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Chapter 3

The Matriarchs

"Sisterhood . . . is the right hand of the Temple." .- Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 25, 1956

"Propelled into the boardroom through the kitchen. . . ." -Jack Wertheimer, The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed

Jewish women were not equals. When Beth-El Congregation was founded in Fort Worth, Texas , in 1902, the women who worshiped at the new Reform temple were not counted as members; only men were. Women could not vote on synagogue issues; only men could. A widow was expected to pay family dues yet could not cast a vote at congregational meetings. This was true not only at Beth-El, but at most synagogues, whether Reform or Orthodox. The notion of women's second-class spiritual status permeated Christianity as well.

Still, Beth-El's women had clout. They found ways-often through the kitchen-to raise money and wield influence in religious affairs. Whenever the men abdicated responsibility, the women moved in, filling a need. That was the community's early pattern. For example, when the pioneer Jewish cemetery, consecrated in 1879, fell into neglect in the late 1880s, Alsatian-born Babette Carb and her women friends in 1896 resuscitated the Emanuel Hebrew Rest Association, raising awareness and money for its upkeep. When efforts to launch religious schools failed, American-born teachers Sara Carb and Ida Brown tried again and again to gather students and keep Jewish literacy in Cowtown alive. Had these wives, widows, mothers, daughters, and sisters not come to the rescue, the newly chartered Beth-El congregation might have disintegrated long before its 100^th anniversary. It nearly did.

Collapse

The Reform congregation had seemed to be off to a strong start. At its birth in September 1902, Beth-El had (all-male) committees setting policies on ritual and bylaws as well as officers collecting monthly dues. By midwinter, these efforts were near collapse. Members bickered with Rabbi Solomon Philo, the wandering Jew who had seemed so helpful at the initial organizational meetings. Hired at $100 a month on "approbation" [sic], the rabbi turned out to be quarrelsome and meddlesome. "Unfortunately . . . [he was] unfitted in every respect for that holy office," concluded Flora Weltman Schiff, writing for The Reform Advocate.[i] "Because of the deserved unpopularity of the rabbi," attendance at Sabbath services dwindled. By the spring of 1903, the undisciplined tribe had fallen apart. No High Holy Days services were held that fall. Fort Worth 's Reform Jews once again seemed "beyond redemption." The forty-three founding fathers and sons went back to business as usual.

However, the women remained a cohesive unit. Although second-class worshipers at Beth-El, they were assertive members of the Fort Worth section of the National Council of Jewish Women, chartered locally in 1901. The Council's treasury had sufficient funds, from monthly dues and Hanukah balls, to hire a rabbi. The section's executive board included Theodore Mack's new bride, Pauline (Polly) Mack, who hailed from Cincinnati , home of Hebrew Union College . She and her fellow board members contacted the Reform seminary for help. The Reform movement's congregational arm, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, responded, dispatching its field representative, Rabbi George Zepin. During the spring of 1904, Zepin made two visits to Texas and revived the faltering congregation from its "state of lethargy." He arranged for Hebrew Union College to place an energetic young rabbi, Joseph Jasin, in Fort Worth after his ordination in 1904.

Jasin, an idealistic spiritual leader with deep furrows in his baby-faced brow, approached his first full-time pulpit position with vigor. He reorganized the Sabbath School , so-called because classes were held on Saturday. He conducted Friday evening services. Flora Schiff reported that "on his advent, membership increased (from 30) to 60 members." The rabbi also mingled with the Orthodox Jewish community, for he shared their passion for Zionism.

Still, the women were discontent. They disliked worshiping in rented rooms at the Spiritualist Temple , an institution that conducted séances. The Council of Jewish Women began "agitating" for construction of a Reform synagogue. The men did not share their concern. But, with the backing of the rabbi, in 1906 the women created a sinking fund to raise money for the congregation's first house of worship.

To augment the fund, they cooked their best dishes and served potluck dinners for three consecutive nights during the biggest event of the year-the Annual Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. The bill of fare, judging from recipes published in Jewish newspapers of the era, must have ranged from traditional to treyf. Apple floden, a Hungarian strudel, was a local favorite. So was the Brin family's recipe for beef à la mode-a six-pound roast, slow-cooked in an iron skillet and topped with onions and a glass of claret. Another sophisticated company dish among some Fort Worth Jews was French egg with pâté de foie gras-a dish requiring one poached egg, aspic jelly, a spoonful of pâté, and a bottom layer of ham.

