GETTING FROM GUELFF TO EDEN VALLEY

We have, at this writing, no direct account of the reasons for Michael Guelff's decision to leave the little Belgian village bearing his ancestral name and seek his future and fortune in Eden Valley, Minnesota.  Nor do we have a direct account of the same journey taken at the same time by the Grein family for a destination a few miles away in St. Anthony, Minnesota.

About Michael Guelff, we know that two brothers and a cousin preceded him to the same general geographical area a few years before his voyage.  One brother settled in Marquette, Michigan, another in Appleton, Wisconsin and the cousin in Austin Mower, Minnesota a few miles away from Eden Valley.  Michael Guelff stayed with at least one of the brothers for  a short time after his arrival.

About the family Grein, we know that they were preceded by close relatives who settled in Minnesota, Ohio and Iowa.  Anna's older sister, Susanne, had married John Roler (also spelled Roller) and they had made the journey to America in 1873.  A great many "Luxembourgers", the term generally used for immigrants from the southern part of Belgium and Luxembourg, settled in the Ohio and northern Mississippi Valleys in the latter part of the 19th Century.  A combination of drought, poor harvests and overpopulation motivated the general exodus to the more promising and less populated United States.

Though most of the specific details on the Grein/Guelff travel arrangements remain unknown, most of the Luxembourgers found their way to the United States using package deals -- ocean passage and railroad tickets to final destination -- offered by several of the emigrant ship lines in collaboration with the expanding U.S. railroads.  Not coincidentally, Eden Valley was a significant rail station on the Soo Line at the time of the Grein/Guelff arrival.

So how did this work?  The Port of History Museum in Philadelphia has a very helpful exhibit, especially
considering that Philadelphia was the Grein/Guelff port of arrival. Basically, after the Civil War and with the advent of seaworthy steamships, a large number of "ocean liners" were built to ply the emigrant trade mainly from European ports in Germany and the Netherlands to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore along the eastern seaboard.

One of the most famous lines, the Red Star Line, was only a trade name, not a corporation. It is not entirely clear who owned the name, most likely the International Navigation Company, since that is the name printed on the "Report or Manifest of all the passengers taken on board." 

At Philadelphia, in 1871, some businessmen created the International Navigation Company. The company ordered in England the construction of three vessels, one of which was the steam ship Nederland, although it apparently also had two masts as depicted on the manifest.  At Antwerp, in 1872, another company known as the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine was founded. The International Navigation Company put into this new venture the three vessels under construction. Consequently, the newly formed company became the owner of the S.S. Vaderland, the S.S. Nederland, and the S.S. Switzerland.  The Nederland was completed in 1873, and both companies started operating a line under the name of Red Star Line.  The photo of the S.S. Nederland below comes from a website of old steamship photos:

The principal ports of departure and routes of those ships that routinely made a port of call at Philadelphia are illustrated by the map below, also borrowed fromthe Port of History Museum.

The ship that brought the Greins and Michael Guelff to the Port of Philadelphia was a typical twin screw double-masted affair.  It was in the smaller range of ships, about 2200 tons. Some of the larger ships built later carried 1000 or more passengers. These vessels arrived on a weekly schedule in New York and Philadelphia, as noted in this schedule from the Antwerp end of the voyage. 

Like most immigrants, Michael Guelff and the Grein family booked passage in steerage, fairly cramped quarters below decks.  Moreover, steerage passengers were not allowed access to the more desirable parts of the ship and certainly were not allowed to mingle with the first class passengers.  At the time of their crossing in 1878, the ships typically did not have separate cabin space for families.  Curtains drawn around bunks were about all the privacy anyone had.  The bunks were none too commodious either, and did not have spring suspension until around 1900.  A six-foot person would either need to curl-up or dangle feet over the foot of the bunk, which was very clear from the interactive exhibit at the Port of History Museum, which invites you to "Climb Rigt In."  Anna Grein at 5' 4" or less, on the other hand, probably had little difficulty sharing one level of the bunk with a parent or a sibling.  Her baby brother Pierre Grein was 13 months old and her younger sister Catherine was 5 at the time of the April 14, 1878 departure of the Nederland  from Antwerp.  Anna may have had one or both in her charge. The manifest has her age listed as 14, even though she was 16 years and four months at the time the ship set sail from Europe.  The lower age probably meant a lower fare and doubling up on one of the bunks.

The steerage fare also did not allow much room for luggage, certainly nothing more than could be stowed under the lower bunk in one of the typical "steamer trunks" manufactured for exactly that purpose, a precursor of the airliner roll-on.

