Project highlights early US Jewish settlers [In New Mexico]

Jerusalem Post ^ | Jul. 26, 2003 | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

[yonif]

The carved inscription over the main doors of the Roman Catholic St. Francis Cathedral contains the four consonants of the ancient name for God in Hebrew.

It may be a reminder in stone of a little-known element of New Mexico's highly touted diversity the role of its early Jewish settlers. Jews were an integral part of life in 19th-century New Mexico, as merchants, bankers, miners, ranchers, soldiers, politicians and governor of Acoma Pueblo.

But only recently, in two separate projects, have the strands of that history been woven together into a broader picture of this small, vibrant group.

The New Mexico Jewish Historical Society and the University of New Mexico have teamed up on an oral history project, videotaping the early settlers' descendants.

At the same time, the Palace of the Governors the state history museum is showing "Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico," a look at some of the first Jewish residents. The exhibition will be on view until 2005.

"Although these people played an enormous part in the history of the state, it's a story people don't know about, even people in the Jewish community," said Judy Basen Weinreb, who helped coordinate the oral history project.

Project volunteers have interviewed about two dozen people. Tapes and transcripts will be available to researchers at the state archives and at UNM; the project is trying to raise money to produce booklets on each family interviewed.

Jeanette Wertheim Sparks, whose German-born grandfather made his way to the New Mexico territory in the 1880s, says the efforts are timely. "The old pioneers are long gone, and we're the survivors ... and if they want our history, they'd better get hold of us in a hurry," the 85-year-old retired businesswoman said with a laugh.

Sparks has been interviewed about her grandfather, Simon Vorenberg, who came to the United States in his early 20s, worked in a Philadelphia delicatessen, then was hired to work in a general mercantile store in the tiny New Mexico town of Mora.

He went on to the neighboring village of Cleveland where he established the first post office and then to Wagon Mound, N.M., where he owned a store. There his eight children were raised, schooled by a specially hired teacher who "could teach all the regular subjects, plus German and music," Sparks said.

Sparks grew up in Carlsbad, N.M.. Her parents were the only Jewish family in the county but she vividly remembers visits to her grandparents' Wagon Mound home.

"We kids had a grand time," she said.

Her grandmother's soup tureen is among the items on display in the "Jewish Pioneers" exhibit, which documents the immigration to New Mexico of Jews from the German states, Russia and Eastern Europe, beginning in the 1840s. Also on show are photographs and memorabilia: a saddle, spyglasses, silver tea services, cigar boxes, a powder flask and a piano that came on the Santa Fe Trail by ox train.

By the 1850s, the majority of the Jewish population in New Mexico was German, and all were men who worked as merchants or clerks.

"There was a good business on the Santa Fe Trail. There was opportunity," said Henry Tobias, a retired history professor from the University of Oklahoma. "They not only opened stores, but they sold supplies to the U.S. Army and to Indian reservations."

Brothers came, and cousins. Ten siblings of the Bibo family immigrated during the 1870s, and three of the brothers opened a mercantile business in the Laguna Pueblo area. Solomon Bibo married a woman from Acoma Pueblo and was elected governor.

Some of the Jewish settlers were mayors of their cities: Samuel Klein in Las Cruces, Sigmund and Julius Moise in Santa Rosa, Henry Jaffa and Mike Mandell first and second mayors of that city in Albuquerque, Louis Ravel in Columbus, and Nathan Jaffa in both Roswell and Santa Fe.

In Santa Fe, Willi Spiegelberg was a leading merchant, and his wife, Flora, an accomplished social and community leader who could converse with Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy in his native French.

Jewish merchants contributed to Lamy's effort to build a cathedral; Abraham Staab's donation was sizable. Staab's descendants say he tore up the note for a loan he had provided, and the grateful archbishop ordered the Hebrew inscription on the cathedral's front.

Whether or not that's the origin of the inscription, there is every indication that Lamy and the German Jews of Santa Fe with their shared European background were quite close, said Tobias, the author of "A History of the Jews in New Mexico," published in 1990 by University of New Mexico Press.

[yonif]

Should these Jewish "settlements" be dismantled as well?

[Simcha7]

Shalom!

Yonif,

Very interesting article.

Did you know that there was a very large Hasidic Jewish Community in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma?

Our Jewish people were taken straight from Ellis Island in New York City and put on Trains with a "One Way Ticket" going out West, whether they liked it or Not.

Today, there is a very nice Hasidic Jewish Historical museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with Judaica, artifacts, clothing and documents from the early 1900s on display.

[debaryfl]

From "Jews in Savannah", a page at a Jewish history website:

Accordingly, we find that as early as 1733 about forty Jews sailed from London, or, in the language of the original memorandum (kept in Hebrew, and still preserved in this city), "voluntarily embarked from London, and paid their passages thence to this country, and arrived in Savannah, in the State of Georgia, on the eleventh day of July, 1733."

LOL, there was a Temple in Savannah at a time when Catholics weren't welcome.