Rabbi Samuel and Miriam Fox

Marshall Weiss

The Dayton Jewish Observer

Beth Jacob to honor Miriam and Rabbi Samuel Fox for 50 years

Some 53 years ago, Miriam Tarczewski, a student at NYU, was fixed up on a date with a young rabbi from Little Rock, Ark.

Two weeks later, she and Rabbi Samuel Fox were married in her hometown of Cincinnati.

Little did they know then how their lives together would significantly impact the Jewish community of Dayton for more than a half century.

In honor of their 50 years of service to Beth Jacob Congregation and the community, the synagogue will honor Miriam and Rabbi Samuel Fox with a gala dinner on Sunday, April 23.

Their first connection to Beth Jacob came with the arrival of Candy and David Davidson to Little Rock; Candy was from Xenia and her family was active at Beth Jacob.

“I met him in 1951,” Candy said of Rabbi Samuel. “We had just moved to Little Rock, Ark. I called the synagogue there and asked for Mrs. Fox. They all laughed because he wasn’t married then. We met him and he came over for dinner.”

Candy recalled that Little Rock in the 1950s was “very rigidly segregated.”

She said Rabbi Samuel was active in the integration movement. Before receiving his smicha (rabbinic ordination) from Hebrew Theological College in Chicago, he had earned a law degree from DePaul University.

“He made them take down the fountain sign, ‘black only/white only’ in the (Little Rock) downtown section,” Candy remembered. “He was very liberal thinking, and they tried their best for the integration in Arkansas.”

Miriam said her father hoped she and her husband would find a pulpit closer to her family in Cincinnati.

“We found out that Dayton, Ohio had an opening,” Miriam said. Candy said that her mother, who had met Rabbi Samuel in Little Rock, encouraged Beth Jacob to interview him. After some visits to his Little Rock pulpit by Beth Jacob member Sol Shapiro and six months of interviewing other rabbis, the congregation offered him the job.

A year after the Foxes arrived, the Davidsons moved to Dayton and joined Beth Jacob.

These were the years when Beth Jacob was located in the Jewish neighborhood of Dayton View, on Kumler Ave. Men and women sat separately, divided by a middle aisle. As was common among Orthodox synagogues in the Midwest at the time, there was no mechitzah or physical divider separating the sexes.

Since the congregation’s move to North Main Street in 1978, men and women are able to sit together in the main service. In the last decade, Beth Jacob, now described as a Traditional congregation, added an additional mechitzah service for Shabbat and festivals.

“It was a lovely community,” Rabbi Samuel said of Dayton in 1955. “But at that time, it didn’t have a mikveh (ritual bath) and that’s a big thing. It didn’t have a day school, and that’s a big thing.”

“We had two children, Yakov and Sarah, our two oldest,” Miriam said. “They had to go to Cincinnati to day school and I would have to shlep them back and forth. And there was this angel called Milt Kantor. He had a business near Cincinnati. He said, ‘Rabbi, Miriam is not going to be driving back and forth.’”

For several years, he drove the Fox children to Cincinnati. “I bless him to this day,” Miriam said.

Soon after their arrival in Dayton, Rabbi Samuel and Miriam set out to raise support for a day school and a mikveh.

In 1958, the mikveh opened. Miriam served as its president for 25 years. “When we didn’t have money, I would go out and schnorr (beg),” she said. “We were really determined, because building a mikveh, you know, it’s not the most popular thing on the agenda. We had to make people understand.”

By 1962, Hillel Academy Jewish day school opened, with their son Joshua as one of the first five students.

“People wanted more for their children than just a smattering of knowledge,” Rabbi Samuel said.

Miriam said they went house to house rounding up children to start the school.

“Then again,” Rabbi Samuel added, “I can’t say the community was in favor of it. Let’s say the Jewish Community Council (now the Jewish Federation), they had their own vested interest. They realized that a day school would make more outlay of money. There were some that oppose day school altogether; they believe in public education on those grounds.

“But we got it through anyhow. We had meetings at our house and I remember some of them saying, ‘Rabbi, why didn’t you bring us through the front door?’ I said, ‘It wouldn’t have gotten through the front door.’ We did a lot of ground work and got a lot of people interested in it, so the Federation went along.”

