Remembering Texas's Don Teter

Remembering Texas's Don Teter

Texas Jewish history expert Donald Lee Teter died in Houston on January 26, 2012, at 86.

Don was a founder of the Texas Jewish Historical Society and the Baytown Historical Museum. Over many years he organized efforts to locate, describe and preserve Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and other historical sites throughout Texas. I first met Don in the late 1980s when I was researching the history of the B'nai Abraham Synagogue in Brenham, Texas, of which my great-grandfather was a founder. Don also was an expert on the Jewish history of Baytown, where he had worked as chemical engineer after graduating from Rice University.   His 2008 paper "OIL GEVALT: The History of the Baytown, Texas, Jewish Community, 1928-2008" can be read here.

Brenham, Texas. Jewish cemetery - one of nearly 100 cemeteries documented by Don Teter. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (1988)

I followed Don's work in Texas throughout the 1990s. When I was collecting information on abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe, Don was doing the same for Texas. Together with his wife Gertrude, to whom he was married for 63 years and who survives him, Don compiled the massive Texas Jewish Burials, published by the Texas Jewish Historical Society in 1997. The 448-page book includes information on all Jewish burial grounds in Texas, including consecrated Jewish cemeteries separate from any other cemeteries, sections of non-sectarian cemeteries consecrated and dedicated as Jewish cemeteries and Jewish burials in non-Jewish cemeteries. The Teters collected the name and birth and death dates for each burial they and their colleagues located.  From this survey work developed many subsequent programs for cemetery clean-ups, sponsored by synagogues and other religious and civic groups.

Don Teter  will be missed by his large family and circle of friends.  For his warm spirit and abundant energy, and because of his work in Jewish history, heritage and community; he will be long remembered.

Donations in Don's memory can be made to Congregation K'Nesseth Israel, P.O. Box 702, Baytown, TX 77522 or other charity of your choice.

Remembering My Mother, Artist Shirley Moskowitz

Refugees (1942) by Shirley Moskowitz. Marble. Collection of the National Museum of Jewish History

Remembering My Mother, Shirley Moskowitz
by Samuel Gruber

It is hard for me to accept that it has been four years this weekend since my mother, artist Shirley Moskowitz, died in Santa Monica, California at the age of 86.

I've written about some of her art on this blog before, and though Jewish themes were not a major preoccupation in her work, I thought I would remember her on this Jewish Art and Monuments Blog by posting a few of her explicitly Jewish works, many of which will be unknown to her friends and even family members. Several of Shirley's earliest works - or at least those that survive - are of Jewish subjects, reflecting a strong Jewish presence in her life, especially through the Susnitskys, her mother's extended Texan-Jewish family. Her first published drawing is of her Hebrew teacher, submitted to the Jewish youth magazine Young Israel when she was fifteen.

"Undecided about what to draw, I thought of my first Hebrew teacher who has since passed away,"
First published drawing by Shirley Moskowitz, Young Israel (1935).

One of her first large works of sculpture is a marble carving (above) from 1942 of two tired seated figures called "Refugees." If there was any doubt as to the subject of this work, it was made clear when she donated it to the Museum of American Jewish History (now the National Museum of American Jewish History).

Later, in the early 1960s she carved a series of Jewish figures that are essentially nostalgic, and these look back to her childhood memories of attending religious services at her grandfather's synagogue in Brenham, Texas and perhaps again to her Hebrew teacher. Three works - Der Chazin, The Rabbi and Olenu were carved during a period when she most involved with a Jewish community, but in a thoroughly modern way. My family moved into its second suburban home in 1959, a new split-level house in a new housing development outside of Philadelphia. We three children were soon all attending afternoon Hebrew school twice a week and "Junior Congregation" on Saturdays at the Norristown Jewish Community Center, in nearby Norristown, Pa.

Der Chazin (1961) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

The Rabbi (1962) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

Olenu (1963) by Shirley Moskowitz. Walnut wood carving.

