c. 2000 Religion News Service

HOUSTON _ In the public imagination, longhorns, oil wells and space shuttles loom large in Texas history, as do names such as Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barbara Jordan. So do cotton and cowboys.

But not rabbis.

Still, the men who led Texas’ Jews prior to World War II _ early years for those faith communities in the Lone Star state _ were an unusual bunch.

Individualists and mavericks, their style and spirit blended well with the frontier feel of Texas culture, said newspaper-reporter-turned-author Hollace Ava Weiner.

In towns where religion normally meant being saved or a sinner, rabbis became peacemakers and bridge builders.

“They were an exotic addition to the West,” says Weiner, formerly with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She uncovered a rich legacy of rabbinical leadership deep in the heart of Texas Judaism and tells their story in “Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work” (Texas A&M University Press).

Researching the book opened her eyes to the need for more history on Texas Jews and their rabbis, and she’s now working on a second book about Jews in Fort Worth.

“It may be different now, but in the past, most people had never seen a rabbi. They didn’t know what they looked liked. Some didn’t really know what one was.

“There’s a story about a Corpus Christi rabbi. … He came down (to Texas ) in 1932. The people in a little town called Bishop invited him to come speak. And when he got there the town was totally dark. He thought maybe it was the wrong town or the wrong day. He was so puzzled.

“He saw one light in the middle of the town. He drove up to that light,” she said. “ When he walked in, it was a large hall and every single man, woman and child in the town was there _ waiting to see what a rabbi was.”

Her thoroughly researched and documented book is organized into 11 chapters, each an engaging portrait of a rabbi in a state where Jews have never comprised more than 0.6 percent of the population.

“I found that these rabbis were public figures,” Weiner said in an interview. “That was a new phenomenon for me. They had small congregations so they had time to minister to everybody. People were very receptive to them. They were educated outside the region.

“Face it, way back then in the late 1800s _ even in the 1940s _ not that many people were educated outside this region. Not many had advanced degrees.”

The “rebbes” who emerge from her book’s pages were dedicated clerics with indomitable spirits and humanity. The portraits are so vivid old friend and news anchor Connie Chung, who attended high school with Weiner, praised the book, but lamented: “Too bad most of these rabbis lived in an era before prime time.”

Many of the early rabbis were immigrants, coming from Hungary, Germany and the Ukraine. Some were younger sons seeking better opportunities in America. Others came with their families. Many simply needed a congregation to serve.

Their ranks, culled from her chapter titles, which list the rabbis’ tenure in Texas pulpits, include, among others:

“Henry Cohen: The Quintessential Texas Rabbi, Galveston, 1888-1952.” The youngest of seven children, Cohen grew up in a lower-middle class home in London, the son of Polish immigrants. He was a hero of the Great Storm of 1900 who aided the hurricane’s victims. Weiner writes that there were so many corpses after the storm _ still recorded as the nation’s worst natural disaster _ that thieves cut fingers off bodies to plunder rings.

Their audacity didn’t intimidate Cohen, who “patrolled on foot, a shotgun under the crook of his arm as he attended to the suffering of all faiths.”

For many years, Cohen was the dean of Texas rabbis, a man remembered for fighting the Ku Klux Klan, for assisting 10,000 Jewish immigrants who entered the United States through the port of Galveston, and for having a Roman Catholic priest as his best friend a half century before most clergy forged such interfaith ties.

“In a state that prized mavericks over conformists,” Weiner writes, “idiosyncrasies marked Cohen’s style. He rode a bicycle, rather than a carriage, a trolley or a car. He soiled his starched white shirt cuffs with penciled lists of tasks to be done.””Sam Perl: Pearl of the Rio Grande, Brownsville, 1926-1980.” A haberdasher, Perl was a lay rabbi who faced the unwieldy task of assisting a polyglot of Jews during the the Great Depression. He had his own radio show, a five-minute afternoon spiel packed with hometown events in which his favorite word was “copacetic,” which Weiner notes is a southern term possibly derived from the Hebrew phrase kol b’seder, everything is in order.

Though his rabbinical role and civic involvement are not unprecedented, Weiner found that Perl’s long tenure is distinctive. She notes that in communities with no rabbis, the area’s Jews often “had a tendency to anoint a representative,” perhaps because Judaism’s style and history show parallels to the American frontier. “Like the frontier West, Judaism is democratic, with little hierarchy,”Weiner writes in the chapter on Perl.

“Biblically rooted, its rituals and daily practices evolved from commentaries and codes reinterpreted by succeeding generations. The core of the tradition is the 10-man prayer service, which any participant may lead. Sam Perl, like lay leaders in the past, did just that.”

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“Hyman Judah Schachtel: The Celebrity Rabbi or Splintering Over Zionism,

Houston 1943-1990.”

Still remembered by many Houstonians, Schachtel was a friend to presidents and politicians. Among Christians, he continues to symbolize interfaith harmony and leadership, but he still represents dissension to many Houston Jews.

Schachtel served at Congregation Beth Israel, the state’s oldest synagogue. Born in London, he moved to Houston from Manhattan at a critical time in American Jewish politics. Europe’s Jews had begun to suffer and were almost annihilated under Hitler’s Third Reich. But free nations, including the United States, declined to enlarge immigration quotas to take in thousands of Jewish refugees before, during and after World War II.

According to Weiner, what emerged among Jews was tension between supporters of two wings of Zionism _ national Zionism, a separate Jewish country, which is Israel today, and cultural Zionism, a Hebraic renaissance. Though he later became an Israel supporter, Schachtel in the early 1940s allied himself with a group stressing its “pro-American rather than its negative anti-Zionist mission,” Weiner writes.

“Successful rabbis, whether they were Orthodox or Reform had to be ambassadors to the Gentiles. They had to interface with the larger community in order to get along,” Weiner said. “They had to understand that their congregants were going to make compromises _ like some (Jews) keeping their stores open on Saturdays. A rabbi had to be flexible in order to stay here.”

DEA END HOLMES