He added that congregational support for Hillel Academy at that time came from Beth Abraham Synagogue and Beth Jacob. “But in regard to where to hold it, neither congregation was overly enthusiastic to have it,” he said. “They figured children would break the facilities, it would be hard to keep the place clean. Anyway, it started out at Beth Jacob and then it alternated for a while: Beth Jacob, Beth Abraham. It worked like that until they got a building.”

The Foxes agree that today, Jewish education is not as high a priority with parents, particularly with those enrolled in supplementary religious schools.

“There used to be two days a week besides Sunday when they would go to the synagogue of their own choosing — Beth Abraham, Temple Israel and Beth Jacob,” Miriam said. “Now they go two days a week — one is Sunday and one is during the week. They cut out one day. You can’t learn a language and customs and ceremonies and Bible and all the subjects that are encompassed in the curriculum in four hours a week.”

“Parents didn’t want to be inconvenienced,” Rabbi Samuel said. “Parents didn’t want to drive them back and forth. And then they had soccer and football and basketball. It’s sad, but that’s what happened.”

“At the beginning,” Miriam said, “the children had a different attitude toward education. They learned. You’d give them homework and they did it. The children are not as interested in learning today like they used to be.”

The solution — beyond day school — they said, is to increase the days of education, have more education programs for parents, and to encourage parents to participate so they will appreciate their heritage.

“You know it really stems from the parents,” Rabbi Samuel said. “If children see their parents are interested, they’ll be interested. Parents have to set an example. There’s no getting away from that.”

Miriam was principal of the Beth Jacob Sunday School and taught at the Dayton Community Hebrew School and Hillel Academy. She was also on the faculty at the University of Dayton. In the 1970s, she taught Hebrew to the university’s Marianist priests, who were required to learn Hebrew. This proved to be one of her favorite teaching assignments.

“Before they could go to Lucerne, Switzerland to continue their education, they were required to know how to read Hebrew 30 words a minute, have a vocabulary of 300 basic Hebrew words, and know the past, present and future tense,” she said. “And they had to accomplish it in 60 hours — two semesters. And we did it. But they’re wonderful students. You know, if you tell them to study for three hours, they study three hours.”

Because she preferred not to drive as far as the UD campus, administrators arranged for her to teach the Marianists at the Community Hebrew School building in Dayton View.

“At any rate, it was amazing,” she said. “Many people were wondering when (they saw) a big bus stopped in front of a little Hebrew school and men with white collars got out.”

At the close of each semester, Miriam would invite her Marianist students to the Fox house for a party.

“One would come with a guitar, and one with a violin, and we had a piano,” she said. “The Hebrew songs, I would transliterate, and I would sit and we’d sing and they loved it. You know, I was the first Jew they had ever had as a teacher — and the first woman.”

 

Families of rabbis

Born in Lokatch, a small town in Poland, Rabbi Samuel said he was a young boy when his family came to America.

“I remember the name of the ship we came over on: it was the Majestic. We came through Ellis Island. It still has memories for me. I remember passing the Statue of Liberty.” His family settled in Milwaukee.

Both Rabbi Samuel and Miriam come from families where all the men were rabbis. Their sons — Yakov, Joshua and Hillel are also rabbis. Like their father, they too hold professional degrees.

“One is a doctor, one a dentist, one a lawyer, and the girls (Sarah and Judy) have master’s degrees,” he said.

When Rabbi Samuel retired after 43 years as the congregation’s senior rabbi in 1998, Beth Jacob turned to Rabbi Hillel Fox, who has served at the helm ever since.

“Of course it’s a great nachas (joy) to see your own son taking over your own pulpit,” Rabbi Samuel said. “It doesn’t happen very often. I expected that, because Hillel is terrific.”

Rabbi Samuel and Miriam now divide their time among their homes in Dayton, Boca Raton and the Israeli West Bank settlement of Efrat — often visiting and hosting their children and 28 grandchildren.

“We were very close and part of the family of three and four generations of a number of families (in Dayton),” he said. “I can tell them stories about their zaydies and bubbies and what they did. One of them said, ‘Rabbi, you’ve been with us such a long time. Oh, I know some of these people and I don’t know how you’ve done it. You deserve a medal.’ I’ve heard that from more than one. I can’t say they’ve all been easy to get along with. But all in all, I don’t regret not having left my congregation for greener pastures, for bigger positions. The fact that God enabled me to raise a beautiful family right here in Dayton, Ohio and also be close to grandparents, that means a lot.”

For reservations to the dinner, call the synagogue office at 937-274-2149.

© 2006 The Dayton Jewish Observer