"Jews are a people of memory," a wise friend says. As Jews around the world celebrate the New Year, marked by the fall harvest, we are remembering Mayer Samuel Weiss, Houdini's enigmatic father.
We’ve documented the Weiss family saga, of how Harry’s father fled a prosperous life in Budapest after he fought a duel and killed a prince. He was educated as a lawyer, but his European degree and his lack of English barred him from the American bar. When he and the family moved to Wisconsin, then later to New York, he was desperately trying to make a living with the remnants of his excellent education in the Old World - as a rabbi, a kosher butcher, even a mohel, a man who performs circumcisions. All this is reflected on the business card above.
It was 125 New Years ago that the congregation mentioned on Dr. Weiss's business card, Adath Jeshurun, came into being. It still meets today in its original building, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, now a national historic landmark. 
It first opened its Moorish-style doors during the High Holy Days of 1887, when Harry and his father were "living together, that is starving together," in New York City, to quote Harry. During that first year the synagogue had no official rabbi. In those days, and still today, it does not require an “ordained rabbi” to guide services in a Jewish synagogue. Anyone who knows the prayers and rituals can lead, and can be called "rabbi," which means "teacher."
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So it is quite plausible that Weiss (like other temple-less Jewish “rabbis,” “reverends,” “preachers” and “ministers”) nominated himself “minister” of this brand-new congregation which, at the time, was the next big thing for the city’s swelling population of German-speaking Jews. There are no direct mentions of Weiss in synagogue records, but there are shadows.
For instance, his friend Rabbi Bernard Drachman, who later bar mitzvahed Harry. Drachman presided at the opening ceremonies at Eldridge Street, and in some records it's called "his" congregation, though again all quite unofficial. Could that be where he and Weiss first met? Both were alumni of the University of Heidelberg, if Harry’s account is to be credited. In his memoirs Drachman recounts how the proud Weiss, in great need of money, refused his offer of a gift or a loan, but instead sold him a portion of his excellent library of Jewish books.
Drachman, Weiss and many German-speaking Jews of that time lived in Yorkville, the old German neighborhood on the upper East Side of Manhattan.
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| More or less unchanged view from Houdini's window at 227 East 75 Street, NYC |
But daily life for Jews, especially poorer ones, was concentrated a long walk or a short subway ride downtown, on the Lower East Side. Eldridge Street for "ministry" work, Broadway between Broome and Spring for "piecework." That was the location of the now-legendary “necktie factory” where Harry and his father worked together and Harry first began to practice magic.
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| This is where Houdini got his start in magic. |
This place, formerly H. Richter & Sons at 502 Broadway, made neckties, but the main business was in the prayer shawls, binding fringes and tassels that Orthodox Jews have worn since ancient times. Mayer Samuel Weiss, Ph.D., LLD, foundered here in the riptide of his Old World past, while his son went on to accomplish what the father could not.
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Wonderful post. Thank you. Love the shot of Richter & Sons.
ReplyDeleteMay I second Mr. Cox's statement - great post! Full of feeling for a man felled by his own pride. A tragedy? Or the hand of fate that made Houdini what he became?
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