Given the cramped quarters and the monotony of a 17 day crossing, the Grein/Guelff party was undoubtedly very happy to arrive in Philadelphia on May 1, 1878, a bustling seaport teaming with families and adventurers ready to head west.  Some contemporary lithographs, undoubtedly idealized and spruced-up, convey some sense of what the arrival and re-embarkation via railroad must have been like.

"At Dock Street Wharf" is a hand colored engraving by Schell & Hogan from Picturesque America, which was published in 1876, just two years before the Nederland brought the Grein/Guelff party to America.

Another lithograph, from a magazine tear entitled "Scene At the Landing of Immigrants from Europe At the Washington Avenue Wharf, Philadelphia", though from about 1900, gives a stylized depiction of the arrival process, not too different from what took place in 1878. 


Next stop, Eden Valley.

PASTOR POISONS GIRL GETS LIFE

Rush N.D. Minister To Prison Cell After Midnight Sentencing -- Mercer County Man Confesses He Killed Maid, Fired Parsonage After She Threatened To Tell Wife of Illicit Relations

After this piece was published, I was contacted by a writer researching this particular murder for a magazine article and, potentially, a book dealing with strange happenings and murder mysteries of the Dakotas.  A correspondence ensued and substantially more genealogical research, including a letter from prison written by the Rev. Heid Janssen and correspondence with a descendant of the Reverend who was also a psychiatrist.  The writer has priority to the use of the research, so it will not appear in this blog in whole or in part until the story and book are published, at which time I will offer my readers a review of the story.  

--Mandan, N.D. Aug 19 [1938]--Sentenced at a midnight court session, Rev. Heid Janssen, Evangelical Lutheran pastor at Krem, began a life term in the state penitentiary today a few hours after pleading guilty to poisoning his 16-year old housemaid and firing the parsonage containing her body.
Feeling in the community ran so high trial was ordered immediately after the minister, 51, admitted he killed Alma Kruckenberg because she was pregnant.
Sentence was passed by District Judge H.L. Berry. Janssen was taken immediately to the penitentiary.
The arraignment followed swiftly after Janssen signed a confession before States Attorney Floyd Sperry of Mercer County admitting he perp[etrated the crime Monday.
"The devil overcame me," the pastor said impassively. "I did wrong. I have a very good Christian wife and two boys any father would be proud of and I feel only sorry that I bring such grief to them."
The girl's father after hearing the pastor admit his guilt told him:

"I FORGIVE YOU."

"We were the best friends he had," John Kruckenberg said. He described the minister as "the best preacher I ever heard.
"He was especially good for children and was very well respected, not only in this community but ministers over the state as well," the father said.
Kruckenberg described his daughter as "not very healthy" and said he had placed her in the churchman's care because he thought she was safe there and that the work would not be too hard.
Miss Krickenberg was one of 10 children in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Kruckenberg, farmers near Krem, 60 miles north of Mandan. She had been employed at the parsonage since last January.
Sperry and Special Assistant Attorney General James Austin began questioning Janssen early Tuesday. During two days of incessant interrogation, Sperry said, the minister denied any connection with the fire and burned body.

PARENTS ASK TRUTH

Thursday evening the parents of the murdered girl confronted Janssen and pleaded he "tell the truth." The confession followed.
Janssen told the court he gave the girl poisoned wine Aug. 13, and then burned teh house. He admitted illicit relations with the girl. He said the girl threatened to tell Mrs. Janssen, and he decided "to do away with her."
Janssen's wife was in Bismarck for medical treatment when he confessed to the crime and Sheriff F.W. Vreeland of Mercer County did not believe she knew either of the confession or the sentence.
The minister was calm throughout the trial and did not break down. He seemed pleased he would be taken immediately to the penitentiary.

FORMERLY AT HARVEY

Serving a parsonage of almost 50 members in the Krem area, Janssen has been there five years, previously serving in Montana for 18 years and before that at Harvey S.D. for eight years.

