CIRCA - Fall 2011 - Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience

History
Some Southern Jewish History with a Personal Twist
By: Dr. Stuart Rockoff
This summer, my research
into Texas Jewish history
got personal. In Palestine,
my interns Jon Cohen and
Lindsay Sprechman and I
visited the Jewish cemetery.
We already had a complete
list of burials there, except
for one gravestone which
was entirely in Hebrew. This
stone stuck out because the
rest of the gravestones were
almost entirely in English,
representing the Reform,
assimilated nature of the
Palestine Jewish community
at the time. Jon, who is
fl uent in Hebrew, took a
crack at deciphering the
unknown grave. The stone
was weathered and very hard
to read. We soon gave up
and headed to the Palestine
library, which had a local
history room.
There, I found a fi le of
obituaries of the people
buried in the Palestine Jewish
cemetery. I saw a picture of
the unknown Hebrew grave,
which has an English date:
Dec. 5, 1905. I then fl ipped
the page and saw a local
newspaper article about a
tragic fi re, and realized that
the unknown Hebrew grave
was that of Chaike Ratner,
my great grandfather Moses
Shapiro’s fi rst wife. I had
always heard that Moses’
fi rst wife had died, and
then he had a new wife sent
over from Russia. It was his
second wife who gave birth
to my grandfather Sam
Shapiro. I never knew how
his fi rst wife died, where
she was buried, or even her
name. According to the
newspaper article, Chaike
perished after her dress
caught fi re from a stove in
her house in the tiny town of
Oakwoods. They buried her
in Palestine since it was the
closest Jewish cemetery.
After this discovery, we went
back to the cemetery and
worked harder at trying to
decipher the gravestone,
and sure enough we found
the Hebrew phrase “Wife of
Moishe Shapiro” on it. One
of the reasons it was so hard
to read is that the Hebrew
carving is quite shallow.
While the English date is
ISJL History Interns Lindsay Sprechman and Jon Cohen try to decipher
the gravestone of Chaike Ratner.
professionally done, the
rest was clearly done by an
amateur. Moses may well
have done it himself. Living
in rural east Texas, my great
grandfather was probably
unable to fi nd a stone carver
who knew Hebrew.
Finding this small
gravestone, which helped
unlock my family’s mysteries,
was a meaningful and
poignant reminder of how
we are all connected to our
history.
CIRCA / Fall 2011 The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life 11