Golden Boy Research Articles

Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El Richard F. Selcer (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The only known picture of Henry Schuhl is a pen-and-ink engraving that appeared in the New York Herald at the time of his disappearance in 1898. It shows a handsome, distinguished-looking gentleman with strong features highlighted by a big walrus mustache. It is impossible to say what he looked like earlier, but by this date he did not wear the traditional full beard of most rabbis. Source: Boston Post, Nov. 26, 1898. [End Page 396] The name Henry Schuhl was in newspapers all over the country between 1881 and 1898, but today he is scarcely remembered. A history of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El devotes less than four pages to his troubled tenure, making vague reference to a “rupture” in the congregation that was “shortly healed.”1 He was the golden boy of Cincinnati’s Jewish community, then he came to Dallas and turned the staid Temple Emanu-El on its ear. During his lifetime he was a religious seeker, a politician, a labor leader, a con man, and a fugitive from justice in addition to being a distinguished rabbi. He caused one of the great religious scandals of the nineteenth century, earning him comparisons to a notable contemporary, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Brooklyn clergyman. In August 1881, Henry Schuhl stepped off a train in Dallas to start his tenure as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, considered by some at the time to be “the largest, wealthiest, and most important Hebrew society in Texas.” Five years later he was on a train out of town, leaving in disgrace amid accusations of adultery, “licentiousness,” embezzlement, and swindling. But he proved F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong by going on to a second act—and more—before his life was through. Constantly on the move and on the make, Henry’s story is an extreme version of the quintessential nineteenth-century [End Page 397] immigrant experience in America, full of self-invention and new beginnings.2 Henri Schuhl was born December 6, 1846, in France, probably in the border region of Alsace-Lorraine, an area claimed by both France and Germany, which would explain why he spoke fluent German and French. After immigrating to the United States, he Anglicized his given name to “Henry.” His wife, Brunette Nathan, was born in France on September 11, 1847. They were married on November 20, 1868, and moved to America together. They settled in New York City first, then moved to Montreal, where they lived for a short time. In 1870, they were living in California where their first child was born, a daughter they named Florette. They had three more children between 1872 and 1877, Aaron, Palmyra, and Caroline. In 1878, they moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where the Mound Street Temple hired Henry to lead singing and congregational prayers as chazzan (cantor). It was a prestigious position, equivalent to being deputy rabbi, and as a graduate of “the leading university” of Paris Henry was well-equipped for his duties. He was a dynamic public speaker who reportedly “possessed the sublime gift of oratory” to go along with his scholarly credentials. Still, he was not an ordained rabbi. The position of chazzan did not pay very well, especially for a person described by the American Israelite, the national Jewish publication out of Cincinnati, as a “gentleman of culture and refinement” who was supporting a family of six. Apparently, the job did not occupy “sufficient of his time,” either, because in 1880 he became “city agent” for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia. If Henry was good at anything, it was selling—especially himself.3 His detour into the insurance business did not last long, however, and in 1881 he arrived in Dallas to begin a new life at Temple Emanu-El. One scholar characterizes nineteenth-century Texas as one of the last “corners” of the historic Jewish diaspora. Dallas was one of seven Jewish congregations in the state in 1881. Although the town was struggling at this date, it still represented a golden opportunity...

The Touchstone of Memory: My Parents, Oberlin College, and the Second World War Dominique H. Vasseur (bio) These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me. —Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited I In most respects my parents were fairly typical people, who led lives typical for their time. Yet, when I tell others how they met and eventually married, the response is always “you need to write about this—it’s fascinating,” and so this is the story of my parents. I never knew my father, Jacques Henri Vasseur. I was simply too young, only a little over two years old, when he died at age thirty-three from cancer. One of my earliest memories of him is a photograph in my French grandmother’s apartment in Paris. In it he is dressed as a French sailor looking young, innocent almost, but intelligent, thoughtful, and yet curiously detached or distant (Fig. 1). My grandmother idolized him. He was her one and only child, her blue-eyed, fair-haired golden boy, and it was clear to me from an early age on that in her eyes no finer man had ever lived. Years after my mother, Mary Vasseur, returned from France to the U.S. following my father’s death, she did not, as I remember, often speak of him, except to say “he loved you and he would be proud of you today.” His tragic and early death had to be painful for her to recall. Or perhaps I did not ask her enough about him; I suppose it was painful for me as well. I do remember being embarrassed that I did not have a father [End Page 237] like all the other neighborhood children in Springfield, Ohio, where we lived. That circumstance, among other things including my French name, contributed to my feeling different and apart from others. Yet I always wanted to know more about my father, as that knowledge seemed a key to understanding who I was or might become. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jacques Vasseur in French naval uniform, ca. 1937. Despite his absence in our day-to-day lives, my father was nevertheless present in small, unspoken ways. My mother kept a photograph in her bedroom of him wearing a plaid Pendleton [End Page 238] wool shirt that she took to him when she went to visit in 1948. There were also mementoes from the Second World War, which were kept in a metal Craven A cigarette box. My father preferred Craven A cigarettes—incidentally Charles de Gaulle’s favorite brand—while he was in England with the Free French Forces. Every now and then, I would open the box and inspect the contents, which included military uniform patches, an enameled Cross of Lorraine pin, and a ring made from worthless aluminum French francs. As I had no real understanding of the war these totemic relics seemed highly mysterious. Whenever though we went to visit my French grandmother in Paris, my father became more real through her vivid memories. Her 18th arrondissement apartment had not changed since my father lived there with her in the 1930s and after the war. I remember being very upset, but not showing it, when my grandmother had her apartment redecorated in the 1980s, as if the new wallpaper itself was a barrier or insult to my father’s memory. My mother, Mary Burmeister (Fig. 2), was born on April 29, 1921, in Springfield, Ohio, a small once-prosperous city between Columbus and Dayton known for International Harvester Corporation and Crowell Collier Publishing Company. Her father, Frederick William Burmeister, was a senior salesman for Robbins & Myers Fan Company and her mother, née Ruth Heileman, had been a nurse in the early years of the twentieth century, graduating in the first nursing school class in Springfield.1 The Burmeisters had come to the U.S. in the 1890s from the region of Alsace-Lorraine, then a part of the Second German Empire, settling first in Cincinnati but later moving to Springfield, which had a large German-American community. The Heilemans, it seems, came to the...

