Our Congregation

Dear friends,

In an age in which truth is under attack as fake news and in which unsubstantiated conspiracy theories abound, it becomes more and more difficult to trust the great tales that come our way. Over the years I have made it a habit of reviewing Holocaust stories, many of which are miraculous and life inspiring. Included among them are tales about husbands and wives, cousins and friends, often assumed by one another to be deceased who decades later find each other. For decades Israeli newspapers and radio shows would send out calls and notices by one survivor after another in search of lost loved ones. On this you tube is one such moving tale about two reunited cousins which made it to the evening news; Click Here To Link

A college friend of mine was born in a Displaced Persons camp with his fraternal twin brother after his surviving parents were reunited. He told me of another friend, who came to Israel as a young boy after the Holocaust as an orphan, convinced that his parents were deceased. So he thought! One day, as his friend was walking the streets of Tel Aviv in 1965 he saw an elderly couple walking hand in hand, his parents who likewise thought that their little son was dead. One cannot adequately describe the depth of emotion as the parents and child were reunited. As Jews we are not immune to the tragedy of lost parents, children and friends. Our Holocaust legacy has sadly found parallel in the current accounts of Mexican children separated from their parents. We Jews feel kinship with so many who have suffered. Below is the tale of Clara Brown which I share in anticipation of next year’s Black History month. We are well advised to celebrate that history along with the heritage of others. It is a bittersweet tale which confirms once more that “truth is stranger than fiction!”

Rabbi Yossi J. Liebowitz D.D.

Clara Brown (c. 1800 –October, 1885) was a kind-hearted, generous woman whose determination led her on a life-long quest to be reunited with her daughter. Born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in 1803, her earliest memory was of being sold on the auction block. She grew up in Logan County, Kentucky, married at age 18, and had four children. At age 36 her master, Ambrose Smith, died and her family was sold off to settle his estate. Despite her continued enslavement, Clara Brown vowed to search for her ten-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane. For twenty years Clara worked for George Brown raising her new master’s children instead of her own.

In 1856 she was freed upon Master Brown’s death allowing her, at age 53, to set out to find her daughter. Three years of searching in Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas proved fruitless. Clara thought that perhaps Eliza Jane had joined the multitude of people that had gone to Pikes Peak hoping to find gold. Thus Clara’s search took her 700 miles west to the Colorado Territory gold fields. She had secured a job as a cook on a wagon train in exchange for the free transportation of her laundry pots.