Regardless of what graced the menu, the potluck suppers were a success. The Council of Jewish Women, in which Reform women predominated, received community-wide recognition and a profit of $320 to augment Beth-El's building fund. Combined with previous savings, the sinking fund totaled $500. Credit for the smorgasbord went to eight women-Pheenie Alexander, Elfrieda Brann, Sarah Brown, Carrie Friend, Polly Mack, Blanche Mayer, Mary Miller, and Mrs. Lucius G. Schenk.

Seeing how easily the women had raised $500, the men of Beth-El began sharing the vision of a house of worship. They opened their wallets. By spring, the congregation had purchased a $7,700 lot on the corner of Fifth and Taylor streets. More money was pledged. Addie Levy and Blanche Mayer each raised an additional $900, a "very handsome and unexpected sum." When the High Holy Days arrived in October, the congregation moved into a $6,000 wood-and-stucco building at 601 Taylor Street . The inscription over the front entrance in Hebrew, Y'hee Or, meaning Let there be light.

"While the building is not spacious, it is sufficiently large to accommodate the congregation and Sabbath School ," Flora Schiff wrote. Forty students, including youngsters whose parents davened at Ahavath Sholom, the city's Orthodox synagogue, enrolled in Beth-El's Saturday religious school. Besides classrooms, Beth-El's first building had "memorial windows finished in art glass, . . . . a minister's study, . . . . a perpetual lamp and Bible [donated] by the Sabbath School children, . . . . a very handsome and costly chandelier" from the Levys, and, last but not least, a "tastily" furnished office for the Council of Jewish Women.

The women had a presence and a place in the new synagogue. For the next five years the local Council of Jewish Women continued functioning as its auxiliary. Council women tidied the Temple interior and recruited Sabbath School teachers. They funded the choir for $150 a year. "Without the influence of our women, our . . . congregations could not thrive," wrote Polly Mack, who served successive terms as Council president. "This is universally the case in smaller communities."

The women continued serving. The first congregational supper was home cooked. "Ida Goldgraber, Hattie Simon, Carrie Brin, Eugenia Seligman, and Julia Pincus prepared and served dinner in the choir loft of the Taylor Street Temple ," Sophia Miller recalled years later. Dessert chef Mollie Ginsburg raffled off her prize-winning cakes.

Sisterhood emerges

Rabbi Jasin, who worked in partnership with the matriarchs, remained four years, from 1904 to 1908. He was followed by the return to Fort Worth of Rabbi George Zepin, the respected rabbi who had rescued the congregation from oblivion. Zepin's heart, however, was in national organizational work. He departed in 1910, returning to Cincinnati 's Union of American Hebrew Congregations with a keen understanding of what made a Temple tick-mainly, its women.

Zepin was determined to empower women within Reform Judaism, to upgrade their status from marginal to mainstream. He wanted to harness and institutionalize their participation so they would remain a constant in congregational dynamics.

A student of history, the rabbi agreed with nineteenth-century theologian Abraham Geiger, who lamented "the spiritual minority of woman as though she were incapable of grasping the deep things in religion." In 1837, Geiger had railed: "Let there be from now on no distinction between duties for men and women unless flowing from the natural laws governing the sexes . . . . Our whole religious life will profit from the beneficial influence." [ii] In 1851, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, pioneer of American Reform Judaism, instituted a revolutionary change in that direction. He abandoned segregated seating, replacing it with the "family pew." The innovation, criticized by Philadelphia editor Isaac Leeser as a "Gentile fashion," was an early step toward women's equality in the Temple . "Allowing women into the main sanctuary entailed a willingness to revise fundamental assumptions of what it looked like to . . . pray as a Jew." [iii] The Reform movement also discarded the notion that only men constituted a minyan-the ten worshipers required to hold a service.

Still, by 1910, when Zepin departed Fort Worth , few Reform congregations extended voting membership to women. Zepin favored this advance but could not dictate it. The best he could do to empower Jewish women was to unite all Temple auxiliaries into a "mighty weapon in the service of Judaism . . . [and] congregational life." In 1913, he became executive secretary of the newly created National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). As the organization's administrator, he was present in Chicago , January 19-21, 1915 , for Sisterhood's First Biennial Meeting, when delegates from 104 synagogues convened.

Among those attending was Hortense Fox, the delegate from Fort Worth -and the lone representative from Texas . Her attendance was probably due to Rabbi Zepin and his close ties to Beth-El.

That Fort Worth had the first Sisterhood chapter in Texas has gone unheralded. It was two years before a second Texas congregation-Corsicana's Temple Beth El-joined the Sisterhood movement. El Paso 's Temple Mount Sinai followed in 1919. The Reform women of Dallas 's Temple Emanu-El did not affiliate with NFTS until Sisterhood's Fourth Biennial Meeting in 1921. By then the Dallas Reform congregation had hired Dayton, Ohio , rabbi David Lefkowitz, whose wife, Sadie, was already serving on Sisterhood's national board. She apparently brought the Dallas Temple into the national fold. Houston and Waco also affiliated in 1921.