From The Fargo Forum Friday Evening August 19, 1938

I requested a copy of this news article from the Germans for Russia Historical Society after a research librarian there generously offered to run a check for the appearance of an Evangelical Lutheran Pastor by the name of Heid Janssen in connection with the murder of a servant girl sometime between 1930 and 1940. This genealogical investigation into an otherwise long forgotten crime was triggered by a story my father once told me when I asked him why he only went to church when his mother was buried and his children got married. He said he did not like the hypocrisy of church goers who sinned all week and held themselves out to be holy and righteous for an hour or so on Sunday mornings. Then, after a short pause, he told me about a pastor he knew when he was young who raped and killed a girl working at the parsonage. He never mentioned it again, and I never asked. But I never forgot the story.
A week ago, I returned to eastern Montana to celebrate the 100th birthday of my Uncle Bill, who was married to my father's sister, the oldest of the five children in my father's family. While there, I also reconnected with my 92 year old Aunt Martha, the widow of my father's older brother. It turns out that my Aunt Martha and my father were confirmed by the same Lutheran Pastor in a little church in Marsh, Montana, not too far from Glendive, both on or near the Yellowstone River. So I asked her about my father's story. Without hesitation she recited the particulars pretty much as I remembered my father's account and added to it, the names of the pastor's wife and two boys as well as the last name of a servant girl, whose body was found in the well of the Marsh, Montana church after Rev. Janssen was arrested and convicted for a similar crime in North Dakota.  A coroner's report, subsequently located, said only that the girl's body was found downstream in the Yellowstone River.  No autopsy was done.
As I write this piece, I am looking at "Zur Erinnerung an den Tag der Konfirmation" with the written inscription at the bottom "Evan. Luth. Jehovah -- Kirche, Marsh Montana" and in the same hand signed "H. Janssen ev. luth." Pastor, dated 23 June 1929.

THE TALMUD AND THE INTERNET

Taking my lead from the title, I downloaded this book from the Internet and read it on my Kindle. Spark-like thoughts shot out from the "e-ink screen which reads like real paper and boast 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images." So says Amazon.com.

The author deftly weaves the very old and the very new with reflections on his relation to religion and his Jewish identity. He views the Talmud (2000 years of rabbinic commentary on the Torah) as a sort of Internet chat room of indefinite duration and scope. As Rosen points out, rabbinic scholars speak of "the sea of the Talmud" to convey the organic size and neural connectivity of the work, which can be entered at almost any point in time and on any topic along the vast shoreline of its ocean.

Most unusual to the uninitiated (and perhaps most intriguing), the Talmud like the Internet reflects and refracts an overwhelming array of views, often directly contradictory, even on matters that are settled confessions of faith in most other variations of occidental monotheism. Possibly (plausibly) this seeming chaos of uncertainty emerged from the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in the first century of the Common Era and ensuing Diaspora. Judaism, to survive and even sometimes thrive, evolved into a "grass roots" organization in which each Jewish household, wherever it existed geographically, became a functional equivalent of that temple, at least in some important respects. Thus, Judaism in exile became a portable religion of the book and never-ending commentary on the book, a sort of evolving collective covenant of memory that bound a people. The Talmud bundled culture, customs and practices into a portable abstract world of the word that was realized in the here and now wherever it was studied, revered and shared.

Rosen raises the provocative possibility that the Internet may (has) become the collective enduring consciousness of this century and, like the Talmud and the Torah before it, both memorializes and retroactively reshapes the past. Being of a literary bent, Rosen feels no discomfort by the evident and heavy pen applied with equally heavy moral judgments and consequences (real or imagined) by those priestly and later rabbinic scribes and commentators to those familiar and oft re-interpreted stories from the Tanahk (roughly what is also known as the Old Testament). Unlike the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, Russians, Nazis and other lesser known enemies and oppressors, Jews have survived and controlled the telling and re-telling of the past.

Rosen does not reflect on the Orwellian aspects of the enterprise. In the slogan words of Big Brother: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Rather, Rosen explores more deeply the importance of remembering in order to establish identity and in order to defeat attempts to erase memory (in fact, to erase any remembrance that Jews or Judaism existed). He does this by reflecting on the two lines of his ancestors, one escaping from the Shoah to spend the duration of WWII in a camp for Jewish children on the estate of Lord Balfour and the other having arrived and becoming established in the United States before the great calamities of the 20th Century claimed the lives of a third of the world's Jewish population.

One cannot read The Talmud and the Internet without being inspired to follow the path of Rosne's reflections. In 2000, when the book was first published, Wikipedia had not yet taken off. Wikipedia's own history of Wikipedia states that the Wikipedia was not formally launched until January 15, 2001, quickly became a large global project that today includes over 14 million freely usable articles in hundreds of languages worldwide, and content from millions of contributors. Some of them even rabbis.

In a partial recounting of what Jews faced from several centuries in Europe, Rosen mentioned a particularly loathsome tract penned by Martin Luther later in his life, "The Jews and Their Lies." Luther had, at the beginning of the Protestant break from the Catholic Church, been sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. The sympathy evaporated when it became apparent that Jews could not be converted to Luther's vision of Christianity. This should not have surprised Luther since his theological concept of redemption by faith alone is the perfect antithesis of the Judaic emphasis on the hard work of achieving by practice and conduct what is promised in the covenant. Judaic deed versus Lutheran creed or otherwise put in the disputation between Erasmus and Luther, works versus faith.

