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In Galveston, descendants of a forgotten Jewish migration keep their community’s story alive
(JTA) — GALVESTON, Texas – More than a century ago, this busy Gulf Coast port and longtime vacation destination 50 miles southeast of Houston welcomed so many European immigrants – including some 10,000 Jews – it earned the moniker “The Ellis Island of the West.”
Today, the few remaining descendants of Jewish immigrants from that time period still living on the island are determined to preserve and nourish the story of the Galveston Movement, a mostly forgotten but pivotal chapter in Jewish-American history.
Galveston, an island-city of 53,000 residents, is the fourth-busiest cruise port in the country and the birthplace of the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. With 32 miles of brown-sand beaches, a charming historic district with numerous well-preserved Victorian-era homes, and some 80 festivals held year-round, the island annually attracts 8 million tourists.
It also offers visitors several sites related to the Galveston Movement and what was once a robust Jewish community that produced five mayors, prominent business leaders and two highly renowned rabbis.
The Galveston Movement, also called the Galveston Plan, was a humanitarian effort operated by several Jewish organizations that brought Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia and Eastern Europe through the port of Galveston between 1907 and 1914. Most arrived in Galveston on steamships from Bremen, Germany, a transatlantic trip that took two to three weeks.
A recent book by English historian and journalist Rachel Cockerell — “Melting Point” — has helped reignite interest in the Galveston Movement. Cockerell, whose great-grandfather David Jochelmann played a key role in organizing the program in Europe, spoke this month at Galveston’s Temple B’nai Israel as part of a U.S. tour promoting the book.
“As soon as started reading about the Galveston Movement, I sort of went down a rabbit hole from which I didn’t emerge for three years,” Cockerell told a group of more than 100 Galvestonians, Jews and non-Jews alike. “I was totally transfixed by this amazing story of Jewish immigration in the early 20th century.”
“I love it,” says Shelley Nussenblatt Kessler, 74, of the heightened attention on the Galveston Movement. Kessler estimates she is one of 25 to 30 “BOIs” — shorthand for “Born on the Island”) — still living in Galveston who are descendants of the Jewish immigrants who came to America as part of the program. Her grandmother and grandfather immigrated from what is now western Ukraine to Galveston in 1910 and 1911.
“Not only am I very proud to be a descendant of two of these immigrants, but I can’t help but think of how lucky I am to be here,” she said. “I’m in awe of what my grandparents did and how they got here, and the sacrifices that they made.”
By the late 1880s, thousands of Jews began fleeing their homes in the Russian Empire to escape antisemitic policies and violent pogroms. Many immigrated to New York and other East Coast cities, resulting in overcrowding and poverty.
Jacob Schiff, a New York banker and philanthropist, financed the Galveston Movement as a way to blunt an anticipated wave of antisemitism on the Eastern seaboard, which might lead to immigration restrictions. Schiff sought to find suitable alternative destinations in the American South for the influx of Jewish immigrants.
Charleston, South Carolina, which had a long-established Jewish community, was considered but city leaders there only wanted Anglo-Saxon immigrants. New Orleans was also in the mix but there were concerns about periodic outbreaks of yellow fever.
Enter Galveston, a port that checked all of the boxes. It had a deep-water harbor that could accommodate large ships and an extensive railroad system available to transport immigrants to other cities and towns.
“Really the purpose of Galveston was to channel the immigrants into other parts of Texas and up the middle of the country west of the Mississippi,” said Dwayne Jones, a historian who is CEO of the Galveston Historical Foundation.
Jones says there was another key reason Galveston was selected: There already was a well established Jewish community that was thriving in the city’s business and political circles. In fact, Galveston had elected its first Jewish mayor — Dutch-born Michael Seeligson — as far back as 1853.
“It was a more tolerant community with a depth of diversity you didn’t see in other places,” Jones said. “It also had a long history of Jewish leadership and activities in Galveston.
