Jewish Baltimore: A Family Album

By Gilbert Sandler

Book Overview

A wide-ranging history of Baltimore's Jewish community from the 1850s to the present.

From East Baltimore to Forest Park to Park Heights, from Nates and Leon's deli to Hutzler's department store, Jewish Baltimore tells stories of neighborhoods, people, and landmarks that have been important to Baltimore's Jewish experience. Gilbert Sandler, whose popular columns have appeared in Baltimore's Jewish Times and the Baltimore Sun, offers a wide-ranging history of the region's Jewish community from the 1850s to the present, covering both German Jewish and Russian Jewish communities. Sandler's archival research uncovers new details about important people and events, but the heart of his book lies in its anecdotes and quotations--the reminiscences of those who recall the rich tapestry of days gone by. More than a hundred nostalgic photographs help to bring the memories to life.

Many of Sandler's essays invoke famous names in Baltimore history--names like Jack Pollack, the ex-boxer turned politician; Joseph Meyerhoff, who gave his city a symphony hall; Samuel Hecht, founder of the last surviving local department store chain. But just as often, these essays remind us of unsung heros: rabbis, merchants, teachers, and camp counselors. Sandler tells many inspirational stories, including how one young woman, escaping from Germany in 1939 on a ship headed to Bolivia, seized an opportunity when she learned the ship would stop in Baltimore. She sent a cable to her boyfriend in Richmond, Virginia, telling him to meet her at the dock, and the two were married onboard--which eventually allowed her to enter the United States. Sandler always uncovers the "human interest" in his stories. His account of the S.S. President Warfield--refitted as the Exodus to carry food, supplies, and 4,500 European refugees to Palestine in 1947--contains personal recollections from one of the local businessmen who played a key role in the secret operation, and even a statement from someone who, as a young workman, helped to load the ship.

Jewish Baltimore also highlights fondly remembered institutions. Hutzler's department store, for example, was a common meeting place for weekend shoppers; a notebook in Hutzler's balcony allowed friends to trade messages and track each other down in the large store. Hutzler's celebrated return policy stated that "anything could be returned within a reasonable amount of time"--with the word reasonable conveniently left to the customer's discretion. There was also Hendler's ice cream, whose advertisements featured a kewpie doll, proclaiming "Take home a brick " When a competing chain bragged about producing twenty-eight flavors, Albert Hendler counted fifty flavors in his father's stock--including licorice, eggnog, and tomato aspic (the last flavor produced as a speciality for the Southern Hotel).

Focusing on religious education, Sandler tells of the Talmud Torahs, the area's first highly visible, community-wide system committed to providing a Jewish education--two hours of instruction daily, in addition to a Jewish student's other lessons. The Talmud Torahs, dating from 1889, laid the foundation for later Jewish schools, such as the Isaac Davidson Hebrew School. Sandler also visits P.S. 49, a public school remembered for its high concentration of Jewish students. For recreation, the Monument Street "Y" was a popular site, providing a health club, game rooms, six-lane swimming pool, soda fountain, and library. In his essays on summer vacations, Sandler discusses family visits to Eastern Shore beaches and describes the summer camps that were frequented by Jewish children. Sandler has a knack for getting the people he interviews to recall every detail, from the names of favorite teachers or rabbis down to the price of a movie at the Avalon theater and which streetcar line they used to get there.

Baltimore has a strong and historically important Jewish presence, and this book engagingly tells the story of that community.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801864275
• ISBN13: 9780801864278
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.8" x 10.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Reunion

What a wonderful experience it was to turn the pages of this book. Imagine seeing your high school after many decades or being reintroduced to foods, customs, and places that you have long forgotten about. Each page brought the return of memories of my life growing up, or reviews of people and places before my time that had an influence on my life. There were many pictures of people in my family (especially those of older generations)and I will look forward to sharing this family tree with my children. I even learned some new things about my family and my birth city. Memories abound.

My life, practically, in pictures

This is a book that could describe my life in pictures.I was born in Pikesville and had lived there all my childhood. I grew up living nearby my grandparents on Park Heights Avenue, grew up knowing every place of Reisterstown Road. And I grew up as a Jewish girl who went to Camp Louise every summer of her life and spent those lazy summers on the White House (Camp Louise) lawns making friends with girls who even now I still keep in touch with.It's a book that'll describe your life. Trust me: it described mine.

Growing Up Jewish in Baltimre

_________________________________________________________________At the moment this book on "Jewish Baltimore" is most popular in Baltimore (#1) and Pikesville, MD (#3). Little wonder it should be selling well in Baltimore and Pikesville, a suburb adjoining Northwest Baltimore, part of the Greater Baltimore Jewish ghetto. In "Jewish Baltimore" Gilbert Sandler recounts the long, slow trek of Baltimore's Jews from East Baltimore (where my father was born) through Northwest Baltimore (where my parents first lived after they married) to the neighborhoods of Forest Park and Park Heights Avenue (where my grandmother Julie lived) on to Pikesville (where I grew up) and even further northwest to Owings Mills. "Many of Sandler's essays invoke famous names in Baltimore history," says the blurb on the book's dustcover. Included among the "famous names" Sandler invokes is my family's name, which never seemed famous to me when I was a child (or thereafter).The book has two main features: essays and photographs. A number of the essays are based on columns Sandler has written over the years for the Baltimore Sun newspaper and for the Baltimore Jewish Times. The book is subtitled quite aptly "A Family Album. " It is a photo album of all of Baltimore's Jewry. The photos are superbly chosen and the captions are well researched, nicely written, and enhance the excellent pictures. Historically, Jewish Baltimore was decidedly not a single community. There were separate German Jewish and "Russian" (really Central and Eastern European) Jewish communities. And they were truly separate. The German Jews had come first to Baltimore and they looked down on the "Russian" Jews. This book is bittersweet for me. It brings back some wonderful people to me, some who are now dead. But it also brings back to me the feelings of discomfort, even pain, I felt about the highly segregated situation in which we then lived where the "colored people" lived separately from the "white people," where Jews lived separately from those who were not Jewish, and where German Jews lived apart from the "Russian" Jews. All of these and other ghettos around Baltimore were based on "restricted housing" covenants and on the ingrained narrow customs of prejudice.Gilbert Sandler evokes with warmth the history of Jewish Baltimore and he neatly skirts most of the less warm and cozy memories some of us have who lived as members of Jewish Baltimore.A lovely "Family Album" it is. An account with balance between the bitter and the sweet it is not.