Chapter 2

The Founding Fathers

Geknippt und gebunden . . .-Yiddish expression meaning "tied and tethered," i.e., a virtual cousins club

  And so, at 11:00 a.m. , Sunday, September   21, 1902 , a core group of  well-established Fort Worth merchants, well known to one another through business, fraternal, and family ties, gathered on the second floor of the Pythian Castle, a fraternal hall at the corner of   406 Houston Street . Henry Gernsbacher, one of the state's leading merchants of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils, chaired that first meeting to which he invited all the "Israelites of Fort Worth" who desired to attend "independent" High Holy Day services. [i]

            "Independent" was an apt term. The earliest Jewish entrepreneurs to settle in this barren region overlooking a fork in the Trinity River were adventurers, risk takers, and nonconformists who had left established cities for a frontier locale sixty miles south of Indian Territory and forty miles west of cosmopolitan Dallas .

            Gernsbacher, 44, a New Orleans native, had moved to Fort Worth two years before from nearby Weatherford, which promoted itself as a "city of churches." In Weatherford,  he and his wife, Julia, had reared six sons-the beginnings of a regular Tribe of Israel. They wanted their sons to marry Jewish women and perpetuate the faith of Israel , albeit in a modified, modern manner. Their faith in Reform Judaism was evident from their well-worn family Bible, a handsomely bound, illustrated, and annotated 1891 volume edited by an American Reform rabbi and printed only in English.    

Gernsbacher's right-hand man in this "independent" religious venture was real estate appraiser and notary public Isidore Carb, a lodge brother at the Knights of Pythias and native of the Deep South . Carb, 49, hailed from Hillsboro, Mississippi . His parents had lost their rural farm in the Civil War and resettled in New Orleans , a city too hectic and fast paced for his liking. Fort Worth , where Carb had arrived driving his own horse and wagon in 1882, was better suited to his devil-may-care personality and his perpetual quest for a card game. Isidore Carb had gradually persuaded the rest of his family-brother Charles and widowed mother Babette-to move west from New Orleans to Texas . Now he and his brother, both married, with five children between them, were eager to help establish a Reform congregation.  

Also joining the Temple nucleus was David Brown, 52, an ice manufacturer.  Brown was the only man among the Reform contingent with experience at launching a congregation. In 1898 he had helped found an East Texas synagogue, also called Beth El,  located in Tyler .

Others at the initial congregational meeting were the Alexander brothers, Marcus, 33, and Simon, 31, accompanied by their brother-in-law Joe Pommer. Sam Neumegen, 57, who had lived in Germany , San Francisco, England , Waco , and Weatherford, attended the meeting with his son-in-law, Mose Rosenthal, 24, a Houston Street furniture   merchant. They were certain they could recruit more mishpokhe, including a cousin, Aug Keller.  Jake Henninger, a father of three who worked as a tailor, could be counted upon to spread word about the High Holy Day services to the Jewish haberdashers who operated the city's top two men's stores: Washer Brothers Clothier and  A&L August. Three other men, George Landsberg, D. M. Shapira, and J. Kalisky, were at the meeting, but little is known of them except that Landsberg and Kalisky each subscribed $1.50 per month to keep the new congregation afloat while Shapira pledged $1 installments. Also attending that first organizational gathering was the venerable Simon Gabert, 66, Fort Worth 's first Jewish pioneer. German-born Gabert, a cotton broker, had ventured to Fort Worth in 1856, had gone farther west to chase gold-rush dreams, then had returned after the Civil War and a stint in a Union infantry division. A proud member of the Knights of Pythias Lodge, Gabert was bound to persuade other Jews who belonged to the fraternal order to sign on as charter congregants.

One more gentleman sat in the meeting room. He was the peripatetic, unemployed rabbi, Solomon Philo. Philo attended the meeting as a consultant, not a congregant. During the preceding year, he had led Gainesville 's United Hebrew Congregation. A Polish-born spiritual leader with many pulpits in his past, the rabbi was hoping for a call to the new congregation.   

Henry Gernsbacher called the meeting to order while Isidore Carb took notes in elegant penmanship. After some discussion, the thirteen prospective Temple members voted to organize a "permanent congregation" and to name it Beth-El, the Hebrew words for "house of God," a phrase taken from Genesis, 28:19.

The next order of business was election of officers. The men selected as president someone who was absent-Sam Levy.   Levy, majority owner of a wholesale liquor enterprise called Casey & Swasey, was a 33 ^rd degree Mason with money in the bank, a reputation for philanthropy, and a distinguished presence. If this religious effort was to succeed, Levy had to be part and parcel of it.  

Jake (aka Jacques and Jac) Mayer, was not at the organizational meeting either, although his brother-in-law, the milliner Marcus Alexander, was. Confident that they could count on Jake Mayer, the thirteen organizers elected him to the board of trustees.  

Reliance on these two absent gents proved justified. Levy, 46, not only accepted the presidency, he apparently brought along to future meetings his three brothers-in-law-Alvin, Mannie, and Nat Kramer. One of Levy's business partners, Herman (Harry) Lederman, 34, also participated, becoming a mainstay of the budding congregation.  Another of Levy's associates, Herman Marx, pledged $5 per month to the embryonic  congregation. The other board member elected in absentia, Jake Mayer, 46, likewise recruited relatives. Among them were his brother Joseph (Joe) Mayer, a liquor store proprietor who had spearheaded the community's earliest attempts to form a Jewish religious school and congregation. Joe Mayer attended subsequent meetings, eager to pledge his support. So did Joe's son, Max K. Mayer, and Max's father-in-law, Joe Gans, owner of a chic ladies' clothing shop. Oscar Seligman, 47, Joe Mayer's partner at the liquor store as well as a loyal Pythian, also became a charter member, pledging dues of $5 per month.  