A significantly large number of Lutherans in the late 18th Century, the Pietists, also essentially rejected the central Lutheran doctrine, some of my forefathers among them. Because the establishment Lutheran church began to assume the outward trappings of Catholicism, the Pietists started to meet in household conclaves, dress simply and work hard on conforming personal practice to ethical ideals. The established church viewed them as trouble makers, even though generally they were widely regarded as conforming their behavior to a higher standard of moral conduct.

In the 18th Century, first Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great sent an invitation to prosperous farmers to resettle in the Ukraine near Odessa in land seized from the Ottoman Turks. My ancestors accepted and went in family groups known as "harmonies". They settled in self-governing colonies, guaranteed by the Czarist edicts (ukases) to be exempt from military service, taxation for a period of years, military service and complete freedom of religion. An added incentive to those, like my chiliastic forefathers, who fervently believed the world would end in the 1830's, was the proximity of Odessa to Israel. They were ex-communicated from the Lutheran church when they left as reflected in the large "X" through the church records of their family births, baptisms, marriages and deaths.

Many Jews from the same regions of German speaking Europe also accepted the invitation. For a time, the deal worked for both groups. The Jews generally worked in trades within the larger
population centers and the German farmers remained within the small walled villages. In the end, with the rise of Slavic nationalism, the promises of the ukase were rescinded. It turned out to be a deal with the devil.

Rosen's mention of the Luther tract startled me. The Lutheran environment in which I grew up was nearly devoid of Jews and completely devoid of anti-Semitism. My Lutheran heritage had been shaped more by the tripartite, internecine and fratricidal wars of Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics causing both maternal and paternal ancestors to flee Alsace and Weurtemberg. The maternal side came to colonial western Maryland where they found ways to cooperate even to the extent of sharing church structures and pastors with other Protestant denominations, an arrangementthat never would have happened in Europe.

I was also struck by Rosen's reference to his father's involvement, like my own father's, in Masonic orders, which are open to all monotheistic faiths. My father repudiated the Lutheran church, which his step-father built and served as a deacon. See Pastor Poisons Girl Gets Life. The Masonic orders became an outlet for a deeply held, but rarely expressed spirituality.

It did not seem at all unusual to me that my father had as a close friend one of the handful of Jews who lived in Helena, Montana. Jerry Karasik owned and operated a cafe on Rodney Street called the Dutch Maid from 1955 until sometime in the 70's or 80's. Jerry's parents were "Bohemian Jews," according to census records recently located. Jerry was born in Canada. He came to the United States and eventually to Fort Harrison just outside Helena to train as a paratrooper in a Canadian-American commando unit that came to be known as the Devil's Brigade, 1st Special Service Force, organized in 1942. Helena's Memorial Park is dedicated to the unit, along with I-15 and its extension into Alberta, Canada all the way to Lethbridge. A couple of Hollywood action movies, notably "The Devil's Brigade", have been made about it, but certainly bear almost no relation to the reality of the training or what these men actually faced in combat.

Jerry liked Helena, and came back after the war. It must have seemed like a return to paradise. Jerry and my father got to know each other in the late fifties when my father was frequently in Helena to bid on state and federal highway contracts. My father consumed large amounts of beer and coffee, so I suspect the location the Dutch Maid near two of his favorite bars, Jesters and the Red Meadow, had a lot to do with the initial acquaintance. Also Dad's low/middle German shared vocabulary and idiomatic expressions with Yiddish, so they probably had that in common as well. For some reason, Jerry either never learned to drive a car or at least never owned one, so Dad got in the habit of driving him back and forth to grocery stores and other places. Later on, when Dad's company failed, Jerry reciprocated by providing a relatively unlimited supply of "Jewish road oil" (Dad's term for Jerry's coffee and his notion of friendly harassment) and odd jobs around the malt shop.

The friendship may also have had something to do with the Masons. At least one group of German Mason's openly repudiated the rampant anti-Semitism in Germany prior to and during the rise of Hitler, though others were not so righteous. See www.bessel.org/masjud.htm David Kaufmann, the author of the piece and a free mason, summarizes the intersection of the fraternal order and Judaism. Both subscribe and aspire to respect and support individual freedom, moral responsibility, the symbolic finding of "light" through moral practice, ridding oneself of all prejudices and a deep respect for learning. Of course, Masonry also borrows freely symbols that are central to Jewish liturgy, literature and practice, most especially the Temple of Solomon and light as the symbol of divinity. The place where I scattered my parents ashes on the crest of the continental divide hosts an open air Masonic structure commemorating the first Masonic meeting in Montana. The structure faces and points to Jerusalem, more specifically and symbolically the location of the Temple.