The first Reform congregation in Texas, Galveston’s Congregation B’nai Israel, was established in 1868. Twenty years later, London-born Henry Cohen, who was only 25 at the time, became the congregation’s rabbi. Cohen led B’nai Israel for a remarkable 64 years until his death in 1952. It’s believed to be the longest tenure of a rabbi at the same congregation in U.S. history.
In 1900 Galveston was decimated by a storm known as the Great Galveston Hurricane. It remains the deadliest natural disaster in American history, with an estimated 8,000 fatalities, about 20% of its population at the time. Two-thirds of the island’s buildings and homes were destroyed. Cohen and other Jewish leaders played a major role in the relief and reconstruction efforts that followed.
“Jewish leadership took a really powerful role in rebuilding the island,” says Jones. “Without that leadership, I don’t think Galveston would have come back as it did.”
Seven years after the hurricane, the first ship that was part of the Galveston Movement – the S.S. Cassel — arrived from Bremen with 86 Jewish passengers. Cohen – who was proficient in 10 languages — was the humanitarian face of the movement, meeting ships at the Galveston docks and helping guide the immigrants through the cumbersome arrival and distribution process.
The arrivals were processed at the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau headquarters in Galveston, which gave the immigrants rations and railroad tickets to more than 150 towns in Texas and other places west of the Mississippi River.
Unlike a vast majority of the immigrants who had only a brief stopover in Galveston before settling in other communities, Kessler’s grandparents decided to remain on the island. Her grandfather was a painting contractor while her grandmother worked as a housekeeper.
Adjusting to life in Texas proved to be a struggle for many immigrants. Kessler’s grandparents decided they would be happier back in Europe, even buying passage on a ship so they could return to their homeland. But World War I broke out, canceling their trip.
“The harbormaster told my grandparents to hold their tickets until after the war, and if you want to go back, we’ll redeem them,” Kessler said. “Thank God, they didn’t go back.”
By 1914, declining economic conditions and a surge in nativism and xenophobia — a forerunner of today’s anti-immigration climate — brought an end to the Galveston Movement. Still, the program resulted in an estimated 10,000 persecuted Jews finding new homes in the American hinterland in places few had imagined.
The Galveston Historic Seaport Museum chronicles the immigrant experience in an interactive exhibit called “Ship to Shore.” The exhibit includes a prominent photo of Henry Cohen. Computer terminals enable visitors to search for information taken from ships’ passenger manifests pertaining to their ancestors’ arrival in Texas. The Galveston County Museum, located inside the county courthouse, also features artifacts related to the Galveston Movement.
Kessler’s late husband Jimmy, who died in 2022, was another key figure in Galveston’s Jewish history. Jimmy Kessler served as B’nai Israel’s rabbi for 32 years until his retirement in 2014. He also was the founder and first president of the Texas Jewish Historical Society, which is now 45 years old and has more than 1,000 members.
Jimmy Kessler was devoted to telling the story of the Galveston Movement, writing three books about the area’s Jewish history, including a biography of Henry Cohen called “The Life of a Frontier Rabbi.” The street on which B’nai Israel is located was renamed Jimmy Kessler Drive in 2018, honoring his service to the congregation and the greater Galveston community.
“I’m married to a street,” joked Shelley Kessler, adding, “Jimmy, with what he did to preserve Texas Jewish history, kept all of this [the Galveston Movement] in the forefront.”
B’nai Israel, which now has a membership of 125 families, relocated to a new building in 1955, named the Henry Cohen Memorial Temple.
The congregation’s original synagogue – built in 1870 – was the spiritual launching point for the Jewish immigrants who were part of the Galveston Movement. It still stands on Kempner Street (named after a prominent Jewish family that included Mayor Isaac Kempner) in downtown Galveston. The building is now a private residence. Galveston also has a small Conservative synagogue, Congregation Beth Jacob, that was founded in 1931.
Robert Goldhirsh, 75, former president of Congregation B’nai Israel and another descendant of immigrants from the Galveston Movement, has been the caretaker of the Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery for the past three decades. Several hundred Jews — some of whom came to America in the Galveston Movement — are buried in the cemetery. Henry Cohen also is interred there.
