Two cities - two families - two shidduchim: The Friedman-Isaacs connection.

Two of the children of R. Aharon Tzevi & Rebecca Friedman - Rachel and Abraham - married two of R. Schachne & Reitza Isaacs children - Abraham and Rachel! These two couples went on to produce several Friedman/Isaacs grandchildren, two of whom were named Nathan. Both Nathans, my grandfather and Professor Nathan Isaacs settled individually in Massachusetts and became close friends.

The following account of our early family history is taken from an essay about Nathan Isaacs by his brother Elcanan Isaacs, published in 1964 in the book Men of the Spirit, edited by Leo Jung.

Schachne Isaacs (1811-1887), the paternal grandfather of Nathan Isaacs, landed in New York City in 1853 with his wife and six children. He came at the urging of his brother Lazarus, who about 1820 had left the village of Libawa, Suwalk Province, on the border of Lithuania and Germany and had gone to England. A few years later, he joined a group of English Jews who were migrating to Cincinnati, Ohio, where earlier co-religionists had established a prosperous settlement. Lazarus had become ill and was ministered to by a young English nurse. Eventually they were married and settled in Cincinnati.

In that city, at that time more or less a frontier community, Lazarus became a successful manufacturer of hats and caps. From time to time he urged his brother, Schachne, to join him. The latter, however, was reluctant to leave the comfort and security of Libawa for the Ohio wilderness but finally promised to come. He took the long journey with regret. It was planned that Schachne, who had semikhah (the rabbinic diploma) and kabbalah, (authorization to act as a shohet), although he never practiced these callings except for his own family needs, was to spend his time in study.

All went well until Schachne discovered that Susannah, the wife of Lazarus, though she was a devout orthodox Jewess, had not been Jewish at the time of her marriage. He severed relations immediately and thereafter he, his wife, Reitza Kashan, and his family of small children were on their own. He moved to Darrtown, near Cincinnati, and opened a general store. The fact that the Sabbath was the shopping day for the farmers in the vicinity did not create a problem for Schachne. On that day the store remained closed. Gradually the farmers learned that it paid to make a special trip during the week. In the early days there was much shoddy material on the market but in this general store honest value was given. The admiration for Schachne’s uncompromising religious principles and the quality of his merchancise ultimately led to a complete change of the buying habits of the community. Subsequently Schachne moved to Cincinnati where he entered the wholesale dry goods business under the name of S. Isaacs and Sons.

Throughout his life he was known as a “fire-eater,” eternally vigilant in the observance of orthodoxy and against any innovation. His portrait, painted by Henry Mosler, shows his reddish hair and penetrating steel blue eyes. When presented with a copy of Isaac M. Wise’s reform prayer book, he publicly burnt it in a stove. In 1875, Elijah Holzman dedicated his volume, “Emek Refaim” to Reb Schachne for his stand in this matter. When the large orthodox congregation, of which he was a member, failed to include plans for a mikvah in a proposed building, he resigned in protest and in 1866, started a new congregation, Kehillah Kedosha Bet Tefillah, which became one of the largest in the Middle West and is still known as Reb Schachne’s Shul.

For the promotion of Jewish Life in the United States he maintained steady correspondence with the great orthodox leaders in Europe, notably Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spector of Kovno.

Schachne had eleven children; the seventh son, Abraham, was born in 1859, in Hamilton, Ohio. Abraham, following in his father’s footsteps, was a wholesale dry goods merchant until his death in 1928. He served as president of Reb Schachne’s Shul for many years and with his brother Moses, during the critical years of Russia’s persecution of the Jews, promoted the immigration of victimized families to Cincinnati and thereafter aided them to establish themselves. Many of the Russian Jewish Families in Cincinnati owe their success to the first aid given to them by the Isaacs brothers, whose systematic activity on their behalf was a forerunner of the modern Jewish Social Service Agency.