Golden Boy Research Articles

Articles published on Golden Boy

Potensi Bunga Anggrek Cymbidium Golden Boy sebagai Sumber Antioksidan dan Aplikasinya pada Flower Leather

Morphophysiological responses and tolerance of various sweet corn (Zea mays convar. saccharata) hybrids to shade stress

Identification of Morpho-Physiological and Yield Traits of Sweet Corn Hybrids at Various Shade Levels

Inventarisasi Dan Analisis Jenis Anggrek (Orchidaceae) Di Kampung Nambo, Desa Batukarut, Kecamatan Arjasari, Kabupaten Bandung

Is Hydrogen the Future Golden Boy of Maritime Transportation?

What Color is a Golden Boy? The Glorification and Disparagement of Male Superstar Athletes in Sports Illustrated

Golden Boy

Scanning and three-dimensional-printing using computed tomography of the "Golden Boy" mummy.

Introduction of Dr Mannikam Suthanthiran as Recipient of the Medawar Prize for 2022.

Diving Lessons

Effects of inoculated mycorrhizal fungi and non-mycorrhizal beneficial micro-organisms on plant traits, nutrient uptake and root-associated fungal community composition of the Cymbidium hybridum in greenhouse.

Marginality and Liminality in Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy

If These Wings Could Fly by Kyrie McCauley

Redemption Prep by Samuel Miller

Mexico’s Place-Names and Road-Names as Psycholinguistic Evidence in the Search for Al Dorado

Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El

The Best of Iggy by Annie Barrows

The Sukari Neoproterozoic granitoids, Eastern Desert, Egypt: Petrological and structural implications

REVIEW: RICHARD SHUSTERMAN, THE ADVENTURES OF THE MAN IN GOLD. PATHS BETWEEN ART AND LIFE

The Touchstone of Memory: My Parents, Oberlin College, and the Second World War

Lead the way for us

Editage

Paperpal

R Discovery

Mind the Graph

Golden Boy Research Articles

Articles published on Golden Boy

Potensi Bunga Anggrek Cymbidium Golden Boy sebagai Sumber Antioksidan dan Aplikasinya pada Flower Leather

Morphophysiological responses and tolerance of various sweet corn (Zea mays convar. saccharata) hybrids to shade stress

Identification of Morpho-Physiological and Yield Traits of Sweet Corn Hybrids at Various Shade Levels

Inventarisasi Dan Analisis Jenis Anggrek (Orchidaceae) Di Kampung Nambo, Desa Batukarut, Kecamatan Arjasari, Kabupaten Bandung

Is Hydrogen the Future Golden Boy of Maritime Transportation?

What Color is a Golden Boy? The Glorification and Disparagement of Male Superstar Athletes in Sports Illustrated

Golden Boy

Scanning and three-dimensional-printing using computed tomography of the "Golden Boy" mummy.

Introduction of Dr Mannikam Suthanthiran as Recipient of the Medawar Prize for 2022.

Diving Lessons

Effects of inoculated mycorrhizal fungi and non-mycorrhizal beneficial micro-organisms on plant traits, nutrient uptake and root-associated fungal community composition of the Cymbidium hybridum in greenhouse.

Marginality and Liminality in Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy

If These Wings Could Fly by Kyrie McCauley

Redemption Prep by Samuel Miller

Mexico’s Place-Names and Road-Names as Psycholinguistic Evidence in the Search for Al Dorado

Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El

The Best of Iggy by Annie Barrows

The Sukari Neoproterozoic granitoids, Eastern Desert, Egypt: Petrological and structural implications

REVIEW: RICHARD SHUSTERMAN, THE ADVENTURES OF THE MAN IN GOLD. PATHS BETWEEN ART AND LIFE

The Touchstone of Memory: My Parents, Oberlin College, and the Second World War