Chapter 7 Fear Is Love #2
Rabbi Herzfeld was right to inquire about Esther at Shaarey Tphiloh.
One of the synagogue’s leaders found Esther’s history in the congregation’s records.
Esther Nacht was born in Vienna in 1905.
Her mother’s maiden name was Meyer—from the Hebrew word meir, which means “enlightened.” Hanna Meyer, who’d also been born in Vienna (in 1880), married Simon Nacht.
He was born in Bremen, Germany. Simon died during the voyage to Portland—as did other passengers onboard the German ship from Bremerhaven.
It was a bacterial pneumonia, like streptococcal pneumonia, but Hanna Nacht didn’t know what it was—she just prayed her infant daughter wouldn’t die of it.
Her husband’s name, Simon, meant “to hear” (or “to be heard”) in Hebrew.
All Hanna had heard, on the ocean passage to Portland, was her husband’s cough.
The former Hanna Meyer lived up to the expectations of her maiden name.
In explaining her circumstances and describing her fears for her daughter—with every word she spoke to the rabbi at Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh—Hanna was enlightening.
As it sometimes happened with Jewish immigrants who were new to Portland, her story was so complicated that the rabbi asked one of the synagogue’s leaders to transcribe the conversation between the rabbi and the new immigrant.
The rabbi at Shaarey Tphiloh shared those records with Larch.
The extensive recordkeeping in the case of Hanna Nacht’s conversation with the rabbi at Shaarey Tphiloh was unusual in one way—due to the direness of Hanna’s circumstances.
She was afraid for herself and for her two-year-old daughter.
Neither the rabbi nor the synagogue leader had ever seen Hanna Nacht before.
Her prayers on the long voyage from Bremerhaven notwithstanding, Hanna was not an observant Jew; she’d made no friends among the members of Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh.
Dr. Larch had just assumed that Esther was too young to attend Hebrew school.
“You don’t know anything about Hebrew school, Wilbur,” Nurse Angela interrupted the saga.
“At this rate, we’ll all die before we get to the tattoo,” Edna interjected.
In Vienna, both Simon and Hanna Nacht had been trained to teach English as a second language.
Hanna told Simon she wanted to immigrate to the United States or Canada when their child was born.
As always, she was enlightened—ahead of her time.
She knew anti-Semitism was proceeding in a gradual, subtle way—even more so in Austria than in Germany, in Hanna’s opinion.
In Portland, two German-speaking Jews who were trained to teach English as a second language might have eked out a living for themselves and their new daughter.
There was a growing population of new immigrants; Hanna and Simon would have taken turns with the teaching and looking after Esther.
But now Hanna was a widow and a single mother; what little money she made as a teacher was spent on childcare, and Hanna found only two teenagers to babysit Esther.
Wilbur Larch was aware of the undesirables in the Old Port, on those streets that paralleled the waterfront.
They lived in boardinghouses like the one Hanna moved into.
An older prostitute who had a room there told Hanna she could make more money as a prostitute than she did teaching English to immigrants.
“Restless young men are everywhere,” Hanna told the rabbi.
Of course this was written down by the synagogue leader transcribing the conversation.
Hanna must have been thinking of the young sailors who roamed around the Old Port.
There were some young sailors in the pretty teacher’s class, learning English as a second language.
One of the young sailors told Hanna he’d jumped ship in Portland.
He intended to see the world this way, he said—signing on as crew in one port, jumping ship in another.
This wayward sailor was not a suitable young man for a pretty widow and a single mother to be talking to.
Thus did Hanna express her fears to the rabbi and the synagogue leader at Shaarey Tphiloh.
Yet Hanna said she was more afraid of “those Christian women” than she was of the young sailors.
Hanna didn’t mean only the women from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; she said there were “other women like them.” Hanna was more afraid of these women than she was of possibly becoming a prostitute.
“If anything happens to me, please don’t let those women steal Esther,” Hanna said.
Hanna had sensed that anti-Semitism was insidious in Vienna.
And in Portland, the temperance types were opposed to more than alcohol; they were opposed to immigrants, too.
Those Christian women were watching Hanna because she was a pretty Jew.
The women could see how the men looked at Hanna; they could see how much Hanna worried about Esther, too.
“Your daughter would be safer if she wasn’t Jewish,” a woman who purported to be from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union told Hanna.
“Is your daughter old enough to know she’s Jewish?” one of those women asked Hanna. “Esther would be better off if she never knew she was a Jew.”
“It seems anti-Semitism is insidious in Portland, too,” Dr. Larch told the Winslows, but the Winslows already suspected this.
That day at St. Cloud’s, when Larch and his nurses and the Winslows were together, they all felt ashamed.
Of course it crossed their minds that Esther might be better off if she never knew she was a Jew.
At Shaarey Tphiloh, Hanna told them she wanted Esther to know she was Jewish.
Then Hanna gave the rabbi their travel documents—her passport and Esther’s, which included their birth records.
“If anything happens to me,” Hanna began again, “Esther should have our passports—she should know who she is and where she came from.”
What happened to Hanna would remain murky.
Her body was found in the laundry room of the boardinghouse, where she’d been bludgeoned to death.