Both Goldhirsh and Kessler say that despite perceptions of deep-rooted intolerance in Texas, they’ve encountered little to no antisemitism in Galveston.
“Most of the people I know, it makes no difference that I’m Jewish,” Goldhirsh said. “We’re just Galvestonians.”
Indeed, Goldhirsh says the biggest threat to Jewish life on the island comes from Mother Nature. With climate change a contributing factor, recent years have seen a significant rise in weather-related disasters in Texas. For instance, Hurricane Ike in 2008 led to widespread flooding on Galveston Island and caused water damage in both synagogues.
“During one of the High Holiday services, there was a hurricane headed this way and we had to cancel for fear that the congregants would be caught in a bad storm,” he recalled. “You have to listen to the weather reports. If they say ‘leave,’ you better leave.”
The post In Galveston, descendants of a forgotten Jewish migration keep their community’s story alive appeared first on The Forward.
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Meet the only Jewish president of a Catholic university
Synagogue president and Catholic university president aren’t typically jobs one holds concurrently.
But in 2023, Greg Weiner became president of both Assumption University, a Catholic college in Worcester, Mass., and Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the area.
Weiner’s inauguration in March of that year made him the first and only Jewish president of a Catholic university — one with the motto “Until Christ be formed in you.”
To him, the combination just made sense.
“I never had any hesitation at all about whether being a Jewish president would work — quite the opposite,” Weiner told the Forward. “The divide in society between people who do and don’t treat religion seriously is much wider than between particular religions.”
Shortly after Weiner’s inauguration, college presidents found themselves in the national spotlight as pro-Palestinian protesters built tent encampments on college campuses across the country in the aftermath of Oct. 7
During that time, Weiner became a figurehead for an unconventional idea: that Jewish students who felt unwelcome at secular universities ought to consider attending Catholic institutions like Assumption instead.
Now, Weiner continues to make the case that Catholic schools have much to offer Jewish students.
“The challenge for Jewish families, Jewish parents, Jewish students, is we have to ask ourselves: Do we value education, or do we simply value the prestige that’s associated with certain universities?” Weiner said. “Because, in a lot of cases, those seem to be inversely correlated.”
How Weiner became president
To state the obvious: Appointing a non-Catholic to head a Catholic university was not a risk-free choice.
How would students, faculty and trustees react? Would the university, founded in 1904 by the Catholic Augustinian order known as the Assumptionists, be accused of turning away from its Catholic history, character and mission?
Historically, Catholic universities were exclusively led by priests from the Catholic order that founded the school. Universities like Notre Dame have continued that tradition; every president since its founding in 1842 has been a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
But as Catholic universities have increasingly sought to attract students of all faiths — and as the number of priests available to lead universities has declined — more laypeople have taken the helm. For instance, Loyola University in Chicago named the first laywoman instead of a priest as president in 2016. The Jesuit Fordham University did the same in 2022, breaking with its 200-year tradition.
“I wouldn’t entirely downplay some tensions here, as much as the motto of our university is ‘Until Christ be formed in you,’” said the Rev. Dennis Gallagher, an Assumptionist priest who serves as Vice President for Mission at Assumption University. “Clearly, he’s not going to give personal credence to that particular expression.”
But Gallagher said he was won over by how Weiner articulated the value of a Catholic liberal education, which emphasizes inquiry and debate — values that also happen to be very Jewish.
An Assumption education asks humanity’s’ “enduring questions,” and attracts the kind of students who “haven’t determined that they know the answers to those things before they arrive,” Gallagher said.
Weiner, who draws parallels between Talmudic debate and Assumption’s inquiry-driven approach to education, was well-positioned to promote those ideals, Gallagher said.
