Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
For small town and rural immigrant Jews in the
early 20th century, one of the greatest challenges was,
literally, maintaining their Jewish identity in a sea of non-Jewish
neighbors. The early Jews of Martha’s Vineyard, a tiny island off
the coast of Massachusetts, faced this challenge and, in their own
way, maintained a distinctly Jewish way of life despite their
isolation from the mainstream.
Historian Kenneth Libo speculates that the first
"Jewish" settlers of Martha’s Vineyard may have been Cape
Verdean descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Sephardim who, generations earlier, had converted to Catholicism. The
first definitively identified Jewish settler on Martha’s Vineyard
was Sam Cronig, who arrived there in 1905. Cronig was born in rural
Lithuania, the oldest son of a Yiddish-speaking family who expected
him to become a rabbi. At age fifteen, according to Libo, "after
an encounter with a Cossack’s whip, he left the yeshiva his parents
had sent him to in Minsk and became a baker’s apprentice." It
took Cronig two years to save $200 to purchase his passage to
America.
At age 17, Sam Cronig landed on the Lower East
Side of New York. Finding the atmosphere there unhealthful, he
visited relatives in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who located a farm
worker’s job for him on Martha’s Vineyard. There, he work for a
retired mariner, Captain Daggett, and his wife. The Daggetts took
Cronig under their wing, teaching him English. At one point, they
fantasized about adopting him, but Sam never forgot his family in
Lithuania. Working on the Daggett farm and as a grocery delivery boy,
Cronig was able to save enough by 1917 to bring his three brothers, a
sister and, eventually, his future wife Libby from Minsk to Martha’s
Vineyard.
In 1917, despite having no previous
entrepreneurial experience, Sam Cronig and two of his brothers opened
a meat and grocery market on Main Street in Vineyard Haven. On the
recommendation of a Christian islander whose daughter went to high
school with Sam, a purveyor in New Bedford staked the Cronigs to a
supply of merchandise. Today, Cronig’s grocery store remains a
mainstay of Martha’s Vineyard commerce.
In 1913, a second Jewish family planted roots on
Martha’s Vineyard. Yudel Brickman, a cobbler, brought his wife and
children from Lithuania that year. In 1914, the family of Mrs.
Brickman’s brother, Israel Isaakson, joined the Brickmans and
Cronigs to form the heart of the "pioneer" Jewish community
on Martha’s Vineyard. Israel Isaakson and Yudel Brickman pursued
skills they developed in the "old country": Isaakson became
a tailor and dry cleaner; Brickman borrowed a few hundred unsecured
dollars from the Martha’s Vineyard National Bank and went into the
retail shoe business.
These core families did their best to perpetuate
Jewish traditions and practices despite their sparse numbers. They
conducted prayers in the Cronig’s living room and imported kosher
meat from New Bedford and Boston. According to his daughter, Israel
Isaakson persuaded an island undertaker to visit a Jewish funeral
home in Boston to learn Jewish funeral practices because, "God
forbid, something should happen, we’re stuck." Prophetically,
when Israel Isaacson died, a storm kept the New Bedford rabbi from
reaching the Vineyard to preside at his funeral and the local
Methodist minister conducted the service, reading a Psalm of David.
Before there were sufficient numbers for a minyan on the Vineyard, mainland New Bedford provided the setting for the
island’s organized religious life. The Cronig, Isaakson and
Brickman boys were shipped to New Bedford for six weeks to make final
preparations for their bar mitzvahs. For the High Holy Days, the
families would worship in a New Bedford synagogue or gather at a
hotel in Onset, on Cape Cod. For Passover,
the pioneer Jewish families would gather at the Cronig’s home. A
Cronig daughter recalled that each family would bring its own food
and prepare it in the Cronig’s kitchen. Sawhorses and planks
provided the Pesach table, which stretched form the dining room to
the living room. Each family sat as a group but, in a sense, they
formed one, extended family.
Sabbath observance was more varied. While Sam Cronig’s wife lit shabbos candles, Sam felt obliged to tend his grocery store on Fridays, which
was the island’s traditional paydays, and Saturdays, when many
non-Jewish families had their only chance to shop. Regardless of
their religious observance, however, the pioneer families kept
Yiddishkeit alive, speaking the mother tongue at home, cooking foods
such as knadlach and stuffed cabbage and encouraging their children
to marry Jewish partners. In 1937, when 10 Jewish households were
permanently established on the island, they established the Martha’s
Vineyard Jewish Center.
Dorothy Brickman recalled that there were places
on the Vineyard, such as Edgartown, where Jews were not welcome to
purchase homes and it was rare to be invited socially to the home of
a non-Jewish family. By the measure of participation in organizations
such as the Lions and the Masons, however, or appointment to
positions such as health commissioner or the board of the Martha’s
Vineyard National Bank, the Vineyard’s pioneer Jewish families were
accepted members of the broader community.
Historian Libo has described small town settlers
as "Jewish ambassadors to American society." Balancing
Jewish identity with life among the non-Jewish majority, the pioneer
Jews of Martha’s Vineyard, like the Jewish residents of countless
other small towns and rural areas, paved the way for later
generations of Jews.
Sources: American
Jewish Historical Society |