History of the Jews in Texas

Jewish Texans have been a part of the

Between 1907 and 1914, a resettlement program, known as the Galveston Movement, was in operation to divert Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe away from the crowded-immigrant cities in the Northeast. Ten thousand Jewish immigrants passed through the port city of Galveston during this era, approximately one-third the number who migrated to the area of the Ottoman Empire that would become the state of Israel during the same period. Henry Cohen, the rabbi of B'nai Israel at the time, is credited with helping to found the Movement.^[6]

Texas, however, suffered from antisemitism nearly as soon as it became a state in the 19th century. Judge Roy Bean's first act as Justice of the Peace was to "shoot [...] up the saloon shack of a Jewish competitor".^[7] Judge Roy Bean then turned the tent saloon into a part-time courtroom, pronounced his own innocence, and began calling himself the "Law West of the Pecos". During the early 1920s the Ku Klux Klan became influential in Texas. Billie Mayfield edited a weekly Klan newspaper in Houston that regularly used antisemitic stereotypes to attack Jews as parasites only interested in extracting wealth from the community.^[8] In one article, Mayfield even wrote that “there are lots of good Jews in Houston and all over Texas; you find them with tombstones over their heads.”^[9] In many ways, the KKK threat helped unify the Houston Jewish community, which fought against the racist, antisemitic organization with newspaper articles, business boycotts, and legal action. By 1924, the Klan had lost much of its local support and influence, and Mayfield's newspaper went out of business.^[10]

Even during the height of the KKK's influence, Houston Jews held powerful roles in the local economy. By the 1920s, big department stores in Houston, such as Foley's and Battlestein's, were owned by Jews.^[11] Brothers Simon and Tobias Sakowitz, who left Russia as young children, opened a clothing store in Houston in 1915 that eventually became Sakowitz's, one of the finest department stores in the city until it declared bankruptcy during the economic downtown of the 1980s and sold most of the business to an Australian company. The Sakowitz stores closed for good in 1990.^[12]

Many Jewish immigrants thrived in Houston, such as Joe Weingarten. Weingarten, who was born in Poland, became a very successful grocery store owner. He pioneered the innovations of cash-and-carry and self-service grocery stores in Houston, building a local chain that reached 70 locations by the time of his death in 1967. He was very active in Jewish social causes as well.^[13]

Among the leading philanthropists in Texas were several Jews such as Ben Taub. Taub who was born and raised in Houston, became a leading real estate developer. He donated the land for the University of Houston when it was founded in 1936. He also helped Baylor College of Medicine to move to Houston from Dallas in 1943. Taub founded a new public charity hospital which is known as Ben Taub hospital today. The Jewish community in 1958, decided to build a $450,000 Jewish Institute for Medical Research, which they donated to the Baylor College of Medicine when it was completed in 1964. Leopold Meyer was a major donor and fundraiser for the Texas Children's Hospital. He was also the longtime director of two of Houston's most iconic annual events: the Livestock Show and Rodeo, and the Pin Oak Horse Show.^[10]

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