Second Cousins, Card Parties, and Chickens in the Back Yard Part IV

generations-2002-385x500Article written by Deborah R. Weiner, former JMM research historian and family history coordinator. Originally published in Generations  – Winter 2002: Jewish Family History. Information on how to purchase your own copy here. Many thanks to JMM collections manager Joanna Church for re-typing this article.

Part IV: A Do-It-Yourself Attitude
Miss the beginning? Start here.

While life cycle events offer a good example of the porous boundary between family and community, day-to-day religious observance in rural areas tended, out of necessity, to be more family-based than in large cities. Of course, much of traditional Jewish practice takes place within the home, but families in more remote places had also to take upon themselves tasks that, in larger communities, are performed by religious functionaries. Often they did not have the services of a schochet,  but a surprising number manged to keep kosher using a “do-it-yourself” approach. Jews who grew up in rural Maryland in the first half of the century recall how their merchant-fathers made a special trip to Baltimore to become trained in the methods of ritual slaughtering so they could provide kosher meat for their own and neighboring families. In Salisbury, noted Bernice Dattelbaum, her father, prominent merchant I.L. Benjamin, “was one of a handful of men” who slaughtered chickens in the family back yard. In St. Mary’s county, Bea Shuman Sadowsky explained, “Max Weiner in Beechville was the first schochet. When he died, my father was selected … So he went to Baltimore and was trained.”[1]

The Kaplon family, Brunswick, c. 1895. JMM 2001.82.1.
The Kaplon family, Brunswick, c. 1895. JMM 2001.82.1.

The efforts of merchant-schochets were supplemented with imported goods. Families organized occasional trips to Baltimore to obtain kosher food, especially before holidays. Sometimes food was delivered via train, bus, or even steamboat. Sidney Schreter of Havre de Grace described a typical cobbling together of strategies: “We had meat sent in from Baltimore, we raised our own chickens in the yard, and of course the [family] business manager was the schochet. On the High Holidays he and I would always go to Baltimore.”[2]

A do-it-yourself attitude also prevailed when it came to religious instruction of the children. Before the advent of synagogues and Sunday schools, some families sent sons to Baltimore to be trained for their bar mitzvahs, but others were committed to educating their children at home. With fathers devoting most of their time to their businesses, this task often fell to the mothers. As Alvin Grollman explained, growing up on the upper Eastern Shore in the 1930s and 1940s, “I never had any trouble being a Jew. My mother was very learned and she taught us.” Lena Grollman must have devoted considerable time to this pursuit, since all four of her sons had bar mitzvahs. Families also enlisted their kin networks. Joseph Weiner of St. Inigoe’s received instruction from his Uncle Max in nearby Beechville. The schoolroom was his uncle’s general store, and lessons took place in between waiting on customers. When the boy appeared in a Baltimore shul on the morning of his bar mitzvah (after an all-night trip with his family), it was the first time he had ever seen the inside of a synagogue.[3]

In Pocomoke, even bringing in a paid teacher involved extended family resources and local family participation. Recalled Mary Miller Weinman, “We [told] my grandfather in Baltimore he should go [to the dock] when the ship comes in and to see a fella who’s educated in Yiddish and who wants to be teacher, he’d have a job right away and he’d send him to Pocomoke. And he stayed in our house and he’d have his room and board and $25 a month!”[4]

The Rosenbaum family of Cumberland, c. 1935. Courtesy of Louise Miller, Simon and Stuart Rosenbaum, Frederika Rosenbaum Krall, and Morris Rosenbaum, L2000.109.28.
The Rosenbaum family of Cumberland, c. 1935. Courtesy of Louise Miller, Simon and Stuart Rosenbaum, Frederika Rosenbaum Krall, and Morris Rosenbaum, L2000.109.28.

Intense parental involvement in their children’s Jewish upbringing remained an important facet of small-town family life even after the advent of synagogues and Sunday schools. As Judy Edlavitch Scher explained in a 1980s Baltimore Jewish Times article, “In a place like Baltimore you have to give your kids a Jewish education but you don’t have to worry about the cultural part, it’s all around you. Here, though, you have to teach the educational and the cultural part.” With the influence of Christianity much more pronounced than in large cities, parents did not have the luxury of simply dropping their children off for classes and celebrating holidays. “The Jewish community of the upper Eastern Shore has survived because of those parents who cared enough about their Judaism to actively instill it in their children in their own homes,” observed a 1970s Baltimore Jewish Times article, quoting a young Easton woman who emphasized that “the key to her Jewishness was her parents’ dedication to it. ‘The synagogue was there but still had to be reinforced by my parents in our home.’”[5]

Continue to Part V: Summers in Baltimore

[1] Anne Miller, “A Jewish Way of Life on the Shore,” Baltimore Sun, 10 May 1998; Sadowsky interview.

[2] Phil Jacobs, “There Really ARE Jews on the Eastern Shore,” Baltimore Jewish Times, 16 August 1985; Schreter interview.

[3] Jacobs, “There Really ARE Jews on the Eastern Shore”; Goldstein, “Beyond Lombard Street,” 37-38.

[4] Mary Miller Weinman, interview with Helen Sollins and Moses Auerbach, 14 May 1979 (JMM OH 0093).

[5] Jacobs, “There Really ARE Jews on the Eastern Shore”; Susan Tomchin, “Looking Back with Pride and Ahead with Doubt,” Baltimore Jewish Times, 24 September 1976.

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