These three sculptures were carved during her Wednesday night carving group that met at the studio of Hans Huneke in Norristown, and they reflect Shirley's then acute awareness of Jewish tradition, but seen through a nostalgic lens. Though I never heard her talk about it, these works might also be as much about a lost Jewish Europe as about a lost Jewish Texas. All her carving companions at Hans's studio were acutely aware of what had happened in Europe. Artist Steffi Greenbaum was a refugee from Berlin. Hans was a non-Jewish anti-Nazi Socialist from Germany and his wife Dini was Jewish. Bernard and Ruth Petlock were also sometime part of the group, and Bernie was born in Bialystok. Another good friend of this group was local artist and Holocaust scholar Mary Costanza.

After 1963, however, Shirley moved away from these themes and subsequently most of her carving centered on groups of figures, usually with children, representing families. This theme more clearly reflected the suburban world around her, where streets, sidewalks and backyards always seemed full of us babyboom kids.

Bar Mitzvah (ca. 1960). Lino-block or woodcut print by Shirley Moskowitz.

About the same time Shirley was making her "Jewish" carving she also tried made a few collages and several lino-block prints based on Jewish holidays and celebrations. I think the prints were primarily made to have a ready source of gifts for the seemingly-never ending births, weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs of the 1960s.

Most of Shirley's work during these years was based on her travels, especially long family trips to Europe in 1959, 1962, 1966 and then a three-year stay in Italy from 1970-1973. She tended to sketch and paint landscape and city scenes outside but often work these into collages and, especially after 1970, prints. Though we often visited Jewish sites on our travels, she only sketched a few. One of her favorite pen and ink works is a beautiful view of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague done when we spent the summer in Czechoslovakia in 1966. She later made fine print from this. She also turned a little sketch of the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem made on a visit to Israel with her mother and aunt in 1971 into a lino-block print, shown here. Later, when two of her three children were involved in the world of Jewish monuments and travel, she made a few more works as I have previously shown.

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague (1966). Sepia and ink drawing by Shirley Moskowitz.

Western Wall '71 (1971). Lino-cut print by Shirley Moskowitz (artist's proof).

In sum, my mother was more an "Artist who was Jewish" than a "Jewish Artist." She would not reject the title but would insist - correctly - that while her Jewish work was important to her, it is not representative in quantity or quality of her artistic output as whole. She was, however, as Rabbi Laura Geller stated in her eulogy four years ago, a woman of valor in the Jewish tradition.

For more about Shirley Moskowitz click here.

Remembering Jewish Mothers: Synagogues Named for Mothers and Wives

The Snoa, Curacao. The four great interior columns have been dedicated to the Jewish Matriachs - Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. We remember them on Mother's Day.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2007.

Remembering Jewish Mothers: Synagogues Named for Mothers and Wives
by Samuel D. Gruber

Today is Mother’s Day in the United States. This isn’t a very Jewish holiday – for isn’t every day supposed to by one on which mothers are honored? Still, in the history of synagogues we don’t see much evidence of that. Until the advent of Reform and Conservative Judaism, synagogues were mostly for men – places they could get away from their months (and wives). There a few examples, however, where synagogues have been dedicated to the memory of mothers, and several more in memory of wives and other women – who may have been mothers, too.

The best known example is the Ohel Leah synagogue of Hong Kong. This lovely building erected by Jacob Sassoon in 1901 was named after his mother Leah. Built by the local architectural firm of Leigh and Orange in the Hong Kong Midlevels in 1901, the building was almost torn down in the early 1990s, but was saved due to international protests, and it was restored in 1997. I remember this well, as it was one of the very first “endangered synagogue” cases to cross my desk when I was director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund. Until it was hemmed in by skyscrapers, the white synagogue, with its short twin octagonal towers flanking a projecting Palladian porch, had been for a century a stately beacon visible far out at sea.

