F
reedom, by definition, is liberty, independence and self-governance. The privilege of choices and the belief in equal and inalienable rights. Words by which the very fabric of our nation was stitched.
To better understand this oppression, let me elaborate a bit more. According to Judaism, Sabbath is the holiest day of the year and is the only day mentioned in the Ten Commandments. It could be compared to the Christian observance of A rather ironic thing about freeSunday. Forbidding business on dom is that we so often take it for Sunday was one very autocratic granted. Take a moment to think way of carrying out draconian about what freedom means to orders against a religious group. you personally. What about what Furthermore, restricting the that term means in regards to your family history? Too often settlement and issue of mortgages to Jews was the next ironwe don’t take that moment to remember the importance of fisted method. To put it more bluntly, when were you last told such liberties. Take a moment to envision what life might be you couldn’t buy a house or worship where, when or how you life without such benefits. want? Certainly a liberty taken advantage of too often. For this I take you to the turn of the 19th century. Globally, the turn of the 19th century was quite a turning point. With immense unrest in Eastern Europe and the dawn of World War I pending, refugees were fleeing these parts of the world and flocking to America for political and religious freedom. During the 1880s, the Russian government enacted legislation limiting the number of Jews allowed to attend secondary schools and universities. In 1882, Czar Alexander III authorized the “May Laws,” which restricted where Jews could settle, forbade non-Jews from issuing mortgages to Jews and prohibited Jews from conducting business on Sundays.
16 Our Hometowns | Volume 2 Issue 1
From 1907 to 1914, 10,000 Jewish immigrants came through the port of Galveston as part of an organized effort to redistribute Jews more evenly throughout the country, known as the Galveston Plan. This initiative was organized by the Jewish Territorial Organization and philanthropists in London, along with Rabbi Henry Cohen. While this represented only a little over one percent of the total number of Jewish immigrants who came to America during these years, more of them settled in Texas than in any other state. In 1908, three Russian Jewish brothers immigrated from Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union, and settled in Hamilton. A teenager at the time, Haskell Harelik and his