Weiner was also not an outsider at Assumption. After a career in Democratic politics that included working as press secretary for then-Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and getting his PhD in government at Georgetown University, Weiner joined the faculty at Assumption in 2011 as a political science professor. He quickly rose the ranks, becoming provost and vice president for academic affairs in 2019. After former Assumption President Francesco Cesareo announced his retirement in 2022, Weiner became interim leader.
Gallagher said he didn’t think trustees were seriously considering Weiner for the job of president at the time. But when Weiner excelled in the interim role, the choice became clear.
“I remember saying, ‘I think what we’re looking for is right here with us,’” Gallagher said. “Somebody that can both understand and communicate what a Catholic — albeit not being Catholic himself — what a Catholic liberal education is about.”
In the end, Weiner’s appointment drew far more celebration than controversy, with the university actively embracing his Jewish identity. A rabbi bestowed a special blessing upon Weiner at his inauguration.
A Jewish haven?
Weiner, who grew up as a member of the lone Jewish family in the small town of Luling, Texas, is comfortable with being the only Jew in the room.
When a childhood friend expressed concern that Weiner was going to hell, he took it as “a very ham-handed way of expressing genuine caring,” he said. “I was born without the gene that tells you to get offended quickly.”
That same instinct carried into his career. At first, Weiner said, he didn’t publicly lean into his Judaism as part of the presidency. But in the aftermath of the attacks of Oct. 7, he felt “a particular responsibility to speak out.”
In December 2023, Weiner made a splash with a Wall Street Journal op-ed suggesting Jewish students feeling alienated from Ivy League campuses ought to consider Catholic schools like Assumption.
At the time, other Catholic schools were also explicitly courting Jewish students amid turmoil over Israel and antisemitism on college campuses across the country.
Still, it was an unconventional pitch: Assumption has no Hillel or Chabad on campus, and students are required to take Catholic theology courses where they learn about Christian morality, sacraments and other church doctrine.
But whatever Assumption lacked in Jewish religious life, Weiner said it has made up for in campus culture. Assumption had no student encampments protesting Israel after Oct. 7, in part, Weiner said, because Assumption students are more interested in arguing over ideas in a philosophy class than organizing a protest.
Weiner, who has written four books on political theory and previously worked as a political aide for several Democratic politicians, said students on campus hold a range of views about Israel. But Assumption is not a place filled with student activists.
“Too many campuses have encouraged moral certainty, intellectual certainty, when Socrates says, ‘Philosophy begins with a confession of ignorance,’” Weiner said. “Education requires a certain amount of humility.”
Eli Beberman told the Forward he initially chose Assumption in 2018 because it was close to home and had a strong secondary education program. He expected being Jewish at a Catholic school might require some adjustment. He never imagined the university’s president would become Jewish his senior year.
“Seeing upper level leadership at Assumption also be Jewish was a really cool experience for me,” Beberman said.
Assumption was a place where interfaith friendships thrived, Beberman said. Though there was no Hillel on campus, Beberman was able to pray in an interfaith space with a Torah. He also celebrated Jewish holidays with non-Jewish friends, hosting Shabbat dinners and a Hanukkah party in the dorms, where his parents brought over their “famous brisket.”
“I was able to practice my religion how I wanted to, and I felt very comfortable on campus being a non-Catholic student,” Beberman said.
Jewish faculty members, too, said Weiner’s presidency changed how they saw the university.
Samantha Goldman, a Jewish associate professor of special education at Assumption, said she didn’t seek out a job at a Catholic institution. But once she got there, she was surprised at how natural the environment felt.
“Having a Jewish president of a Catholic institution really communicates this sense of welcoming and inclusivity that might not otherwise be apparent,” she said.
Others were drawn specifically to the culture Weiner fostered. In 2024, Mary Jane Rein left her job as executive director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She said Clark had failed to properly support her after students protested a talk she helped organize featuring an Israeli reservist. That inspired her to come to Assumption, where she launched the Center for Civic Friendship, which helps students engage in civil discourse across ideological divides.
“To my surprise as both a scholar and a Jew,” Rein wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “I feel a warmer welcome and more commonality of purpose at a Catholic institution than at Clark, a secular one.”
