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Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

25 Nov

Here's an extraordinarily vulnerable and beautiful piece by the editor of The Jewish Child - HATZOPHEH (The Scout) - who was actually Elma Ehrlich Levinger (1887-1958).

She informs her readers (aged 9 to 16, as the audience was conceived) that she was feeling low, and began to doubt if the readers enjoy it at all, the content seemed plain, even the pictures stupid and inartistic.

Then she opened a letter from a boy named Joseph in Texas—

Joseph told her how much he enjoys The Jewish Child. There's no Jewish school for him, and his grandmother who told him about Jewish things moved to Cleveland, to live with his uncle.

But his uncle sent him The Jewish Child—

Read 6 tweets

Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

22 Nov

There was once a professional boxing hexer known as Benny "Evil Eye" Finkle. In this piece from 1941 it says he was born "Benjamin Avroom Nebuchadnezzar Finkle."

Some of that was true. He was born in 1898 in St. Louis, died in 1985 in Miami.

A 1978 story on him in Sports Illustrated has this:

"His father Hyman, a hardworking Orthodox Jew, managed a small milk store in Kerry Patch, a tough Irish slum. "I was a kosher punk in the trenches full of tough kids with O's in front of their names," says Finkle. "I could fight but I couldn't spell 'ham' until I was 13.

Read 9 tweets

Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

22 Nov

This quote from R. Aharon Kotler when I nice collie jumped on him is really something: "Tu eppes!"

*a nice collie

and here is the yarmulke which Rabbi Elefant claims Joe DiMaggio claimed he wore for him at Mel Allen's funeral.

Read 4 tweets

Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

17 Nov

There was once a row of houses called "Purim-Place" in London. This little bit from Isaac D'israeli's Curiosities of Literature explains how it came to be, it all started with a squabble about the lack of decorum during the megillah. This occurred in 1783 ("not long ago").

What had happened was, things got kind of crazy, and the Mahamad, or synagogue board, issued a regulation coming down hard on the lack of decorum, and enforced it that year with constables.

One member of the mahamad was outraged, and it all snowballed from there. He withdrew from the congregation, and at some point in a very odd show of something-I'm-not-sure-what named the houses he built Purim-Place.

Read 4 tweets

Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

16 Nov

Pretty cool item, a 19th century Italian synagogue book used to record pledges given on shabbat and yom tov.

Was auctioned on Kedem last year.

kedem-auctions.com/en/content/shn…

Here's the one from London, in Cecil Roth's "History of the Great Synagogue."

And the book as it exists today in the Jewish Museum of London.

It's an Offertory book!

jewishmuseum.org.uk/50-objects/c-1…

Read 4 tweets

Fred MacDowell

@onthemainline

15 Nov

Here are some questions little Jewish boys and girls had, asked and answered in The Jewish Child, 1912-13.

Esther Apfelbaum, Hyman Norman, Dora Moskowitz, and Jacob Seworsky wanted to know "How did the Jews get the Yiddish language?"

@Doc_RPS

Florence Cohen, Henrietta Hotz, Jacob Becker, and Hyman Rosen, proto-SAR students (cc @Doc_RPS) wished to know "Why do Jews have to wear a hat in the synagogue? and why are we not allowed to wear our hats in public school?"

Frieda Willensky and Reuben Caplan wanted to know "Why do we read Hebrew backwards?"

Read 11 tweets

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