No doubt, because of the this notable influence, Free Masonry has often figured prominently in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Once again, from a Wikipedia article entitled "The Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy:"

The International-Communist-Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy, sometimes called
the international-marxist-masonic conspiracy, or simply the judaeo-masonic
conspiracy, is a conspiracy theory involving a secret coalition of Jews, Freemasons,
and communists. The coalition's dark aim, especially in the view of franquist pain,
would be world domination. The absence of evidence for such a world-spanning
is taken as further demonstration of the influence of the conspirators, who are
understood to be working to suppress evidence of their activity.

What else is there to say in the face of such logic?

THE JEWISH QUESTION

This essay is not about the integration of Jews into the societies of 19th Century Europe; it is also not about Karl Marx and his essay On the Jewish Question; and it is emphatically not about Jean Paul Sartre’s Semite and Anti-Semite. It is, however, to a certain extent about the Seinfeld episode with the dentist who converted to Judaism so he could tell Jewish jokes to his patients.

This is the Jewish question: Have you met any nice Jewish girls? I have been asked this question many times, but only on the coasts, far away from where I grew up in the high plateau and Rocky Mountain regions of Montana, Wyoming and Utah. The question contains the implicit assumption that I am Jewish, and I have only been asked the Jewish question by people who are Jewish, usually someone who knows some nice Jewish girl and has also seen Fiddler on the Roof. Very few Jews live in the regions where I grew up, so I suppose it would not be surprising if all of the nice Jewish girls had already met and married someone by the time I became a logical suspect suitable for interrogation. How few you ask? One family of four and one bachelor diner owner in my hometown of Helena, as far as I know.

Although I have never been asked the Jewish question by a non-Jew, I have observed some behavior by non-Jews that clearly indicated, in retrospect, that they also assumed that I was Jewish, which brings me back to Fiddler on the Roof. Norm Jewison, a nice Canadian goy, directed of the movie version of Fiddler. A syndicate of Jewish backers bought the movie rights and asked Jewison, assuming that he was Jewish, to direct it. In his Turner Classic Movies interview, Jewison gives a side-splitting account of the jaw-dropping reaction to his response, “You know that I am not Jewish, right?”

In Jewison’s case, at least in the instance of being offered the job to direct Fiddler, the assumption embedded in the Jewish question worked in his favor. For the most part, in my life, the assumption has also worked in my favor, and sometimes produced similarly comical results. Shortly after arriving at Williams College, my small freshman political science class, in keeping with the college ethic, went to dinner at the professor’s house. During the usual get to know you chit-chat the professor asked in his thick ex-patriate Austrian accent, where I had gone to prep school, guessing a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago. “Prep school? I went to Helena Senior High School in Helena, Montana.” “Really?” he said in obvious amazement and some disbelief, “You seem to have a well-trained mind.” That comment can tell you a whole lot about the then prevailing stereotype of Montana on the east coast.

A few years later, while considering the possibility of graduate school, the chairman of the philosophy department called me into his office to talk about schools, and also about academics as a profession generally. At one point the conversation took a strange turn. Out of the blue, he put the question: “What do you make of the fact that all of the professors in the department that you have worked with come from Christian backgrounds and two are Catholic?” I was tempted to say, well my grandmother was Catholic and I learned a lot from her, so what would you expect me to make of it? My Spidey sense counseled silence, so I waited for him to answer his own question, which he had a history of doing. It was not all that usual for this professor, who had a degree in theology as well as philosophy, to come at something sideways, but this question was a little more sideways than most, so I said, not committing to anything, “I hadn’t really thought about it”, just to see where he was going. He then went into a kind of confessional mode and said that, because of the way he was raised, he only recently was able to stop categorizing people by their last names. After that brief statement, this professor from a starchy New England family who had, perhaps, the biggest influence on my thinking at college and afterwards, went on to write a glowing letter of reference that assured my acceptance to all the law schools and graduate schools to which I had applied. Not until many years later did I realize that he also had assumed that I was Jewish. Did his interest in my career somehow assuage guilt over a self-discovered latent anti-semitism?

In law school, students and professors alike continued to assume that I was Jewish. In general, this worked in my favor because they all assumed, in keeping with stereotypes, that I was smarter and more capable because of it. Professor Kaplan, who recruited me to be a research and teaching assistant for his undergraduate course, was quite surprised by my German Lutheran upbringing, but then became fascinated by the cultural differences and similarities. He grew up in Brooklyn a few blocks from Woody Allen, with some of the same neuroses and sense of humor and exactly the same accent. Kaplan eventually paved the way for work at the Hoover Institute on the Stanford Campus, and then a position at the Department of Justice that I declined in favor of a better offer, economically, at private law firm, the most prominent partners of which --- were Jews.

