Sufganiyot & Stability: Finding Comfort in Jewish Bakeries

December 7, 2020
by RachelK

Blog post by JMM Archivist Maggie Hoffman. To read more posts from Maggie, click here.

Since I joined the team here at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in early October, the community has been incredibly welcoming and supportive. But my interaction with one Jewish Marylander stands out—not because she is kinder or more supportive than the rest, but because she’s someone who I know I’ll never have the pleasure of meeting, though I’ve spent hours in her company.

An archives storage room. On the right side, framed art hangs on racks. A portrait of a woman wearing a black dress and looking at the viewer is visible.

Dora Silber’s portrait hangs in one of the archives storage spaces at the JMM.

In my first few weeks at the museum, much of my time was spent downstairs in our main archives storage space, a room which also holds our framed art and artifact collection. The collection includes ketubahs, plaques, and portraits, all hung on large rolling racks in the center of the room. As one often does when beginning a new role, I felt a bit overwhelmed during those first few weeks. After all, there is an awful lot that I don’t know about Maryland Jewish history. But whenever I felt myself becoming a touch worried, my eye wandered over to one particular painting. In her portrait, Dora Silber offers an encouraging, approving expression. I was immediately struck by how much her portrait comforted me.

An oil painting portrait of a woman, Dora Silber, wearing a black dress, with her hands folded in her lap. She is looking directly at the viewer.

Painted by Henry Cooper in 1955, this oil on canvas portrait shows Dora Silber with her hands gently folded in her lap. Gift of Dora Silber and her children, JMM 1984.136.001

Dora Rodbell Silber was born in Poland around 1893 and immigrated to the United States with her family at age two. Her father, Solomon Rodbell, trained as a baker after arriving in Baltimore, eventually opening his own shop on Lombard street. Dora grew up spending time in the family bakery, and at age 17, she married Isaac ‘Ike’ Silber, an immigrant from Austria who had trained as a baker in Europe. Ike Silber had his own Lombard street bakery, just a few blocks east of the Rodbell family’s. In a 1972 interview, Dora explained that before her marriage to Ike, her mother, Fanny Rodbell, used to pack up a loaf of bread from the family bakery and send Dora off to Ike’s to trade loaves.[1]

Together, Dora and Ike ran their bakery on Lombard Street. Eventually, Silber’s Bakery moved and expanded, first to their main store at Monroe and Westwood, then to Colonial Village in Pikesville. As the number of locations grew, so too did their reputation—Silber’s became a Baltimore staple.

Here at JMM, we’re privileged to preserve some of the Silber’s Bakery legacy. In addition to Dora’s portrait, which is a matched set with a portrait of her husband, we hold a few oral histories with Dora, select objects from Silber’s Bakery, and a few additional Silber family materials. Learning about Dora’s legacy as a well-known bakery owner helped clarify why her portrait reassured me. After all, Jewish bakeries and the goods they sell are themselves familiar and comforting.

Last week, we participated in #ArchivesHashtagParty on Twitter, an initiative by the National Archives that offers a themed space for archival repositories around the country to highlight materials in their collections. This month, the theme was #ArchivesBakeOff, a mouth-watering showcase of cakes, breads, and cookies. As I searched for materials to feature on Twitter, I thought back to that portrait of Dora, and to the important roles that bakeries play in Jewish communities.

Black and white photograph. Three women stand behind a bakery counter with loaves of bread behind them. The floor is lined with floral bouquets.

Crystal’s Bakery grand-opening in 1939, following its relocation to Lombard Street. Gift of Milton Schwartz, JMM 1987.203.001

Bakeries are an after school stop and a place where neighbors wish one another a “chag sameach” as they pick up sufganiyot or hamentashen. They are places of meeting, reunion, and celebration. And according to one story in our oral history collection, they can be spaces of stability and refuge. Milton Schwartz, whose family owned Crystal’s Bakery, shared in a 2005 oral history: “everybody that my parents would bring over from Europe, [they] gave them all a job in the bakery. I had several cousins working there too, and ‘til they got their start in the new world and [would] be able to afford to go out on their own, they always had a job in our bakery doing something.”[2]

Common spaces like bakeries are one of the reasons why I love local history. Because these neighborhood spots do more than sell goods—they create the spaces that locals need to become neighbors. So it’s no wonder that Dora’s portrait comforted me; she shaped her life around making people feel at home. As I’ve admitted, I have an awful lot to learn about Maryland Jewish history. So tell me in the comments, what is your Maryland bakery story?


[1] Dora Silber interview, June 11, 1978, OH 0076, JMM.

[2] Milton Schwartz interview, November 9, 2005, OH 676, JMM.

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