]. And I am so proud to be able to say that in this audience.”
Blum touched on the thriving and expanding population of the lower Rio Grande Valley and northern Tamaulipas, encompassing over ten million people, with a projected 14 million – when combining both sides, seven million on each side of the border – by 2040. Blum noted that the combined populations of Hidalgo and Cameron County alone, totaling 1.26 million, according to 2020 census data, is a population size larger than 11 U.S. states. “We still have the same two senators as the other 11 states. Power in politics is critical,” Blum said.
After addressing the geography of the region, Blum discussed the “growth and expansion of the Jewish presence in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Simon Mussina – a son of Dutch, Jewish immigrants born in Philadelphia – purchased the Matamoros newspaper, American Flag, which he moved to Brownsville in 1848, Blum explained. Mussina bought and sold many newspapers, as well as land holdings, across south Texas, before and after the war. Mussina purchased formerly Mexican-owned land in Matamoros at the outset of the war for the Rio Grande (known as the ‘Mexican-American war’) which became Brownsville, enabling him to rightly be considered one of the city’s founders.
According to Blum, Brownsville’s Jewish Community grew steadily and began to formally organize in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quoting a letter from Rabbi Abraham Blum of Galveston (no relation), by 1882, “the Jewish populations of Matamoros and Brownsville totaled 50 people and had established a Sunday school.”
Jews began immigrating to the newly declared cities of Mercedes and Harlingen, leading to the establishment of Temple Beth Israel in 1927. “The congregation served the Jewish communities and the 16 communities around it – McAllen, Weslaco, San Benito, Harlingen, Donna, Val Verde, Rio Grande City, and Mission,” Blum said.
Harlingen’s population would experience a large growth in the 1930s, due to shipping and industrious potential. Ned Sondock was one of those who migrated to Harlingen during the great depression and founded Delta Office Supply.
Sam Feldman, founder of Feldman’s liquor stores which can now be found all over the Valley, was another.
With the opening of the Harlingen Army Airfield in 1941, an even larger population influx brought several thousands more from across the country, many Jews among them, by 1950, around the time Temple Beth Israel in Harlingen was established. Mercedes and Harlingen were once great hubs of Valley industry, Blum explained.
With respect to current events of global interest, Blum noted that Mr. Max Lutz, a produce businessman, referenced earlier by Sheldon Weisfeld, came together with his good friend, Sam Lack, around the time of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, and “decided that the Jewish community of McAllen needed to help support the purchase of Israeli bonds, and they got two local banks to buy Israeli bonds – the first banks in Texas to buy Israeli bonds.”
After WWII, Mary Westerman — who helped establish a sisterhood 5 months before the dedication of the synagogue and established a Hadassah chapter — worked with the United Jewish Appeal to accept a refugee family from a German displaced persons camp.
Touching on demographic trends and leaps of Jewish life in the area, Blum displayed a chart of the birthplaces of 83 founding Temple Emanuel immigrant families, the vast majority of whom came from Poland and Russia. Western European countries like Germany, United Kingdom, or Eastern European countries occupied by the Nazis, like Ukraine and Romania, pale in comparison, some totaling only 1.
Blum claimed that the biggest majority of founding immigrants, those from Russia and Poland, “were immigrants from WWII.” However, I would contend that it’s likely that a good number of them were actually refugees from WWI, like Moshe Weisfeld and Sam Lack among others.
Antisemitism in Europe before and after 1933
While the Nazi holocaust absorbs most of the historic attention awarded to antisemitism, given the wicked brutality and sheer scale of the atrocity, pre-Nazi antisemitism in Europe, led primarily by the Russian Orthodox Christian Czars who gave us the word ‘Pogrom,’ is therefore often forgotten or overlooked.
Moshe Weisfeld, as mentioned above, was one of those Jews fleeing an area of the world that used to be known as, “The Pale of Settlement.” In the 19th century and early 20th century, Russia had the largest Jewish population in the world, which included Israel’s first female Prime Minister, Golda Meir, who often recalled the horror of witnessing pogroms in Russia during her childhood. She was also Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, the second country to recognize the Jewish state. Meir was received in 1948 by 50,000 Soviet Jews at the Choral Synagogue on the first days of Rosh Hashanah, just weeks after Israel’s declaration of independence.
Beginning in the 1800s (for those unfamiliar), Russian Czars, Patriarchs, and secret police began inciting violence against Jewish people across Eastern Europe in the century leading up to WWI in similarity to the Inquisition. They utilized tried and true conspiracy theories about Jewish people plotting against ‘Christian society,’ alongside collective slanders and libels, in order to distract the attention of the discontent and impoverished masses away from the rulers themselves, blaming the Jews instead for social ills and crises, also known as ‘scapegoating.’
Anti-Jewish pogroms across Russia were ended after the Russian Revolution’s victory over the deposed Czar’s ‘White Army’, which was made up of forces who originated the infamous fabrication known as, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text used by the Czarist police to incite antisemitism across Russia and all of Europe. The text was revived and disseminated en masse in America, in the 1920s, by Henry Ford, and survives today, referenced positively in the founding charter of the Gaza-based ‘Hamas’ organization, and appears to be a must-read for admirers of Stalin and Mao, as I’ve personally witnessed.