My first and best mentor in the firm was a semi-observant Jew. At the first firm function his wife turned to me and asked, “Have you met any nice Jewish girls yet?” I felt it necessary, at this point, to make full disclosure. She was obviously disappointed, but then brightened and said, “But have you met any nice Jewish girls yet?”

Oddly enough, she did turn out to have a connection to the woman I married a few years later. Her mother taught English Literature at the University of Illinois. One of her best students, a descendant of Mayflower era Puritans and recently arrived Irish Catholics, later became my wife.

Several years later, on a business trip to Chile, one of the larger vineyard owners of Palestinian extraction hosted a relaxing afternoon at one of the best restaurants on a hillside near his plantations. After a pleasant afternoon enjoying the view and some very good Chilean wines, my gracious host put his hand on my shoulder, leaned toward me and said in his broken English, “We are brothers.” I said, in my less than adequate Spanish “We are brothers?” He said, “Yes we are brothers. Your people and my people come from the same place and the same tradition.” I said, “The same place? You came from Montana?” He said, “No, not from the mountains. My people come from Palestine. Your people come from Israel. We are brothers.” After I explained and we had a good laugh at the misunderstanding, my host said, “Well, it’s too bad. We know the Jewish lawyers are the best ones, so maybe we need somebody else.”

Perhaps fate predestined a second marriage to a nice Jewish girl, which came about in 2000. With some trepidation, I prepared to meet her conservative-orthodox parents, not sure at all what the reaction would be. They turned out to be wonderfully warm people with pretty much the same basic values as the parents that raised me. At the end of that first meeting, my future mother-in-law took my future wife aside, smiled mischievously and said, “He looks Jewish." I believe that she was thinking, "He could be Jewish.”

My mother and siblings connected immediately with Roslyn, seeing what I saw, and universally concluded that I was “marrying up.” Mom, in particular, liked the match. A year or two after the wedding, inspired by the Friday at sundown prayers that Roslyn and her father did every week by telephone, I started having long distance Sunday at noon “services” with Mom. She was pleased, but kept asking why I was suddenly doing this. Eventually, I told her about the Friday prayers. With no sense of irony, she said, “That Roslyn! I really like her! She will make a good Christian out of you yet!” And she just might. And maybe there is a place in the afterlife where both mothers will get their wish.

THREE TIMES NU

We set out for Potomac at 7:45 am, allowing extra time for weather and traffic. The record-breaking snowfall had not yet been completely cleared from many major road ways, and even the plowed routes had dangerous patches of black ice as well as an over abundance of twittering/cell-phoning drivers with little or no experience with these kind of weather conditions. 

My wife, Sarah, had prepared a briefing folder the night before consisting of three of the Rabbi’s High Holiday sermons (downloaded from the synagogue website) and the directions from Map Quest. We made unusually good time, so stopped at the Potomac Village crossroads for coffee and a grain shovel (much better for heavy snow than a standard snow shovel). Even with the stopover, we arrived at the synagogue about fifteen minutes early.

We could see the rabbi in a large meeting room leading his Wednesday morning minion, so we wandered around the synagogue to get a feeling for the place. A fairly new structure nestled in a wooded neighbor hood, the buildings seemed to blend into the surroundings. We learned later that the architect was a member who lived not too far away.

Rabbi MW of my wife’s family’s “modern orthodox” synagogue in Baltimore recommended this place, even though Rabbi SW was conservative and had come to the conservative stance from a reform starting point. The rabbis knew each other well and for many years. Judaism offers, to the newcomer, a bewildering number of variations that, for most purposes, are lumped into three large “denominations”: orthodox, conservative, and reform. I suspect the Baltimore rabbi directed us toward a conservative synagogue primarily because of his close friendship with Rabbi SW but also because men and women do not sit together at orthodox services. That logistical fact would make it impossible to have Sarah’s guidance in many aspects of the service.

After looking into the sanctuary, the library, and reading the names on the tree of life, we found the rabbi’s office and checked in with his assistant. She had been extraordinarily friendly and helpful a few days before in providing information and background on the synagogue. We knew that the rabbi had built this congregation from scratch in 1988 into a politically and socially active group, and that he is highly regarded in the metropolitan area and beyond. We chatted amiably for a few minutes until the rabbi came in from the minion.

We were warmly greeted and welcomed into his study. Other than the referral from the rabbi in Baltimore, he knew nothing about us, so we spent ten minutes on general background – what we did, where we lived, how we met, children, family, our different religious backgrounds – before coming to the point. Why become a Jew? Why now?

