Kaddish was his first Jewish prayer

By Rabbi Yossie Shemtov

I first met Dr. Seneca Erman, a retired surgeon in Tucson, Arizona, when he was President of Congregation Young Israel and appointed me as the rabbi of the shul. Since then, we have maintained a close friendship. Whenever I visit him, we sing an old Yiddish song together. I recently visited Dr. Erman at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, where he currently resides. We discussed his life growing up and raising his children and grandchildren to be proud Jews.

Dr. Erman was born in December 1928 (11 Teves 5689) in the Bronx, NY. His father, a retired rabbi, passed away at 56 years of age when Seneca was only 22 months old. The mourner’s prayer of Kaddish was one of the fi rst he learned, in addition to the Shema. Seneca’s older brother, who was 15 at the time, taught him to recite the words. “My brother was like a father to me,” Dr. Erman remembers.

He grew up in a large family, including his grandfather and many uncles and aunts, who all lived in one house in the Bronx and helped take care of him.

As a child, Dr. Erman attended public school in the Bronx. Every day from 3:00 to 6:00 PM, including Sundays, he learned Hebrew, davening, and Yiddish at the Cheder around the corner. “Yiddish was my fi rst language. My grandparents spoke Yiddish. My uncles and aunts were all conversive in Hebrew, but they spoke Yiddish.”

“I had two Bar Mitzvahs! I led the entire service,” he declared proudly. “On the fi rst Thursday morning [after I turned 13] I went to shul and had an aliyah. My fi rst tallis and pair of tefi llin were my father’s.” By this time, his mother had remarried and his stepfather wanted to have a party in his shul so he repeated the entire bar mitzvah on Shabbos.

Dr. Erman continued with Hebrew school in the afternoons at Chevra Bikur Cholim, his stepfather’s shul. After graduating high school, he went to university and then on to Cornell Medical School where he was one of only four Jewish students.

He met his wife, Dotty, when he was in his fourth year of medical school. They had a relative in common and many family members thought they would be “perfect for each other.” He took her on their fi rst date to Coney Island but forgot to tell her they were going out to dinner so “she watched while I ate.” A month later, he asked her for a second date and their third date was a picnic to which Dotty brought the food and he brought the soda. By the fourth date, “Already I knew she was the girl I was going to marry.”

As soon as he graduated medical school, Dr. Erman was off ered a position on the Navajo Reservation in Tuba City. His mother would not let him bring Dotty unless they were married. So on their fourth date, “I asked [Dotty] ‘would you like to go to Arizona with me? My mother will only let me go if I am married.’ I said this as a joke but she said ‘OK!’”

They were married in Brooklyn. “We had a real kosher wedding,” he proudly notes.

After relocating to the Navajo Reservation, their daughter, Janece, was born. They imported meat from Denver and kept the only kosher house on the Navajo Reservation. “It was fun!” A few Jews moved to Flagstaff and came to the Reservation for the holidays.

After two years in Tuba City, the family moved back to NY so that Dr. Erman could complete his surgical residency at Beth El (now Brookdale) Hospital. Here they had their second child, Spencer. The Ermans subsequently moved back to Arizona where Dr. Erman ran the Tohono O’odham hospital in Sells and their youngest child, Russ, was born. The family drove to Tucson on weekends so that the children could participate in Jewish events.

When Janece was old enough to start school, the family moved to Tucson and Dr. Erman opened a practice. Dr. Erman and a few friends started a small shul named Bet Shalom. They brought in a rabbi every couple of weeks and Dr. Erman served as the chazzan. Janece remembers seeing her father lead davening and deciding that she wanted to be just like him. When the children were old enough to begin Hebrew school, they joined Congregation Anshei Israel. After all three children became Bar and Bat Mitzvah, the Ermans joined Congregation Young Israel.

Spencer and Russ followed in their father’s footsteps and are both now doctors. Janece (Cohen) realized her dream and is now a cantor. Dr. Erman has many grandchildren who all “read very well from the Siddur and Torah.” He is very proud that his “daughter teaches all the kids to read from the Torah for their Bar and Bat mitzvahs. She teaches them the Parsha and she is very strict.”

Dr. Seneca Erman and his family

Seneca Lawrence Erman M.D. passed away peacefully on September 29, 2021, at the age of 92.