In the early years of the revolution, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, speeches against Jew hatred delivered by Lenin himself were broadcast and disseminated across the country. The early Bolshevik government encouraged the flourishing of Jewish culture and language, alongside encouraging a renaissance in Ukrainian culture, and that of other formerly oppressed nations under Czarism. Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, famously lamented this historic fact in his speech justifying his assault on Ukraine in Feb. 2022, and restated this point of view in his recent interview with American journalist, Tucker Carlson.
Despite this revolutionary progress in what was once the global capital of Jew hatred, antisemitism would regain a foothold in Russia with the ascension to power of Joseph Stalin in 1924 after Lenin’s illness and subsequent death, especially after WWII and Israel’s independence war, when targeted attacks on prominent Jews in the U.S.S.R. — many of whom played a leading and heroic political and military role in fighting the German Imperial Army — increased in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, around the same time McCarthyism in America was getting underway. It’s for these reasons that Jewish immigrants, during the early part of the 20th century, tended to hail from the Pale of Settlement and why later, in the 30s and 40s, they came from other parts of Europe. Many in places like Ukraine tried to flee but the major capitalist empires of North America and Western Europe knowingly turned them away.
Blum was particularly impressed by the amount of Jewish people who won ‘Person of the Year’ in McAllen, right in the middle of Senator Eugene McCarthy’s ‘Red Scare.’ They were Sam Lack in 1955, Sophye Edelstein in ‘56, and Leroy Lewin in ‘57. “When I saw this, I went, my God, how did this happen? Well, it happened because the Jewish community in this town made things happen. And they made things happen,” Blum said. Another ten names of Jewish winners from 1962 to 2023 were listed, including Pat Blum, and most recently, Larry Fallek, in 2023.
Blum highlighted seismic changes occurring in the Rio Grande Valley, like the advent of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley medical school and its affiliate branches, the launching of Space-X in Boca Chica, the establishment of a Texas A&M campus, and the focusing on the temple’s partnership with Catholic Charities (C.C.) in providing aid and materials to migrant shelters, helping newly arrived immigrants seeking asylum, beginning in 2014.
Blum noted the international importance immigration gives to the Valley. He praised Norma Pimentel, a Catholic nun who runs the local C.C. chapter and who “many consider influential.”
Pimentel is also a strong campaigner against abortion, directing initiatives like the “Pregnancy Counseling Program”. She was also an enthusiastic supporter of the McAllen Pregnancy Center — which organized Catholic operatives to protest and harass patients entering Whole Women’s Health in McAllen, once the only abortion provider in south Texas, having to shut down after the Supreme Court’s overturning of the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade — as she once told me in a 2018 interview for an article I wrote for Neta (now Trucha) RGV.
Blum concluded his remarks by postulating what he dubbed, “Judaism 5.0”, that is, what is Judaism becoming? Having touched on the 1.0, and so on, in chronological order. Blum began by acknowledging that “October 7 changed everything for Jews around the world. The government of Israel is doing what they believe to be in the best interest of their population. Regrettably, there are concerns, across the globe, with Israel’s use of force.
“Jews in Texas and across the globe are being tested and threatened. We’ve certainly been threatened here. How we manage those threats, and how we manage the questions, are questions we have to ponder! The Texas Jewish Historical Society – you – may provide the answers, and your leadership may be what makes it happen. Thank you for selecting the Rio Grande Valley for your winter place,” Blum concluded.
The weekend officially ended the following morning, back at the Courtyard’s conference hall, where local community member and spokesperson for the university’s athletic department, Jonah Goldberg, gave a presentation about his great grandfather and great uncle who survived concentration camps, which included a video presentation featuring his great uncle discussing what life was like in the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe and his harrowing escape from Auschwitz during a transportation.
TJHS held their quarterly meeting in the Courtyard’s conference hall before Goldberg’s address.
In reply to my question, Goldberg said his great uncle Joe not only escaped a concentration camp but joined an armed resistance unit against the Nazis.
“My uncle Benny ended up in the resistance as well. He was [Great Uncle] Joe’s other surviving sibling. He was liberated by the Russian Army from the camps and he helped the Russian Army identify high-ranking Nazi officials for the remainder of the war. My Uncle Benny couldn’t originally come over to the United States because he had a heart condition, and they wouldn’t accept him. He somehow got his way into Canada and after some time there they were able to get him here. But his first stop was not Canada. His first stop was what we now know as Israel. He went there and he actually fought in the war for independence. I guess he hadn’t seen enough.
“He was a barber, a very good one. In fact, he had a very high-profile candidate, Ben-Gurion. So, he cut [would-be Prime Minister, David] Ben-Gurion’s hair, came here, once he finally made it into the states, he opened up a barber shop in Brooklyn. When my parents met, my dad’s dad decided to try using the barber shop. He loved it. He’d go get a barber shave there every Monday because that’s the day his kosher deli in Brooklyn was closed. My uncle Benny gave my brother, who’s two years older than me, his first haircut, and then refused to do it for me because ‘it’s too stressful.’ This, for him, was ‘too stressful.’ He survived the holocaust, fought in the war for independence, but giving a child their first haircut, that’s the line!”
TJHS founder, Rabbi Kessler, knew deep down that Jewish people were critical and imperishable in the founding of this great state. Unearthing and studying the under-appreciated Jewish roots of the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico, the surrounding geographic and political convolutions of the 19th century and the historic relationship between Mexican Jewry and the Inquisition, verifies and vindicates Kessler’s founding hunch beyond the shadow of any doubt.
jonathansalinas@substack.com
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