LITMIR.BIZ

      Photo courtesy of the Windsor Star

      Windsor’s chapter of B’nai Brith celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1975. The oldest and longest members (from the left, Harry Meretsky, Robert Cohen, and Maxwell Schott), toast each other at the joint installation of officers. A ceremony and dinner was held at Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue to both mark the investment of the newly elected executive officers and honour those who had built the lodge a half century ago. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Schott were original members.

      Around 1928, after B’nai B’rith had established a Ladies Auxiliary, Dr. M. Levine’s wife became its first president, Mrs. Hyams its vice president, Mrs. I. Cohen its financial secretary, Miss H. Hurwitz its recording secretary, and Mrs. M. Silver its treasurer. Continuing to further B’nai Brith’s humanitarian causes, the group ran numerous impressive programs.¹⁵³

       Prominent Jewish Religious Leaders

      Before dealing with the major shift in Windsor’s religious institutions during the mid-1920s, it might be appropriate to mention the significant roles played by two of Windsor’s spiritual leaders.

      Esser Kamenkowitz served Windsor’s Jewish community as chazan (cantor) and shochet for more than a decade. Born in Lithuania,¹⁵⁴ the son of a wealthy banker, he was an educated man who had received a doctorate from the University of Vilna. When he came to the United States, he tried to make a living as a chazan and shochet in various cities. He then decided to settle in Windsor with his wife and seven children.

      Well remembered for his beautiful voice, Esser Kamenkowitz was a man of medium height. He sported a moustache and sometimes a beard, and was a little on the stout side.¹⁵⁵ Serving Shaarey Zedek for many years, he then had disagreements with some of its directors, which induced him in 1924–25 to move to Ford City, where he ran a grocery and butcher store.¹⁵⁶ He occasionally led religious services at Tifereth Israel and performed wedding ceremonies and other rabbinical functions in the Windsor area, which brought him into conflict with Abraham Able, another itinerant teacher, rabbi, and shochet.¹⁵⁷

      Abraham Able came from a long line of rabbis. Born in Dgisno, Poland in 1892,¹⁵⁸ he had arrived in the Border Cities in 1924, bringing with him his wife and children — one son and four daughters¹⁵⁹ — one of whom eventually married a son of Esser Kamenkowitz.¹⁶⁰ Since Able was closely associated with Talmud Torah, people remember him well as a man about five feet, five inches tall, with red hair, a red beard, a ruddy complexion, and a shrill voice.¹⁶¹ Although somewhat nervous and excitable, he was apparently quite a pleasant individual.

      On December 1, 1926, Esser Kamenkowitz died suddenly. Interviews with his son — who incidentally had changed his name to Sockley Kamin and was the man who married one of Abraham Able’s daughters — revealed the near-starvation existence the family had had to endure after their father’s death, and how little financial help his mother received from the Jewish community.¹⁶²