By then, Fort Worth 's Sisterhood chapter was well established. It had begun in 1913 with a half dozen women, all of them active in the Council of Jewish Women. The Creation of the Temple Auxiliary allowed the Council to focus on the social service arena and the new group to concentrate on Beth-El. The Temple Auxiliary 's first president was Elfrieda Brann; its secretary, Flora Schiff. Its 1915 roster was thirty-nine members strong. In 1917, when Hattie Simon was president and Hortense Fox secretary, the Temple Auxiliary 's membership had increased to fifty. By the Third Biennial in 1919, the auxiliary had increased its numbers to fifty-five and renamed itself Sisterhood. (In the 1990s, Sisterhood affiliates were renamed Women of Reform Judaism.)

At its inception, Sisterhood's national board established two fund-raising projects that continue to this day: uniongrams, to congratulate fellow Jews upon special occasions, and art calendars, which now sell in the Beth-El Gift Shop for $15. The first Sisterhood calendar, dated 1904-5674, illustrated each Jewish holiday, including a Shavuot print of Michelangelo's marble sculpture of Moses, complete with horns.

The calendars augmented one of Sisterhood's goals: "Judaizing homes" with reminders "of things Jewish." Reform Jews had abandoned many, many religious rituals, adopting American and Christian customs in their place. For example, well into the 20^th century, it was not uncommon, particularly in the South, for Reform Jews to place Chanukah presents beneath a Christmas tree. To reverse the trend, Sisterhood encouraged Jewish women to celebrate "the feast of lights in the home." The reasoning was clear: "Our children need to know the heroic stories and to be made to feel a sense of pride in the Maccabean victories, in order that we may in a measure counteract the Christmas atmosphere that they must encounter on the outside." [iv] Amen.

Winds of War and Change

The United States ' entry into World War I in April 1917 broadened Sisterhood's focus. The NFTS formed a National War Emergency Committee. It instructed local Sisterhoods to devote one day a week to Red Cross work.

In Fort Worth , that dictum gave rise to Women's Wednesday Clubs. These began as small sewing circles of friends and relatives, regardless of their affiliation with the Temple , Shul, Sisterhood, or Council. Wednesday was chosen because in Fort Worth none of the major women's groups, Jewish and non-Jewish, held membership meetings at mid-week. These subgroups or cliques of patriotic women gathered in living rooms or met at the Temple to knit garments, sew hospital gowns (from oversize men's shirts), and roll bandages for overseas. The country was at war, creating shortages at home and abroad.

After the war, the work of the Wednesday clubs continued, with efforts redirected to benefit the Free Baby Hospital , forerunner of Fort Worth Children's Hospital, which opened in 1918 thanks to the efforts of Polly Mack and the Council of Jewish Women. "My mother (Ruth Sandler) and my grandmother made booties for the babies . . . and bandages for cancer patients, using white sheets and tearing them up," recalled Sonya Stenzler. By the early 1940s, Sisterhood had its own sewing room at the Temple , replete with Singer sewing machines. During World War II, seamstress skills again helped the war effort. Members of the Women's Wednesday Clubs sewed, kibitzed, and fixed lunch in the kitchen. As the years passed and there was less need for their sewing skills, at least two Women's Wednesday Clubs remained tight-knit circles, with the women gathering for luncheons, birthdays, and anniversaries.

Stereotypes

Beth-El's women were certainly stereotyped. They remained a secondary support battalion. Nevertheless, they raised money and asserted themselves from kitchen, pew, and classroom. While ostensibly staying in their place, they wielded influence.

They governed their own organizations as they saw fit. For the Temple Sisterhood , that meant opening the group's membership to all Jewish women, regardless of where they worshiped and whether their families paid dues to the Temple , the Shul, or no synagogue at all. This open-door policy displeased the Temple trustees. In March of 1923, Beth-El's all-male board passed a motion advising Sisterhood to refuse membership to ladies unless their spouses paid dues at the Temple . Sisterhood balked. Women lobbied their husbands to defeat the measure. Two months later, at the congregation's annual meeting, the proposal was put to a vote of the men. They backed Sisterhood, voting down restrictions.

The time was ripe to push for more women's rights. Women's suffrage had become the law of the land with a constitutional amendment ratified in 1920. The men of Beth-El were not ready to go that far in synagogue affairs. At the congregation's annual meeting of 1923, the men took a half measure, extending voting rights to widows and single women who paid dues. In a final concession to the times, the oligarchy that governed the Temple agreed that women could occupy up to three seats on the Board of Directors.

