Sorry for the lapse in posts, I know you are all waiting. (echo)
This picture was taken many years ago by my father as the chometz was burned in the snow. I didn’t know the year until this past shabbos. Guests at our table included a savant, and he claims it was 1982 that Erev PEsach was snowy. (This week I heard a radio DJ describe our curerent season as “sprinter” i.e., spring-winter.)

Anyone remember the Russian Seder that the JCC ran in Schuster’s Hall for many years? The choir would sing for them at the end of davening before heading home to their own seders.

Russian Jewish emigration to America is basically finished, according to my barber. Here in Brooklyn, some of the legendary Jewish schools for Russian immigrants are ENTIRELY filled with Bucharian and other Sephardic students. This includes Be’er Hagolah and the now defunct RaTZaD. See my post about Russian Jews in the neighborhood here and here.

I am not a researcher. Not more than the average guy with a healthy appetite for history. Yet in the few times that I have hit a dead end, it was FB that came through in the clutch.

Many years ago, (23 to be sure,) a close neighbor passed away. She had no children and her closest relative was overseas. So he received the inheritance and the neighbors received the job of cleaning out her apartment. Because I was a favorite neighbor of this woman from my childhood, I received two pencil-sketched pictures of German street scenes.

Recently, I noticed that many people of German descent have this style of picture hanging in their homes. So I sent photos of this drawing to a museum curator in Frankfurt (the city pictured) but he was clueless.

Not long afterward I joined a FB group for German Jews and after posting the picture I received the name of the estate pictured and the artist’s inscription from a curator in Berlin that can read the cursive well.

The artist’s name: “Tintner”. A quick google search reveals a woman from Vienna named Karoline Tintner. She has a few paintings for sale on ebay, but she is not selling them. She was deported in 1943 and perished in a concentration camp.

The piece of art has now become a treasure for me, and it stands as a memorial to two different women. My neighbor Hilde Lehmann and the artisit Karoline Tintner. Both in a better place now. Pictured above

Recently I came across an article by Werner Cohen, a prolific survivor from Berlin, and the uncle of the Israel’s in WH. He writes about how the ” Jewish” newspapers and the Jewish museums in Germany are staffed by Gentiles – almost exclusively. Link to Jpost article here and his blog post here.

At the mesiba in the BM. A sign in the ladies’ section reads, “hezek re’iah smei hezek”. This was Purim humor: look over the mechitza and you are liable! Happy Purim…

Last night was the Breuers Yeshiva annual dinner. Meta shared a cute story. It was getting too difficult for Rav Breuer to attend the dinner. The hotel staff advised the family about a cargo elevator in the hotel, large enough to drive the Rav’s (Jerry’s) car into and alight in the ballroom itself. And so they did. When the Rav entered it was all the fuss! (audio here)

The dinner once held at the Hotel Roosevelt, later at the Hotel Americana and then for many years at the Hilton at Rockerfeller Center  (today called Hilton Midtown), and finally at the Marriot on Times Square- before moving to New Jersey.

The Hilton Midtown writes on their website that theirs is the largest ballroom in Manhattan!

I came across this plaque in a book about the community in FF, specifically in the chapter on the Realschule. It seems that it is similar to the WWII version in our shul, except that this lists the fallen in battle- and ours lists the enlisted men with two fallen.

My grandfather Max Meyer is a Realschule alumnus who, though he survived the war, died in his fifties of a wound sustained in battle. He was a field commnader and was standing to asess the situation when shot. A second bullet haeaded to his heart was interceptedby the large Tanach and siddur he kept in his backpack. My uncle is in posession of those books today with an inscription attestng to the date and event.

The well known address of Rabbi S.R. Hirsch in Frankfurt was Schoenne Ausicht 5.(see here) As the name implies, this address literally looks over the Main. This conjures up pictures of the saintly Rabbi sitting by a big open window- the big European type- with the flowing river and a little stone bridge just outside- as he pens his Gesammelte Schriften  or something.

The below postcard that was once on ebay and was saved to some other blog shows the postmaster crossing-out that address and substituing what appears to a spokesman at the Judische Museum Frankfurt as Thiergarten 52.

A directory from Frankfurt in 1852 has him residing at Hinter Schoenne Aussicht 1 a back street.

Finally, I am told within the community that his home was on the Schutzenstrasse 4, where the old shul was. In truth, the Schoene Aussicht address is around the corner from Schutzenstrasse, so this might be what was meant.

If you can name some of these faithful school patrol officers you win a CD with a rare choir performance on it.

Good Luck!

I consider this the best picture of Fav Hirsch zt’l. I have never seen it included in any of the publications of the Kehilla nor of the Rabbi Joseph Breuer foundation. It appears when doing a Google image search for Rav Hirsch and appears on the OU website among other sites. Below a vignette:

Forty years ago on a summer morning, we
children were taken for a walk along the “Promena~
den”, the green belt which surrounded the old town
of Frankfort-an-Main. We were not far from the
“Schoene Aussicht”, close to the bank of the River
Main where Samson Raphael Hirsch lived, when my
brother, my senior by two years. took hold of my
arm and whispered: “The Rabbi”. We stopped.
Accompanied by one of his grand-daughters.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, stooping slightly, but with
firm steps, passed by. He raised his hat to the two
small boys who stared at him with curiosity. His
dark eyes were lit up by a kindly smile on beholding
two members of the third generation of his
community. I have never forgotten the friendly
gesture of the Rabbi whose venerable figure had
become part of my life at a very early stage.

From Herman Schwab’s “Memories of Frankfurt/ Aus de Schutzenstrasse”-can be accessed here

In this very early photograph of the Breuer’s school we see Mr. Breuer already acting as schoolmaster. What is important to know about Mr. Breuer, in my opinion, is that he was not the authoritarian school teacher of 19th century Germany. He was a soft, and  kindhearted person. Now perhaps someone who knew him earlier in his career would say otherwise- and I am sure in as long of a career as he had he might have a detractor, but I give here only my perspective.

As I remember Mr. Breuer of blessed memory, he always smelled like baby powder.

When he sometimes had to substitute for a teacher he would bring in riddles and little trivia quizes for the kids, sometimes based around  Hebrew grammar. I believe that Mr. Breuer had semicha, but refused the honorific “rabbi” not to be confused for his father.

If you were sent to his office he always spoke to you kindly and put his arm on your shoulder and sent you back to class shortly after.

Mr. Breuer did not marry until later in life. His father, the Rav, said that he never thought he would live to see the day.

I sometimes see a pattern wherein a great person has a child that doesn’t marry or doesn’t have offspring and that child is a devotee of his parent, helping perpetuate the legacy.