Sarah was a little afraid (with probable cause) that I would respond to this question in a semi-humorous way, my usual entre to a more serious discussion, after the modus operandi of Socrates. When she first put the question to me a few days earlier, my deflections consisted of “It’s about the real estate,” referring to the unoccupied burial plots that her father held for the family in the Baltimore synagogue cemetery. This particular family joke owed its origin to a dear, and recently departed, Czech friend when I first met him at a dinner we hosted at our home soon after we married. “So,” he deadpanned while looking around the house, “You married her for the real estate.” It took me two beats to adjust to his very dry Czech sense of humor (two orders of magnitude beyond conditions in the Mojave Desert) before I said, “Sure. That’s it.”

We had, when our mothers passed away a year apart, discussed the fact that only Jews could be buried in a Jewish cemetery, so if we were to be together through eternity we needed to find a Christian cemetery immediately adjacent to a Jewish cemetery, and arrange for plots along the boundary, one on each side. Such places actually exist! Amazing how the marketplace solves problems of this sort.

The joke, of course, reflects a deeper purpose. We were married in Baltimore nine years ago in a ceremony performed by a reform rabbi and having all of the outward appearances of a Jewish ceremony, except for the critical words, “under the laws of Moses.” Another joke could be made at this point: “I wanted to make her an honest woman.” And it would also reflect a deeper purpose.

When my wife’s mother Sophie passed away, my wife assumed the ritual Sophie had long conducted of lighting the candles and saying the prayers with Willie, to begin the Sabbath at sundown on Friday. The observance took place in Baltimore and Washington, with the prayers said over the phone and sometimes, when we were traveling, at points around the world – Prague, Paris, Rome, Rapid City to name a few. I also gained a deep respect for Willie, who seemed to me to effortlessly “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” This had become my spiritual family.

Inspired by this simple act of honoring her father and the memory of her mother, I began something similar with my mother (at half time on a Super Bowl Sunday), which I called “telephone church.” Starting with Genesis, I would pick a passage, read it along with her, then ask her some questions. This worked, even though she was having short-term memory problems at the time. Talking about things she had learned when young could lead to a current, real-time conversation.

She was curious to know why I was suddenly reading the Bible with her now. To keep her curious, I evaded answering the question for almost two months, when at last I explained to her the Sabbath ritual of Sarah and Willie. Her reaction, without any sense of irony: “I have always loved that Sarah. She will make a good Christian of you yet!” In my mother’s world, being a good Christian had very little to do with theology and everything to do with a nurturing kindness to everyone she knew and an unerring sense of doing the right thing in all circumstances.

 

I told this story to Rabbi SW, and also described a little of the family history, noting in particular that both of our families spent a century in Czarist Russia, a few hundred kilometers apart in Ukraine. Both families knew the horrors of the rise of Slavic nationalism and as a result, emigrated to the United States -- my father’s family from the Black Sea region near Odessa in the 1870 to 1880 time frame and my father-in-law from a village near Kiev in 1920. The family of Sarah’s godchildren emigrated at the same time as my father’s family from a nearby village outside Odessa to a village less than 10 miles away from where my great grandparents homesteaded in the Dakotas. 

Apart from the historic and geographic connection, I was struck from the beginning at the shared values of hard work and high ethical standards that each of us received as our family heritage. In my case it was the natural by-product of at least seven generations of Pietist Lutheran observance and rigorous religious instruction. In Sarah’s case, innumerable generations of Orthodox Jewish observance. I was also struck by the fact, but did not mention, that most of the Yiddish expressions I had heard were variations of the German dialect and the idioms of the language that my grandparents and my father spoke.

 

The rabbi summed it up by saying, “Pretty much the same history, except for the anti-semitism.”  I did not respond, though I could have recounted to him the horrors visited on the 1,000,000 or so Black Sea and Volga Germans whose lands were confiscated, whose woman were raped, whose families were exiled to slave labor camps in Siberia and literally worked to death, whose villages were pillaged and whose leaders were executed prior to and during World War I and World War II. See, The Great Terror by Robert Conquest. I could also have told the stories of those Black Sea Germans who took into their families and sheltered Jewish families from the even greater atrocities visited on them by the invading Germans, or the horrors that followed World War II when Black Sea Germans and Jews alike were forced to return to the miserable and hostile conditions in Russian controlled territories from which they had just fled. But, of course, nothing compares to, or should be compared to the incomprehensible evil of the mass genocide that was the Holocaust.

The rabbi then moved to the attention grabber of the meeting. “It is my duty as a rabbi to shun you, discourage you from converting, and to refuse you three times,” he said, “And then embrace you, if go ahead anyway.” I could not resist. “I have had experience with this, having proposed to Sarah three times, before she stopped objecting to the form of the question.” “Then you know what I mean,” he said, enjoying the joke.

