Pro-slavery sentiment in that corner of Indiana was so strong that those who tried to help runaways did so at the risk of their own lives and the safety of their families. For that reason abolitionists kept no records and such recollections cannot be verified. Considering the danger, it seems truly extraordinary that immigrant Jews, themselves vulnerable and easily suspected of disloyalty, would risk their own safety by defying the prevailing sentiment of their neighbors. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that they were Jewish, however, with the memory of exodus from Egypt reinforced annually at their Passover Seder, that these fervent patriots sympathized with the Union, the government of their newly adopted Promised Land, and dared to assist others escaping slavery. It must have required enormous courage.38
Whether the Weils actually were abolitionists or not, they unquestionably gave their children worthy values. Sophie, like other daughters of upwardly mobile families of her day, probably first attended public schools and later enrolled in a private seminary for girls. She mastered French and German, read the classics in those languages as well as in English, and excelled at the piano. Her mother Clara taught her the finer points of homemaking and introduced her to daily prayers with the help of a personalized Jewish prayer book for the home, written mostly in English and published in America.39
Clara taught Sophie strict German standards of cleanliness as well as culinary skills in the German Jewish tradition, nourishing recipes that avoided pork products but probably contained no other Jewish dietary restriction since Reform Jews rejected kashruth in principle. Biblical injunction against other food such as shellfish was selectively ignored by most, but ham, pork, bacon, and sausage remained taboo. Sophie retained vivid memories of the day her father took her and her siblings to a slaughter house to see its unsanitary conditions and unsavory atmosphere in order to impress upon them the reason then espoused by logic-loving Reform Jews for not eating pork.40
As a serious sixteen-year-old, Sophie wasted no time in cultivating friendship with the new rabbi. When immediately upon arrival he organized the Evansville Literary Society, a staple offering of most Jewish communities, she joined her father and some sixty others as a founding member. Her lawyer-educated father served as the club’s “prosecutor,” and she volunteered as corresponding secretary. In early November she reported to the American Israelite that the group had accepted a “tilt” (a challenge to debate) with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Henderson, Kentucky, Evansville’s neighbor across the river. This was another activity characteristic of German Jewish communities.41
Comely, intelligent, and well schooled in amenities valued by the increasingly acculturated Jews of her day, Sophie appeared to be an ideal match for an American Reform rabbi. Readily smitten, Browne courted her in proper Victorian fashion. Recognizing that her intellectual interests paralleled his own, he thought that she would like to have a copy of a particular reference book that he favored, but apparently believed that it was bad form to bring her a gift and therefore hesitated to do so. After their betrothal, announced October 9, 1871, he presented the chosen volume, accompanied by a card on which he wrote, “Miss Sophie Weil, My lady– Not being entitled to bring presents to young ladies, I only lend you the use of this dictionary. Use it freely. Your most obedient servant, Dr. EBMB.”42
Formidable formality, even for Victorian times!
The book, hardly a romantic offering, was entitled A Biblical and Theological Dictionary: Explanatory of the History, Manners and Customs of the Jews and Neighboring Nation. Nearly twelve hundred pages long and three inches thick, it undoubtedly challenged the physical as well as the intellectual capacity of anyone attempting to use it. Originally compiled by Richard Watson in 1831 and published in a new edition by the Southern Methodist Publishing House in1860, its cover page identified the contents as “History, Manners, and Customs of the Jews and Neighboring Nations, with an Account of the Most Remarkable Places and Persons Mentioned in Sacred Scripture, an Exposition of the Principal Doctrines of Christianity, and Notices of Jewish and Christian Sects and Heresies.” It also included an Alphabetical Table of the Proper Names in the Old and New Testaments with “their proper pronunciation and the chief meaning or significance of each word in the original language,” as well as tables of weights, measures and money mentioned in the Bible, statistics on the religious denominations in the United States according to the 1850 census, a Biblical atlas with numerous maps, and a “Scripture Gazetteer” with engravings of ritual objects and priestly vestments as they were then imagined to have been.43
The new American edition of this tome reflected the growth of Christians’ interest in ecumenism, a positive development despite its purpose being that of conversion. Browne probably considered the encyclopedic volume interpreted by and for Christians as a useful tool for implementing his facility in relating to them. Sophie’s intellectual curiosity and dedication to her future role as rabbi’s wife likely suggested that she would derive both pleasure and benefit from it. Rabbis’ wives were often asked by Christians to elucidate remote points of Scripture that have little relevance for Jews, and this biblical dictionary readily provided authentic answers.
On the lighter side, puns were popular, and Sophie was the target of one published in the Evansville Journal, submitted by J. S. Lowenstein, secretary of the congregation. It posed the question of why Miss Sophie Wile (sic) was like an oyster being fried. The answer was, “because she will become Browne after a Wile.” The pun sheds light on popular culture as well indicating a degree of successful “fitting in.”44
Sophie and Ed were married on March 12, 1872, in a ceremony typical of those then in vogue with increasingly affluent, middle class Jewish families. Five bridesmaids and five groomsmen attended the couple. Wise and his wife Theresa journeyed from Cincinnati, he to officiate and she to stand under the chuppah, the bridal canopy, as surrogate mother for the groom. It was customary for Christian friends to be invited and for relatives from distant cities to attend, as many of them did. As reported in the local newspaper, “There was not room enough in the Sixth Street Temple last evening for the people who came to see the Rev. Dr. E.B.M. Browne married to Miss Sophie, daughter of Moses Weil, Esq.” The same newspaper recalled the event fifty years later.45
The lavish wedding gifts that the Brownes received testified to the acculturation of immigrant Jewish families who benefitted from the post-war economy. A pair of three-pronged Tiffany crystal candelabra, a large insulated hand-painted porcelain pitcher framed in silver on a stand with two silver goblets and drip bowl, a six piece silver coffee service with oil lamp warmer for the urn, and countless other items of heavy silver supplied what those of the Weils’ milieu considered standard necessities for the household of an American rabbi. Remarkably, Sophie preserved them intact through the many moves that characterized her life with Browne.46
For their honeymoon, the newlyweds boarded a river boat and plied the Mississippi, going ashore in several cities where Browne had been invited to speak. Leisurely days on the water provided time to reflect, perhaps inspiring the young rabbi to look back on his seven years in America, and assess his career to that moment.
His experiences had brought him knowledge of six post-Civil War Jewish communities, two of them Southern, and introduced him to a very negative aspect of Jewish public life as rabbis competed for control of American Judaism. After quickly failing in two congregations, he met great success in another, became initially recognized as a public orator and earned a law degree which gave him access to American courts. He had almost finished translating the Talmud so that Christians could better understand Judaism, and he had become an American citizen, married to an American-born daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family. If he had been truly circumspect, he should have perceived where his strengths and interests lay, where to watch for pitfalls, and how to deal with the exigencies of married life.
A few months after their marriage, Browne gave his bride a gold locket inscribed “To my Sophie, Ed, July 30, 1872.” Although the date itself has no identifiable significance, the anchor embossed on its cover could have been intended to carry a message. Still choosing the sea as his metaphor, Browne may have been suggesting that he was ready to drop anchor permanently in Evansville.47
III - EVANSVILLE
Browne