RESCUING HISTORY
New archive at Rice aims to preserve artifacts of Houston’s Jewish community
Before unveiling the pearl of their collection, Joshua Furman and Melissa Kean don white cotton gloves. The artifact is that delicate, that valuable.
They grasp the wooden handles of what appears to be an oversized scroll and slowly, gingerly, unfurl a faded silk banner. It stretches 9 feet long and is adorned with 220 stars arranged in neat rows and a roster of names embroidered in graceful cursive. In the center is a Star of David.
Furman and Kean gleam with pride.
A few months ago, the banner was wrapped in plastic and tucked away in a garage, stowed for decades after being plucked from a storage closet in the long-since-demolished Beth Jacob congregation.
It might have been forgotten, its significance lost forever if not for Rice University’s newly created Houston Jewish History Archive.
Now, the World War II-era service flag is part of a growing collection being assembled by Furman, the Stanford and Joan Alexander Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Rice, and Kean, the universi--
ty’s centennial historian.
Through the archive, they hope to preserve documents, records and archival materials that tell the story of Houston’s Jewish community — an effort that is not only a race against time but a battle to reclaim the memories Hurricane Harvey tried to wash away.
Many of the neighborhoods in Houston hardest hit by last year’s floods are also neighborhoods with a deep Jewish history, places filled with books, papers and photographs critical to understanding the community.
Furman quickly realized that the bulk of the institutions key to Jewish life in Houston are along Brays Bayou, which Kean describes as a “spine” running through the community.
“If we didn’t act right away to get those records out, they were going to be lost,” Furman said. “They were going to be thrown away.”
No time to waste
At his first visit, in the days after Harvey, to United Orthodox Synagogues, Furman knew he needed help. The building had been swamped by several feet of floodwater. History was about to be wiped out.
He called Kean, who has extensive experience as a historian and had already started collecting materials documenting Jewish student life at Rice. The tone of his voice told Kean that there was no time to waste.
The first thing they had to do was rescue a massive amount of wet paper from the synagogue. They grabbed damp documents and slipped them between sheets of printer paper, then spread them on outside picnic tables to dry.
But one particular item — a handwritten book containing the earliest minutes from Beth Jacob synagogue — needed extra care. Kean took the slim volume home and dried out the pages with her hair dryer. One at a time.
For weeks after Harvey, Furman and Kean waded into flooded synagogues, warehouses and Jewish community centers, wearing masks and boots, to retrieve sodden documents and historical records.
From United Orthodox, they saved cemetery maps and membership directories dating to some of the congregation’s earliest decades. At Beth Yushuron, they helped with another archival recovery. They used social media to spread word about their mission, hoping to keep residents from tossing potentially vital items into the Dumpster.
“With each passing day, people are mucking out their house and Grandma’s attic. They are getting rid of stuff,” Furman said. “Since the beginning, there’s always been a real sense of urgency. We need to make sure that no matter what happens, the records and the legacy of this community doesn’t get washed away.”
Houston’s Jewish community, which numbers about 51,000, is relatively young, Furman said. Although Jewish students were part of the first graduating class at Rice University, Jews did not settle here in large numbers until the 1950s and 1960s. The biggest wave of Jewish arrivals was in the 1970s, with many coming because of the medical field.
Furman, who came to study at Rice in 2015, was stunned to discover that little research had been done on the community’s history. He began digging, which led to a book project, which led to the formation of the archive.
At first, the archive — funded by a grant from the Stanford and Joan Alexander Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities — was envisioned as an oral history of Jewish life. Then Harvey hit, shifting the focus of the project.
The archive, which will be open for research and viewing to the public July 1, now contains dozens of donated and acquired items that offer a glimpse into Jewish life in Houston from a time past, from an era receding from living memory.
It is a treasure trove, stored in gray Hollinger boxes and filed on shelves in the vast archives in the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library. There’s a scrapbook from a member of Rice’s first entering class, in 1912, who went on to become a lawyer and a founder of Temple Emmanuel. Inside the book, which bursts with old photographs and flyers from student events, an old Purim invitation is adorned with a Zionist flag, decades before the founding of Israel. Weekly bulletins from the 1940s contain information about Bible readings and picnics at Shearith Israel, a long-defunct synagogue in Wharton.
A notebook, with meticulous jottings in “immaculate Yiddish,” may be the last trace of Rodfei Sholom, a temple in Fifth Ward that existed for only about 15 years in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. On one page, a notation — the only passage in English — authorizes congregation members to purchase sacramental wine. It was written in March 1930, during Prohibition.
A scrapbook from a Jewish high school fraternity captures the lives of Jewish teens in the 1960s. It includes a playbill from a Bellaire High School theater production featuring actor Dennis Quaid and “West Wing” producer-director Tommy Schlamme.
There are photographs from the Jewish Community Center, salvaged from Harvey because they were in a storage closet on the third floor. Credit cards from Jewishowned department stores. Vinyl recordings of synagogue cantors.
But Furman and Kean know there is so much more out there, so much more that belongs in the archive. In attic corners and old boxes. Tossed in dresser drawers or locked in storage units. Some cherished, some in danger of being relegated to the trash heap.
“We always tell people to donate their records and their photographs to Rice University,” said Furman, who will be the archive’s inaugural director. “If it’s here, it’s safe. It’ll be well cared for, it will be preserved, and it will be accessible.”
That is just “Archives 101,” said Kean, who refers to the warren of shelves and boxes as her home. “You have to protect the things. You have to share the things. You have to respect the donor’s wishes.”
And, for the most part, Kean says, you have to depend on the community.
Banner moment
That takes us back to the banner, which came to Furman and Kean, as many of their acquisitions have, through word of mouth.
They are still in awe of this find, still moved to tears by what it represents.
Made in 1942, the flag was a tribute to Beth Jacob members who served in the military during that time. Four gold stars denote those killed in duty. Each name represents a fragment of the community’s past.
Some of those listed have descendants still living in Houston. Others graduated from Rice or have a Rice connection. One is Rice alumni Haskell Sheinberg, Class of ’41, a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project.
After hearing about the archive, the daughter of the man who rescued the banner contacted Furman in October and asked if he was interested in adding it to the collection. He was.
A mention of the banner in a story in the Jewish Herald-Voice, in turn, led to an email from the nephew of a 1928 Rice graduate who fought in World War II.
“He served in Italy. He died young. He doesn’t have children. I don’t have children. I’m the last one,” the message to Furman said. “And I have all his World War II stuff. Do you want it?” He did.
Furman raced to the man’s house and collected a bounty of documents and photos. Then he made another discovery: The uncle’s name was Hyman Rosenzweig — one of the names on the banner.
Another piece of the puzzle tumbling into place.