No one said she’d succumbed to prostitution; if a client had killed her, it likely would have happened in one of the bedrooms. Hanna’s students were interrogated by the police, including the wayward sailor who’d jumped ship in Portland.
Her students were obviously innocent; the young sailor in question struck everyone as the most innocent of all.
It was probable that two people had done it.
Whoever did it had held Hanna over a sink, where her head was repeatedly pounded with a wrench—a tool that anyone could have taken from the laundry room’s utility closet.
There were no indications that Hanna had been abused sexually.
Hanna had the foresight to tell Esther’s babysitters where to go, should she come to harm.
As Rabbi Herzfeld later said to Dr. Larch, they’d done the best they could do—truly, all they could do—at Shaarey Tphiloh.
Esther’s memory of her meeting with the rabbi was remarkably intact; she’d been three (almost four) when the rabbi told her that her mother was dead.
What Esther had forgotten was what she’d said when the rabbi told her that her mother wanted her to know she was Jewish.
“I know!” Esther said. The synagogue leader wrote this down, too.
The babysitter who’d brought Esther to the synagogue had informed the rabbi of Hanna’s murder.
Naturally, the rabbi did not tell Esther how her mother died.
Not in Esther’s hearing, one of the synagogue’s leaders tried to prepare the babysitter for everything that would happen next.
A “delegation” (in the sense of a “deputation”) of women from Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh would come get Esther at the boardinghouse.
In no way did the rabbi or the synagogue leaders at Shaarey Tphiloh distrust this babysitter—she was just an anxious teenager who was understandably distraught at Esther’s predicament.
The young babysitter wasn’t Jewish, but she was very protective of Esther.
The problem was how long it took to find and inform the women in the Jewish community.
Though Esther was a Viennese Jew who spoke and understood English, and her mother had been Jewish, no women in the congregation knew her.
Furthermore, whoever adopted Esther would eventually have to tell the child that her mother was murdered.
It took until the morning of the following day, when three women from the Jewish community agreed to take responsibility for Esther.
The three women would share between them the essential care of Esther, until a Jewish family could be found to adopt the child.
When the Jewish women went to the boardinghouse, they found Hanna’s room in disarray; Esther’s babysitters, two teenage girls, were sorting through the strewn clothes, Hanna’s and Esther’s.
The babysitters were sobbing. Two women had taken Esther a day ago.
The babysitters hadn’t realized that the women who took Esther weren’t from the synagogue—the women weren’t Jewish.
“We thought they were you,” one of the teenagers told the women from Shaarey Tphiloh.
“Esther doesn’t cry—she just gets angry,” the other girl said.
It was everyone’s opinion that those two women who took Esther may not have been from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
They might not have been temperance types at all; it’s possible they weren’t even Christians.
But whoever those two women were, they were anti-Semites.
Whoever they were, they did their best to prevent a Jewish child from being raised as a Jew in a Jewish family.
Yet those two women must have talked to Esther; those two must have realized it was too late to dissuade Esther of her Jewishness.
So they took her to St. Cloud’s, where they left her.
Those two just guessed that a Jewish family wouldn’t venture there.
Rabbi Herzfeld arranged the doctor’s meeting with the rabbi and synagogue leader at Shaarey Tphiloh—Larch’s second trip back to Portland.
Larch was grateful to the synagogue for showing him the written account of Hanna’s transcribed story.
What stood out for him was what Hanna told the rabbi about her daughter when Esther was only two—almost three.
“She’s going to be tall—she already has her father’s long legs, and his long fingers. Esther already has his strong hands.”
In his office at St. Cloud’s, Larch told the Winslows what he’d said at the synagogue the year before.
At thirteen (almost fourteen), Esther was taller than all the kids (and all the adults) at the orphanage; she also had the strongest hands.
The cook at St. Cloud’s was fond of canning fruits and vegetables.
He was devoted to Mason jars with screw-on lids.
When the cook couldn’t unscrew one of them, he would send for Esther.
“That girl’s hands are so strong, she can unscrew anything!
” Dr. Larch had declared to the rabbi and synagogue leader.
“I want to meet her—I want to give her the passports that belong to her,” the rabbi at Shaarey Tphiloh told Larch.
The synagogue leader, an older man, was in tears. “We’ve been hoping someone like you would find her, Dr. Larch—we’ve been praying she would end up in safe hands,” he said.
While the Winslows and Dr. Larch weren’t among the faithful, they had respect for these men of faith, who’d not abandoned hope for Esther.
Of course Larch agreed to bring Esther to the synagogue, notwithstanding that she didn’t believe in God (and Larch knew Shaarey Tphiloh was an Orthodox synagogue).
Larch had confided to Rabbi Herzfeld that Esther wasn’t a believer, but he’d not told them at Shaarey Tphiloh.
Maybe Esther’s lack of belief was more acceptable to a rabbi in a Reform synagogue than it would be to a rabbi in an Orthodox synagogue or a Conservative one—or so Larch ventured to ask Rabbi Herzfeld.
“Given Esther’s experience, it’s not for me to judge what she believes,” Rabbi Herzfeld told Dr. Larch. “Esther deserves to know who she is and where she came from, and how much her mother was afraid for her. Fear is love,” the rabbi said.