That same year, Weiner was reappointed for a five-year term through May 2030 in an announcement trustees said reflected “deep confidence in his leadership.”
To Weiner, the success of his presidency is evidence that Judaism and Catholicism are not as far apart as they may seem.
“Obviously, [there are] some foundational theological differences,” Weiner said. “But with respect to the educational commitments, I think they’re quite compatible.”
The post Meet the only Jewish president of a Catholic university appeared first on The Forward.
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The secret Jewish history of the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’
“Rocky Horror,” which opened in London cinemas on this day in 1975 is the cultural phenomenon that simply refuses to die. Rather, since its first incarnation as a 1973 London stage musical, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” has been continuously reborn on the silver screen, in subsequent Broadway stage productions, and, in 2016, as a direct-to-TV film, starring Laverne Cox of “Orange Is the New Black” fame as the transgender Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the mad-scientist role originated by Tim Curry.
In all its incarnations, however, “Rocky Horror” has always been more than just a performance. Its appeal has been widely driven as a participatory event. Film critic Roger Ebert summarized it best writing about the original 1975 film: “‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is not so much a movie as more of a long-running social phenomenon,” because “the fans put on a better show than anything on the screen.” What Ebert refers to is the interactive tradition that has grown up around “Rocky Horror,” whereby fans attend midnight showings primed for a party as much as a screening: reciting the lines out loud along with the characters and interspersing them with “callouts” — responses that have been accepted into the Rocky Horror canon much as the Talmud is commentary on the Mishnah that has in and of itself become part of the sacred text. In the case of “Rocky Horror,” this also includes activities, such as throwing rice or confetti in the air when the married couple in the film leaves the church; squirting water pistols during a rainstorm; and tossing rolls of toilet paper when one character says “Great Scott!”
In one of the most overtly Jewish moments in and outside of the film, a speech by Dr. Frank-N-Furter hailing the creation of the Golem-like creature of the title, Rocky Horror, is met by chaotic noisemaking on the part of the partygoers onscreen and off. In the original film, some of the crowd generates noise with ratchets – a percussion instrument that looks suspiciously like a gragger, as if Dr. Frank had said “Haman.” There are other Purim-like touches in the film, such that temple congregations have made “Rocky Horror” into part of their annual ritual, such as a “Rockin’ Hora Purimshpiel” in which several of the musical numbers are rewritten as Purim songs.
Other Judaized versions of “Rocky Horror” that have appeared over the years include “Hebrew Horror,” which was staged in Los Angeles in 2007, and the “Rocky Hora Chanukah Song” by the Jewish punk-rock parody group, the Shlomones (sort of a redundancy, since several members of the Ramones were in fact Jewish, as was their outlook in numerous ways, including their song, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg.”
The original London stage version was produced by British-Jewish theatrical impresario Michael White, who was born to Eastern European Jewish-immigrant parents in Glasgow, Scotland. White’s credits had already included the boundary-shattering “Oh! Calcutta!” — the first all-nude revue in commercial theater — and he went on to co-produce the “Rocky Horror” film as well as “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
The original musical and film were decades before their time in celebrating the sexual fluidity of the LGBT world – indeed, there wasn’t such a term as LGBT, much less a socio-political acceptance of it, for years to come. The new TV film version is in no small part an effort to seize this cultural moment when LGBT, and particularly transgender issues, are now part of mainstream political and cultural discussion, especially what with the casting of openly trans actress Laverne Cox.
The original did, however, have a political consciousness beyond its seemingly outrageous effort to provoke. Dr. Frank-n-Furter’s lab coat in the movie was inspired by a Nazi concentration camp inmate uniform and was adorned by the pink triangle that the Nazis used to label what we now call LGBT inmates. And in the film at least, there were implications that Frank’s rival, Dr. Scott was a Nazi.