According to the website of the synagogue:

On August 7, 1901, Abraham Jacob Raymond, the senior member of E. D. Sassoon & Co, laid the foundation stone of the new Sassoon-sponsored synagogue in Robinson Road. It was an event attended by a large gathering of the new century's Hong Kong Jewish community. 'It now affords me very great pleasure.' Raymond addressed the gathering, 'on behalf of Mr Jacob Sassoon, to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that this synagogue when completed will be dedicated to the Jewish community of Hong Kong in commemoration of his beloved mother Leah, and will be a gift to the Jewish community of Hong Kong - the building from himself and the site from himself and his brothers, Messrs Edward and Meyer Sassoon.'

Sir Jacob later endowed a synagogue in Shanghai, which he dedicated in memory of his wife Lady Rachel Sassoon, and named Ohel Rachel. It opened in March 1920, and was consecrated by Rabbi W. Hirsch on January 23, 1921. Since Jacob died soon after the building’s completion, the classical-style was named dedicated in memory of husband and wife. The building still stands and serves as the Jewish Center of Shanghai. Ir was once one of seven synagogues in Shanghai. Today. Only one other survives. Ohel Moishe Synagogue located in Hong Kong district, hosts a museum dedicated to the history of the Jewish Experience in Shanghai.

I know of at least two other synagogues named after women. Rachel Simon in her 1992 book Change within Tradition among Jewish Women in Libya (University of Washington Press, p. 158) reports that the Tripoli (Libya) Dar Shweykah Synagogue was named after a women named Shmeykah of the Guetta family for Yelren who paid for it. To me this woman’s involvement recalls the ancient tradition in North Africa of awarding women synagogue honors – as recorded and analyzed by Bernadette Brooten in her Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. (Chico, CA : Scholars Press, c1982).

In America, the small classical style Temple Freda on 205 Parker Street in Bryan, Texas was certainly named after a woman named Freda, but there is disagreement over which one. The more accepted view and the one recorded in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination (added to the NR in1983 – building #83003128) is that Freda refers to Ethel Freda Kaczer (1860-1912), wife of the president of the synagogue when it was built, and who died during the period of its construction.

A competing account says that the name is for Freda Tapper, the mother of Max Tapper who was on the building committee. Curiously, the two camps could never agree just to settle the dispute by honoring both women. The last I heard the 1912 synagogue is used as a church, but it continues to deteriorate.

Lastly, there is the case of Curacao’s to Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel (the Snoa), a building erected in 1732, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. Inside the four great columns recall those in the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam and have added significance, since tradition states that when the Snoa was built these were dedicated to the four Matriarchs. At the time of the building the honor of laying the foundation stones of the columns went to (for a price) Daniel Aboab Cardoze and his wife Ribcah; and to Abraham Aboab Cardoze and his wife Leah. During a 1974 restoration of the building, the names of the Matriarchs Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah were attached in raised Hebrew letters to the columns, symbolizing the indispensable contribution of our women to the Synagogue.

USA: Houston (Texas) Jewish Cemetery Named Texas Historic Site

USA: Houston (Texas) Jewish Cemetery Named Texas Historic Site

(ISJM) The (Houston) Jewish Herald-Voice (April 23, 2009) reports that Houston's West Dallas Cemetery of Congregation Beth Israel was named an historic cemetery by the Texas historical Commission. a dedication ceremony to mark the designation was helped on April 26th, 2009. An historic marker was installed.

The cemetery was founded in 1844 to serve an Orthodox congregation. The congregation built is synagogue (Beth Israel), in 1854 - it was the first synagogue constructed in Texas. Located at 1207 West Dallas, the land was purchased by recently Jewish arrivals from Central Europe - Bohemia and Bavaria. Graves from this earliest period in the cemetery's history are located in the northwest corner of the site. In 1936, as space in the cemetery was limited, a mausoleum was erected for above ground burials.

To read more about the cemetery and the ceremony see
"A marker for a sacred place: 165 years old, Beth Israel’s West Dallas Cemetery is oldest Jewish burial ground in the state," from the Houston Chronicle (April 27, 2009).