Introduction

You probably thought that the graduation of the I. L. Peretz Community Jewish School was the one place where you would be safe from hearing anything about the Titanic for a few hours. Well, you were wrong.

When one of my parents' friends, a Hebrew school principal, learned that I was researching Jewish people on the Titanic, she replied, "What, all two of them?" The fact is that there were enough Jews on the Titanic that kosher meals were available, and the crew included a chef, known as the "Hebrew chef," to prepare them.

Why should we care that there were Jews on the Titanic? Is there any cultural significance to their presence there, or were they just a bunch of people who happened to be Jewish, who happened to make an unfortunate choice of transportation? What can we learn about the Jewish people as a whole from looking at the lives of those who were present on that "Night to Remember"?

In many ways, a cross-section of Jewish passengers on board the Titanic gives us a look at the pattern of Jewish emigration to this country in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the top, both on the ship and in society, were the Jewish American families whose ancestors, primarily German, came over in the mid-1800s and established themselves in business and in banking. Down in steerage were the hopeful immigrants, many fleeing persecution in their birthplaces, setting forth to start a new life in America. In fact, my own great-grandfather arrived in New York by a different ship around that same time, as did the ancestors of many people in this room. By fate alone, any one of us could have had a relative on board the Titanic.

There is not enough time this morning to tell you about every Jewish Titanic passenger, but I would like to mention a few, some famous and others unknown, each of whom have contributed in their own way toward making the story of Jewish life in America greater and richer.

Typkia Friedberg

The youngest of three German-Jewish sisters, Typkia Friedberg may have already been a citizen or a resident of the United States. If so, she would have resided in Chicago, where her family settled prior to the Civil War. Her sisters Johanna and Julia were already residents of the US by the turn of the century. Typkia's story was shared with us by her great-great-great-nephew Alexander Levy, as recalled by his grandmother Ethel Levy, who is now 86 years old.

It seems that Typkia was married in London, where she and her husband had a street act, which they performed in Picadilly Circus. Her husband would strap a miniature piano to his back and the pair would dance and sing while Typkia played the little keyboard. According to Mrs. Levy, the pair was either emigrating or returning to the states, where they were to audition for a then unknown Florence Ziegfield for his "Ziegfield's Follies". As Alexander stated, "It may well be that they considered Titanic the ship to their dreams," a dream which unfortunately neither of them survived to achieve.

Frank Aks

A third-class passenger who did survive, however, and went on to make a mark in his community, was Frank Aks. When the long-time resident of Norfolk, Virginia, and retired owner of Eastern Salvage Company passed away of heart failure in 1991 at the age of 80, he was one of only a handful of survivors still living -- 79 years before, he had been one of the youngest survivors, and had been dubbed "The Titanic Baby" because of the extraordinary story of his rescue. He had been separated from his mother while still on the ship and carried aboard a lifeboat by another woman who found him on deck -- legend has it that Mrs. John Jacob Astor used her shawl to wrap him up in the lifeboat and protect him from the cold. He kept that shawl, and also during his lifetime accumulated one of the largest individually owned collections of Titanic memorabilia in the world.

Frank's mother Leah was a native of Warsaw. As with many of our families, her husband had preceded her to the US, to work and earn enough money to send for his wife and baby, whom he had not even seen. Happily they were reunited, and settled in Norfolk, where during his lifetime, Frank was an active member of Congregation Beth El, the Khedive Shrine Temple and the Jewish Community Center. He was also a past president of Brith Shalom.

Two Accomplished Women

Women in the early part of this century did not routinely work outside of their homes, so I will now mention two Jewish women who survived the Titanic and had successful careers.

Edith Louise Rosenbaum was 33 at the time she boarded the Titanic. She was a writer for Women's Wear Daily, using the pen name of Edith Russell, and was returning from Paris, where she had been reporting on the new French spring fashions. In a letter to her secretary, which she posted from Queenstown, she wrote that she did not like the Titanic, finding it too stiff and formal, and that she would be happy when the trip was over. Edith Rosenbaum went on to lead an active and exciting life, including during World War I, when she became the first female war correspondent to spend time in the trenches with the troops.

Mrs. Henry B. Harris was travelling with her husband, a well-known New York theatrical producer. He died, but she survived and took over his business, becoming the first woman theatrical producer in New York. Like Molly Brown, these women and others proved to be quite unsinkable.

Mr. Guggenheim and the Strauses

The names that come first to everyone's minds when Jewish Titanic passengers are mentioned are those of Benjamin Guggenheim and Isidor and Ida Straus. Although their names are forever linked together by the manner of their deaths, the fact is that Mr. Guggenheim and the Strauses could not have been more different in terms of their lives.

Although Benjamin Guggenheim dressed up in his best and went down like a gentleman, he was a man of so little accomplishment that his own family's website doesn't say anything else about him apart from going down on the Titanic. According to an article in the Detroit Jewish News, he was involved in mining in Colorado, and was one of the investors who installed elevators in the Eiffel Tower, an act that certainly has been appreciated by the many tourists who go there each year. However, Peggy Guggenheim, his daughter, spoke of the shock of going to the pier to meet the survivors on the Carpathia, still not knowing that her father was dead, and watching her father's mistress descend the gangplank, so we'll say no more about Benjamin Guggenheim.

