Rice houses one-of-a-kind Houston Jewish History Archive in Fondren Library

Countless historical records of Houston’s Jewish community were lost in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey devastated Meyerland, flooding the area for a third time in as many years. The floods washed away the contents of storage rooms and offices in the United Orthodox Synagogues building, the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center and other area homes and congregations. Still other historical documents and photos remain lost in another way: sitting in garages or attics, forgotten and slowly surrendering to time.

Joshua Furman will serve as the inaugural director of the archive. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow)

The new Houston Jewish History Archive (HJHA), under the auspices of the Program in Jewish Studies at Rice University, aims to preserve these pieces of history and others. When it officially launches July 1, in collaboration with the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library, the HJHA will be the only archive of its kind in the city.

In the months since Hurricane Harvey, Joshua Furman, the Stanford and Joan Alexander Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies, and Melissa Kean, Rice’s centennial historian, have rescued historical records from Houston’s Jewish community that were damaged in the storm. Now those records will form the basis of a permanent collection of rare archival materials housed at the Woodson Center, with Furman serving as the HJHA’s inaugural director.

“Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, and the history of its Jewish community has been criminally understudied, given the importance of the city and its proximity to Galveston,” Furman said. He noted that Galveston was a very important port through which 10,000 Jews entered this country during the first 10 to 15 years of the 20th century before World War I. “But many synagogues don’t have archives or any systematic way of keeping their records, and there’s never been a centralized place where one could go to learn about all of the Jewish institutions and families of Houston under one roof,” Furman said.

Inside the orderly viewing room at the Woodson Center, Furman showed off a few of the archive’s recent acquisitions, which run the gamut from photos and program bulletins to newsletters, leather-bound books and rare pieces of memorabilia, such as a 9-foot-long silk service flag. The World War II-era flag originally hung inside Beth Jacob, a congregation which merged with the United Orthodox Synagogues in the 1960s. It lists the names of more than 200 congregants who were serving in the U.S. military at the time.

“Each name has a star next to it, and there are a few gold stars on the banner for men who were killed in action,” Furman said, pointing to the delicate stitching of each individual name. “To look at it is to see a who’s who of the Houston Jewish community in the 1940s.”

A World War II-era silk service flag that once hung inside Congregation Beth Jacob is now part of the Houston Jewish History Archive. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow)

For decades, the banner sat neglected in a closet inside the final home of the Beth Jacob congregation, now demolished, at 3847 Turnberry Circle. Its rescuer kept the silk flag in his garage, wrapped in plastic, after discovering it in the 1980s; there it remained until his daughter contacted Furman, having seen the historian’s request for potential archive items on Facebook. Saving the silk banner from an unknown fate and preserving it for future generations is exactly the mission of the HJHA, especially when those preservation efforts unite Rice with the greater Houston community.

“The collaboration between Rice and the community matters to us a great deal,” said Matthias Henze, the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism and founding director of the Program in Jewish Studies. “That’s the reason why we’re doing this in the first place: We feel that working together with the community creates something that will be of mutual benefit. It’ll be really exciting for scholars, really exciting for our students, but it’s also very exciting for people in the community to know that they can come and look at the material at Fondren Library and, hopefully soon, online as well.”

Although the archive will have its official opening later this year, Furman and Henze stressed that its materials and memories are currently available for public viewing. In fact, they said, the archive has already seen its first visitors and hopes to welcome many more in the coming months. It already houses important collections of records from several of the city’s synagogues, as well as the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston and the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, and plans to add much more from local Jewish institutions and families along the way.

Ironically, planning for the HJHA was well underway when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston last August, as scholars like Henze, Furman and Kean had already seen the need to preserve documents and other records hidden away in homes and synagogues across the city. They’d even begun conducting interviews for oral histories of everything from postwar life in a young Meyerland to memories of long-gone congregations such as Beth Jacob.

Undated photo of comedian Jack Benny’s visit to Houston, posing with Jewish community leaders. The photo was damaged by floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey. Donated to the Houston Jewish History Archive by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow)

“Harvey hit and changed everything, because the Jewish documents were swimming away in water, literally,” Henze said. “As one of our supporters said, it was a blessing and a curse for us. It was a blessing because Harvey made the argument for us — everybody understood that there was a need to professionally preserve and collect the historic documents.

“The curse part was the funding,” Henze continued, “because the Jewish community in Houston was disproportionately hit by Harvey, and it was clear that it would take a lot of money to rebuild, and it was very clear to us of course that full priority should be given to the rebuilding of synagogues and homes.”

With money across Houston already allocated for other rebuilding projects, Henze approached the Stanford and Joan Alexander Foundation, which agreed to fund the creation of the archive.

“Joan and Stanford Alexander have been supporters of Rice’s Program in Jewish Studies for many years,” Henze said. “I am extremely grateful to them for this generous gift. The archive will enrich the program in many ways and will form a strong link between the Jewish community and the Rice campus.” The archive also drew support from the Texas Jewish Historical Society, the N.M. Pryzant Family Fund, the Carolyn and Jay Kaplan Fund and Dr. Michael Ozer and Patricia Kalmans, making it a truly communal effort — just as its creators had envisioned.

Furman hopes to eventually collect materials from all of the synagogues in the Houston area at some point, especially those that don’t have institutional archives of their own. He’s also using Facebook and other networks to encourage people across Houston and South Texas to contact the HJHA with any records, photos, documents or, perhaps, silk banners that might be languishing in storage; his team at the Houston Jewish History Archive is eager to give them a loving home.

“Part of the advantage of bringing things to Rice is not to lock them away in some kind of ivory tower, but to make them available,” Furman said. “There are years of work to be done here in terms of preserving the historical record and in terms of capturing these stories, and I’m just really grateful to be able to get started.”

More images from the Houston Jewish History Archives are available in the Flickr gallery below.