The 2016 version was again produced by music industry legend Lou Adler, who was responsible for turning the stage musical into the original film starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf. In that version, Eddie was played by American Idol star Adam Lambert, the role played by Meat Loaf in the original Broadway cast and film. Lambert, who starred as Joshua in “The Ten Commandments: The Musical,” has achieved fame as a solo artist and as the replacement for the late frontman Freddie Mercury in the rock band Queen. Lambert’s Jewish mother, Leila, was a dental hygienist.
Seth Rogovoy is a contributing editor to the Forward.
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Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham secures GOP Senate nomination
(JTA) — South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham defeated U.S. House Rep. Ralph Norman in a special primary runoff on Tuesday, putting her in a dominant position to win the Senate seat left vacant with the death in July of her older brother, the pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham.
The Associated Press called the race two hours after polls closed at 9:01pm. By the time 99% of votes were tallied, Darline Graham had secured 52.3% of the votes to Norman’s 47.7%.
“Tonight is a great victory, but it’s not the finish line,” Graham told her supporters on Tuesday night. “In fact, it is the starting line for an even bigger fight, which lies ahead.”
If Darline Graham goes on to win November’s general election against Democrat Annie Andrews, she will have big shoes to fill. Her brother served 23 years in the Senate and eight in the U.S. House. He traveled to Israel about a dozen times between Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish state and his death at age 71.
Heading into the primaries, analysts expressed no doubt that Darline Graham would be pro-Israel. But matching Lindsey Graham’s level of foreign policy activity, they warned, would be a formidable task. Meanwhile, her campaign to date has largely avoided discussion of international affairs. Instead, she has focused on domestic concerns like reducing spending, securing borders and promoting Trump-backed policies.
During a debate aired on C-SPAN last week, Graham struggled to respond to a foreign policy question about Taiwan and the South China Sea, ultimately admitting that she’s “not that informed on national security.”
“I’m not a polished politician up here,” she said. “National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise.”
Later addressing issues of affordability, Graham linked the domestic economic situation to the war in Iran and said she trusts President Donald Trump “to get the Strait of Hormuz open.” She also voiced her preference for financial sanctions over putting troops on the ground.
Asked about the country’s relationship with Israel, Graham described the Jewish state as “one of our strongest allies.” Recognizing her brother’s close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she added that during a recent meeting with the Israeli premier, she vowed to “continue supporting Israel in any way” she can.
“We have to stand with Israel,” Graham said.
At their previous face-off, Graham had secured 33% of the vote, while Norman came in second place, at 25%, against eight fellow Republicans. But South Carolina requires primary winners to earn a majority of votes in order to avoid a two-candidate runoff. In the November general election, Graham will contend with Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who is unlikely to prevail in the solidly Republican state.
Tuesday’s runoff marked the third time in two months that South Carolina Republicans came to the polls to select a Senate candidate. Lindsey Graham, won the first primary in June but died suddenly the next month from an aortic dissection.
A few days later, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, appointed Darline Graham to finish her brother’s term. Though she only had minimal policy experience, including a leadership role at the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, she earned President Donald Trump’s endorsement and declared her candidacy in the full race.
Trump celebrated Graham’s nomination in a Tuesday night Truth Social post, writing that “Darline Graham rides Trump endorsement to win GOP nomination for brother’s South Carolina seat.”
Graham thanked Trump profusely during her Tuesday night acceptance speech, recognizing the president as one of her brother’s “closest friends” and crediting him for helping her secure a victory.
Norman, meanwhile, thanked his supporters on Tuesday night for their “prayer crusade of a campaign,” stressing that he “did not prepare a concession speech.” He accused “outside PACs” of spending $8 million opposing him and blamed the Democrats for this situation, adding that “they got what they wanted.”
He recognized Trump’s role in the race as a supporter of Graham, noting that he “never understood why he got involved” but that it is the president’s prerogative to do so. Nonetheless, Norman pledged that there “won’t be any tears” and that he planned to back Graham.
“I’m not supporting a Democrat, so I will support her, Darline, as best I can,” he added. “We’ll live to fight another day.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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