Dr. Boris D. Bogen, in his autobiography, “Born a Jew,” on page seventy-three, referred to the tradition of the Isaacs family which would eventually affect Nathan Isaacs:

“Cincinnati Jewry looked up to the Isaacs as to courageous men standing on a summit unattainable to all others. There shone about them an aura of aristocracy which seemed far finer and rarer that the aristocracy of the richer German Jews.”

Abraham had much of the character of his father. One of his betes noires was the hazan who overperformed, who in his singing went “endlessly upstairs, downstairs, backwards, forwards and sidewise.” It was not uncommon, therefore, for the congregation to see Abraham and his nine sons express their disapproval of the hazanic longwindedness by stalking out of the synagogue in the midst of the service.

Nathan Isaacs’ maternal grandfather, Rabbi Aaron Tzevi Friedman, also played an important part in Jewish affairs of his time. He was born in Stavisk, Poland, in 1822 and died in New York City in 1876. In 1844 he moved to Bernkastel-on-the-Moselle in Germany where he became rabbi and shochet. He married Rebecca Lieberman of Frankfort. In 1848, he was invited to come to New York to oversee the shehita of the city. To refute the attacks by Henry Bergh, president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Rabbi Friedman wrote in 1874 a defense of shehitah entitled “Toov Ta’am,” which two years later was translated into English, French, and German. It was a scientific explanation of shehita and so impressed Bergh that ever after he insisted on eating only kosher meat. The Jewish Encyclopedia, in the biography of Rabbi Friedman, says: “His strict orthodoxy and learning caused him to be widely known as the ‘Ba’al Shem’ of America.

The seventh of the twelve children of Rabbi Friedman was Rachel (1861-1929). At a very early age she showed considerable intellectual ability, When she was four years old, she insisted on accompanying her brothers and sisters to school. The teacher permitted her to attend and she soon showed such competence that she continued there with the rest of the class and was graduated from high school at the age of twelve. Throughout her life she maintained her intellectual interests and long before the cult of rapid reading developed, she read one or two complete books in an afternoon, the contents of which she could remember with ease. She was also a poetess of some local note.

Abraham Isaacs and Rachel Friedman were married in New York City on June 2, 1878. Incidentally, a brother and sister of each [Abraham Friedman and Rachel Isaacs] were also married to each other thus doubly uniting two of the leading orthodox families of the 1870’s. In both families there were eleven children and two of the sons of Abraham Friedman who achieved prominence in religious circles were Moses Friedman of New York City and Nathan Friedman of Taunton, Massachusetts. The children of Abraham Isaacs were the late Aaron Z. Isaacs, and Isaac Isaacs, both businessmen in Cincinnati; Rebecca F. Isaacs; Nathan Isaacs, the subject of this biography; the late Major Schachne Isaacs, Associate in Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and later associated with the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Raphael Isaacs, Director of the Hematology Research Laboratory of the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago; Mrs. Nesh Isaacs Rothfield, formerly Instructor in Political Science at the University of Cincinnati; Dr. Elcanan Isaacs, lawyer an associated with The American University; Dr. Moses Legis Isaacs, formerly Assistant Professor at Columbia University and Dean of Yeshiva University; Dr. Asher Isaacs, Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh and the late Judah M. Isaacs who was engaged in business in New York City. In all, eight of the brothers and sisters were elected to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society and four were included in Who’s Who in America.

Impressed no doubt by the example of their parents, the Isaacs’ children took to books naturally. One large room at home was the library with bookcases covering its walls. Books also filled the third floor that extended over the whole house. Abraham Isaacs had inherited a very considerable library of Hebrew books from his father, who had imported many volumes from Europe. He added to these books, buying especially to assist itinerant authors until with his oldest son, Aaron, he had amassed one of the largest libraries of Hebrew books in the area. His greatest enjoyment was to spend an evening browsing through these books.

In addition, each month brought a supply of American and British magazines. Great cantors, such a Sirota, were available on records as well as Caruso and other opera stars. There was no lack of stimulating discussion and even extended argument ranging from philosophical theories to ethic problems of Conduct.

**********

In later postings I plan to share other sections of this book relating the life and accomplishments of Nathan Isaacs.