            Three more organizing meetings were held, one in Isidore Carb's real estate office at 906 Main Street , another at Sam Levy's business headquarters at   9 ^th and Jones streets, and a third in a meeting room at the Columbia Dry Goods Co., a major retail concern that had financial backing from Marcus Alexander and Joe Pommer. In between meetings, one committee applied to the Texas secretary of state to "procure" a charter, and another rented space for High Holy Day services at a Spiritualist Temple on Taylor Street . Isidore Carb, the group's scribe, copied his penciled minutes onto lined stationery, using a fountain pen. Among Carb's surviving papers are the original minutes, scribbled on the back of a courthouse circular, documenting the congregation's third meeting. Another document, this one on Carb's letterhead stationery, is the rough draft of a missive to Dallas 's Temple Emanu-El, asking if the new congregation could please borrow a "Safer Thorah and a Shofar, if you have them to spare." Rabbi Philo was dispatched to Dallas to hand carry the ritual objects back to Fort Worth . Having gained the congregation's confidence, "Rabbi Dr. Philo" was hired on "approbation" [sic] for a ninety-day period at $100 a month. He conducted Rosh Hashanah services beginning at sundown October 2 and Yom Kippur worship starting the evening of October 10.  

By October 21, Beth-El's charter members had swelled to forty-three people-not counting wives, widowed grandmothers, and children. (Although these men considered themselves modern and endorsed religious reforms, the concept of females as full congregation members was a foreign notion, an idea still to come.) Most of the men signing on were contemporaries in their mid-forties. Peer pressure apparently played a role in rounding them up.

Among those who had come on board were Louis Weltman, 46, the saloon keeper on Hell's Half Acre, who pledged $2 a month for the coming year, and Phillip W. Greenwall, 60, manager of the Greenwall Opera House, who pledged $2.50 monthly. The city's first Jewish attorney, Theodore  Mack, 48, just back from his honeymoon, also signed on as a charter congregant, pledging dues of  $3 per month. His father, Henry Mack, had been a pillar of Cincinnati Jewry and had recruited to Cincinnati the American Reform movement's founder, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.

             Also joining the Fort Worth congregation, and attending subsequent meetings throughout the fall of 1902, were three haberdashers: Leon Gross, 46, proprietor of Washer Brothers Clothier, and the August brothers, Larry and Aphonse, who brought along their bachelor cousin Felix P. Bath, 47, a wealthy attorney and cotton broker. Bath had an Old World yeshiva background yet had become such a free thinker that he built a mausoleum for himself at Hebrew Rest Cemetery .   For this new congregation, Felix Bath pledged $5 a month.

            That month, the Star-Telegram published a one-column story   announcing, "Reformed Jews Are Organized." The article noted that the congregation's charter members included twenty-five "heads of families." The implication was that some of the congregants, like the Gernsbacher brothers, Aaron, 17,  and Jake, 20, were single and living at home. Others were widowed grandfathers, living with their married children, or bachelor brothers-in-law living alone or with siblings, nieces, and nephews. To the Star-Telegram, Beth-El's members may have appeared to hail from twenty-five households. However, their common denominators and interrelationships actually reduced them to some half a dozen extended families. To use a Yiddish expression, they were geknippt und gebinden-tied and tethered-interrelated at so many levels that their family trees intersected at multiple points. They formed a veritable "cousins club."   Tracing their relationships was akin to traversing a spider's web.    

            Marriages extended the family networks. David Brown's daughter, Bessie Brown, married Isidore Carb's son, Meredith.  Louis Weltman's daughter, Hattie, married Dave Brown's cousin and brother-in-law, U. M. Simon, a recent University of Denver Law School graduate.  Haberdasher Leon Gross married Edith, one of the Mayer girls, linking his family tree with Jake Mayer and with Joe Mayer, whose son Max had married Joe Gans's daughter, Berenice. Intensifying these interrelationships was the fact that Joe Gans and Harry Lederman had wed sisters-Amy Schloss and Hattie Schloss. Their mother-in-law, Tillie Schloss, was among the Jewish community's grandes dames, a matriarch who strengthened social ties by hosting seven-course dinners after which everyone played whist, a forerunner of bridge.      

            Charter members Isadore Marx and Herman Marx were not related to one another, although Isadore was the bachelor uncle of Mose Rosenthal's wife, Mary Neumegen. The Rosenthal/Neumegen clan had previously lived in Weatherford, forging business ties with the Gernsbacher brood.

            Some families were not connected by blood or business, yet felt the kinship that comes with geography. Harry Lederman's daughter, Annette Lederman Schwarz, married into a family that traced its roots to Witkowo, the same Prussian town the Weltmans came from. That made them landsmen-the next best thing to relatives.

            Such interlocking relationships augured well for the future of Beth-El. When  temple members argued and disagreed-and the early minutes reflect that they did-they  generally reached a consensus, or at least a truce. Though feuds and slights might simmer for generations, few quit Beth-El.  More than temple business bonded them together.  Layers of commercial, familial, and fraternal ties linked them in overlapping spheres. They shared a pride of place, a sense of kinship, and a conviction that Beth-El Congregation was an extension of home.  

             Such family ties and interrelationships also fostered leadership, creating role models for succeeding generations. Nine men connected with the founding families served as temple president, providing direction that spanned Beth-El's first thirty years. Many more served as trustees. That pattern of participation from generation to generation was gradually replicated by new families that joined the temple and worked their way into the governing network. Beth-El was not the result of one person's drive or vision, but rather the sum of many people's hopes and expectations. From the start, it was governed by families working to achieve consensus, stability, and institutional longevity. The   responsibility of sustaining Beth-El would remain an extended family affair.