First, he raised the issue that most deeply divides and defines the difference between Christianity and Judaism: the divinity of Jesus. The divinity of Jesus, as special and distinct from the divinity of all mankind as the children of God, had always perplexed me, so much so that it came close to derailing my confirmation when I raised the question with the wife of our Methodist minister in confirmation classes. I had noticed very different formulations among the four gospels, with Mark being the closest to what I perceive as a continuation of one strand of Jewish theology in the teaching of Jesus: namely, the recognition that, since all men are children of God, the love of your neighbor as yourself is essentially equivalent to the love of God. I told the story to the rabbi.

Second, he turned to the observances of Judaism, notable among them the attending services (Shabbat) and the ceremonial circumcision for men who are already circumcised (hatafte dam bit), and the purifying immersion in water (mikvah)-- the antecedant of Christian baptism.

Third, we discussed the logistics and the time required for completion of conversion classes and learning some rudimentary Hebrew, the involvement of the rabbi as my sponsor, working with my father-in-law on some of the material, and other practical aspects. We decided that Sarah would attend classes with me and that we would attend Shabbat services in Potomac, except when attending in Baltimore, with conversion classes taking place in conjunction with another synagogue in DC.

The rabbi gave us a list of books to get started with, and we were on our way in the next journey of our lives together.

WHAT ELSE?

My father-in-law, Willie, celebrates his birthday on December 24^th. Probably, that was the date of his birth in Ukraine in 1919. In any event, the ship manifest from his family’s arrival in Baltimore 10 months later corroborates the month, if not the exact date. We planned to see him in Baltimore on his 90^th birthday. So, how to break the news? How would he react?

As in the meeting with the rabbi, my wife once again offered copious precautionary advice, mostly focused on the appropriate answers to the inevitable questions of “Why?” and “Why now?” I listened carefully, but did not commit to a script. I said only that I would wait until that time in the course of the visit when he would predictably say “What else?” after we had gone through a list of things mundane and not so mundane.

After lunch, a game of cards, a recounting of his social calendar (he needs a social secretary) and the usual checklist of things working and not in his apartment, he said, “What else?” My wife and I sat across the table and my father-in-law at the head. Our eyes locked, we smiled and then I turned and said, “What else? Well, remember about ten years ago when we knocked on your door and we said to you and Sophie, ‘We have come to announce a simcha involving a chuppah.’ Well, this time we have come to announce a beth din involving a mikvah.”

On that prior occasion, I had spent the better part of the trip from DC to Baltimore wrapping my vocal cords around the unfamiliar sounds of simcha (literally “happiness”) and chuppah (literally a “canopy” or “covering”). Simcha as a Hebrew and Yiddish noun, means “festive occasion.” Any celebration is a happy occasion, especially a wedding, or engagement. The chuppah in a Jewish wedding ceremony is a covering stretched over four poles which symbolizes the home of the couple to be wed and under which the wedding ceremony is performed. To me, at the time, the words sounded more like a Mexican fast food dish with salsa.

Willie’s eyes welled up immediately on hearing beth din, a Jewish religious court consisting of a rabbi and two observant men which, among other things, presides over a conversion. A mikvah, is a ritual bath designed for one of its purposes to be used for the ritual immersion in Judaism in connection with a conversion. Without doubt, the Christian ritual of baptism can be traced to the mikvah. He glanced at me, and said wryly, “I assume that someone is thinking about a conversion.”

He seemed so relaxed and unsurprised that Sarah and I suspected that either the rabbi or his assistant had somehow tipped him off. This seemed more likely since the rabbi’s assistant, a close and longtime friend of Willie, had been over for a visit earlier the same day. But our suspicions were misplaced, evident by Willie’s reaction when he found out that she and the rabbi had been part of our little conspiracy.

Then Sarah said to Willie, “Any questions?” To which Willie said, “I suppose the obvious one, ‘Why?’”

Sarah had that look she always gets when she knows that I am operating without a script over which she has editorial approval. Returning to the theme of the simcha and the chuppah, I said that we had been talking about our ten year anniversary and the possibility of renewing our wedding vows. That conversation and other things over the last several months had started me thinking about our life together, past, present and future. “But a lot of the decision had to do with my respect and admiration for you, Willie, and my desire to have you be part of the studies leading to conversion. Assuming, of course, that are you willing to play that role.”

At this point he surprised us both. “I had been thinking about this for a long time. I was wondering whether we could all be together. I used to cry about it; I really did. I was so worried that Sarah would be without you in the cemetery and we would not all be together.” Though our eyes were welled up with tears, we all then burst out laughing. So it was about the real estate after all!