American Jewish Archives Journal

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92Ibid., xiii. 93Marshall Sklare, “The Conservative Movement: Achievements and Problems” in The Jewish Community in America, ed. Marshall Sklare (New York: Behrman House, 1974), 179. 94Louis Bernstein, Challenge and Mission: The Emergence of the English-speaking Orthodox Rabbinate (New York: Shengold, 1982), 7. 95Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 283. 96Yoni Lipschitz, “Recollections and Reconsideration: Revisiting the Path of Rabbi Norman Lamm,” The Commentator (17 December 2007), http://www.yucommentator.com/2.2828/ recollections-and-reconsideration-revisiting-the-path-of-rabbi-norman-lamm-1.297600 (accessed 26 April 2010). 97For a comprehensive look at America’s attempts to fortify the center during this era, see Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1949). 48 • American Jewish Archives Journal
Place of Birth 1 Rudolf B. Schmerl Identity is customarily associated with, among other critical variables, your place of birth. The assumption is that that is where you learned to walk and talk, learned who in the family was who, acquired a sense of familiar foods, smells, sounds, sights, and space—in short, where you began to become a person. If your place of birth was not the setting where you learned and acquired those things, the question is where you did grow up. That place—i.e., that society in its physical setting—is usually regarded as a formative influence on the development of character, talent, and opportunities. As I was growing up in various American cities Erwin Schepses, Fall 1966 in the 1930s and 1940s, the two most important (Courtesy Rudolf Schmerl) men in my life, my father, Ernst Schmerl, and his best friend and brother-in-law, my uncle Erwin Schepses, seemed to me to exemplify the stability I lacked because, when they had been my age, they had had a single city to call home: Berlin. But their fates as refugees from Hitler’s Germany were very different from one another, distinct not only because of differences in their professions and linguistic abilities, but also because of their places of birth. Identity turned out to be not only who they were but also who they were declared to be. Personal History: Who We Were Erwin Schepses was born on 14 June 1896, in Orizaba, Mexico. His father was Benjamin (“Benno”) Schepses, originally from Vilna, part of the tsarist Russian Empire when he was born there in 1865, the second son of Boris and Anna Abramowitz Schepses. Erwin’s mother was Elma Ernestine (“Tina”) Salinger, the third child and oldest daughter of Solomon and Lina Lichtenstein Salinger, born in Lyck, then in East Prussia, in 1871. Ashkenazi Jews have of course been peripatetic for most of the centuries of their existence, but Orizaba must have seemed a particularly exotic place to have been born, if and when Erwin ever thought about it later. He could not have remembered it. He left it when he was three, with his mother and little sister, Irma, after his father’s death on 29 November 1899. The family story was that Benno fell off a train, but his death certificate states that he died of tetanus “on the permanent way of the Mexican Railway.” Perhaps both were true, but the tetanus may have been regarded as embarrassing. At any rate, Erwin’s place of birth proved to be Place of Birth • 49
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The American Jewish Archives Journa
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VoLuME LXII NuMBER 1 (2010) A Journ
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To Our Readers CONTENTS Gary P. Zol
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Ari Y. Kelman, Station Identificati
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Miriam Intrator City University of
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TO OUR READERS… For those looking
Page 13 and 14: of the journal’s issues in an eff
Page 15 and 16: Notes 1Paul Mason, Napoleon’s Hem
Page 17 and 18: ARTICLES “Revive, Renew, and Rees
Page 19 and 20: Ararat cornerstone reproduction (Co
Page 21 and 22: The mere name of the planned city,
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Page 33 and 34: Conclusion On 26 October 1825, a mo
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Page 37 and 38: The Excommunication of Mordecai Kap
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Page 41 and 42: should not even deign to look at it
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Page 45 and 46: publication, Kaplan asked Finkelste
Page 47 and 48: pick up Kaplan’s siddur because o
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Page 85 and 86: BOOK REVIEWS Jeanne E. Abrams, Dr.
Page 87 and 88: Lila Corwin Berman, Speaking of Jew
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Page 93 and 94: Jonathan Sarna’s American Judaism
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Page 97 and 98: Fred Rosenbaum, Cosmopolitans: A So
Page 99 and 100: Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching i
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