One of the most haunting scenes in the current Titanic movie shows an elderly couple lying together in their bed while the water rises around them. That couple is Isidor and Ida Straus. As is well known, she would not leave him, and he would not take a space in a lifeboat from a woman or a child, and so they remained on the ship until the end. Their final hours have become part of the Titanic legend, but their lives as well as their deaths are also worth remembering.

Isidor and Ida Straus were a part of the group of well-known German-Jewish New York families who came to be known as "Our Crowd." Isidor's death in 1912 brought to an end a life devoted to social service, education, the Jewish community, the business world, and the New York Democratic Party. His wife of forty years, the former Ida Blun, was described as a woman of sweetness and strength. She had raised their six children, and stood by her husband in all his endeavors. The loss of their lives affected the entire community and they were greatly mourned. I would like to tell you a little about Isidor Straus and his family.

The earliest known member of the Straus family, Isidor's great-grandfather Jacob Lazare, was a member of the Assembly of Jewish Notables convened by Napoleon in Paris in 1806, which led to the establishment of the French Sanhedrin, created by Napoleon to advise him when he was considering the liberation of all Jews in his dominions.

Isidor's father, Lazarus Straus, emigrated from Otterberg, Bavaria (now part of Germany) in 1852 to Talbotton, Georgia, where he later was joined by his wife and three sons, Isidor, Nathan and Oscar. Lazarus was an educated man who spoke German, French, and Hebrew. He started out as a pushcart peddler, and later opened a dry goods store, although he was not allowed to own it because Jews couldn't own businesses there. He was an observant Jew in a place where there were no other Jews or a synagogue, so he sent his children to a Baptist Sunday School, where they learned the Old Testament, and where Lazarus held lively discussions with the minister.

The Straus family supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Since Jews everywhere observe Passover by remembering being freed from slavery in Egypt, it may seem surprising to learn that a Jewish family supported the cause of slavery in this country, but many other well-known Jewish families besides the Strauses also did this. Isidor worked as a Confederate bond salesman, and went to Europe to purchase supplies for the Confederate states, including ships for blockade-running, but after the war ended, he settled in New York, where he became a partner in the Macy's Department store, and later in another store, Abraham and Straus.

Although he never attended college, Isidor Straus became one of the best-informed men of his time. In all of his activities, he was more interested in service than in recognition. He was a close personal friend of President Grover Cleveland, and worked on Cleveland's re-election campaign of 1892, but turned down the position of Postmaster General, stating that he was "seeking neither glory nor office". He was elected to the House of Representatives in Congress from the 15th district of New York in 1892, after what a newspaper of the day described as a hotly contested campaign, and served from 1893-95, but declined to run for a second term, and also refused the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York in 1901 and 1909. However, he did serve as a member of the New York and New Jersey Bridge Commission, and was a founder of the Reform Club of New York.

The Tribune of 1912 described Isidor Straus as "one of New York's leading philanthropists". As a resident of New York City, he was very involved in social action and the local Jewish community. In the area of social action, he was a Vice president of the J. Hood Wright Memorial Hospital, a trustee of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, and a member of the board of the Birbeck Company, which lent money at low interest rates.

Isidor's involvement in the New York Jewish community included being a founder of the American Jewish Committee and a major contributor to the endowment fund for the Jewish Theological Seminary. He helped make possible the publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia, and was an organizer of the Educational Alliance. Located on East Broadway in the congested East Side tenement district, the Alliance, also known as "The People's Palace", was the cultural center of the immigrant and native-born Jewish intellectuals. Isidor served as its president from its founding in 1893 until his death in 1912.

When Isidor was a boy in Talbotton, Georgia, he had to go to a Baptist Sunday School because there was no Jewish congregation near to his home. Therefore, it must have given him great satisfaction to lay the cornerstone for Synagogue Ansche Chesed in New York City on April 13, 1908. Isidor and Ida Straus were traditional observant Jews, but they lived in a world where there were many restrictions on what clubs, hotels, and social institutions they could enter. Their children became much more assimilated, and today many of their descendants are not Jewish. However, all maintained high moral and ethical standards. In the words of Joan Adler, the historian of the Straus Family, "They felt strongly that they had been blessed and had an obligation and a responsibility to give back in whatever way possible."

Acknowledgements

When I first thought about speaking about this subject, I thought it would be easy to go to the library and look up whatever information I needed, but it turned out that not much had been written about Jews on the Titanic. Some information was found on the Internet, but I would like to thank three people who gave me a lot of help:

• Joan Adler, the historian of the Straus Family,
• Alexander Levy, who shared the stories told by his grandmother, Ethel Levy, about her great-aunt Typkia Friedberg, and
• Mark Wolfgang, a member of the Titanic Historical Society, for the information about Frank Aks, and other general information about the Titanic.

I would also like to thank Shelley Jacobs Mintz for this poster from the Yivo Institute in New York.  It is the cover of a piece of Yiddish sheet music called "The Titanic Disaster", published in 1912.  The words are by Solomon Small (Smulewitz), and the cover drawing is by J. Keller.  The ship has struck an iceberg and as it goes down people are climbing down on ropes from the ship to the sea.  Above the stricken ship float the spirits of Isadore and Ida Straus, demonstrating that the sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy that left no heart untouched.