The first to so serve were Hattie Simon, Julia Pincus, and Maggie Haas Rubin, the Sisterhood president. Two other women were tapped for the finance committee: Sophia Miller and Ida Goldgraber. These women still had no vote at congregational meetings, but on the board they had a voice and a vote. Progress. For the next twelve years, two or three women at a time served board terms. Finally, at a board meeting on October 8, 1935 , Temple President Isadore E. Horwitz made a motion, that "wives of those members of the congregation who are in good standing be given a vote in all matters the same as the members themselves." The motion carried and was ratified at a congregational meeting. Full suffrage for women at Beth-El had finally come fifteen years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

With their voting rights secured, the women relaxed. Nominating committees ceased recommending women for board seats. The female presence in the boardroom diminished, then disappeared. A right, if not exercised, fades from memory and ceases to exist. Periodically, a woman would be nominated to the board amid proclamations that she was the "first" to so serve. Then the supposed precedent would again be forgotten.

In 1949, when the Sisterhood had 228 members, Jake Gernsbacher moved that the group's president, Natalie Simon, become a nonvoting member of the Temple board. The practice continued for a term or two, then lapsed. When Ruby Kantor became Sisterhood president in 1971, she increased the membership roster to 334 and lobbied to give the Sisterhood president an ex-officio seat on the board. This time around, the measure stuck.

Women were still denied seats on the bimah. Rabbi Robert J. Schur, an advocate of equal rights for racial minorities, opposed women ascending to the pulpit and leading services. Yet there was a precedent for this practice. In 1942 and 1943, a previous rabbi, Samuel Soskin, had allowed Council Sabbaths during which NCJW women led Purim services. Unaware of this precedent, the women, so to speak, reinvented the wheel. A determined Ruby Kantor instituted an annual Sisterhood Sabbath, during which women conducted the service. At the first Sisterhood Sabbath, December 8, 1972 , five women finally led the Shabbat worship. Those on the bimah along with Kantor were Selma Krauss, Livia Levine, Louise Lipshitz, Edie Yentis, and Rolly Schur, the rabbi's wife.

Feminism was sweeping the country, even reaching Fort Worth , a far corner of the American Diaspora. Egalitarian participation was close at hand. Elsewhere in the Jewish world, women had been making major inroads. Golda Meir was prime minister of Israel . The first female rabbi, Sally Priesand (a classmate of Beth-El's current rabbi, Ralph Mecklenburger) was ordained in 1972. Theologian and historian Abraham Karp observed: "The most significant development in Jewish organizational life in the '70s and '80s has been the entry of women into positions of leadership in national organizations and local federations and synagogues which had traditionally been male preserves."[v]

At Beth-El, more and more women routinely served on the Temple board and its executive committee-although usually as secretary. A woman finally became congregation president in 1987 when Louise Kuehn Appleman took the mantle. She had already held multiple leadership positions in Fort Worth , Tarrant County , and Texas and was honored at being tapped to serve her congregation. Appleman's father-in-law, Frank Appleman, was a past president at Beth-El. Her own father had been president years before at Corpus Christi 's Temple Beth El. Her brother was then serving as Corpus Christi 's Reform temple president. Gender no longer prevented her from following in their footsteps.

A decade later a second female president, Judie B. Greenman, followed. She served during construction of the congregation's $11 million synagogue. In 2002, Beth-El's centennial year, the president-elect is Maddie Lesnick, a former classroom teacher, religious school director, and management team member at RadioShack Corporation.

Finally, the hopes of Abraham Geiger, voiced in 1837 and repeated at the opening convention of the NFTS, had come to pass: "Let there be from now on no distinction between duties for men and women unless flowing from the natural laws governing the sexes; no assumption of the spiritual minority of woman as though she were incapable of grasping the deep things in religion . . . . Our whole religious life will profit from the beneficial influence which feminine hearts know how to bestow on it."

[i] The Reform Advocate, "History of the Jews of Fort Worth ," Mrs. Flora Schiff, Jan. 24, 1914 , pp. 1-12.

[ii] Abraham Geiger, The Position of Women in the Judaism of Our Time, 1837, quoted in 1913 at first general convention, National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods.

[iii] Karla Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism ( Harvard Univ. Press, 2000,) p.122.

[iv] First general convention, NFTS.

[v] Karp, Abraham. Haven and Home: A History of the Jews in America ( New York : Schocken Books), 1985, pp. 346-347

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