JEWISH WORLD

JEWISH WORLD • JUNE 14-20, 2024 9 Sag Harbor’s Jews soon celebrated the opening of Temple Mishcan Israel syna- gogue – later renamed Temple Adas Israel. continued on page 22 weren’t particularly welcome in neighboring East Hampton and Southampton. Hungarian Jews might have thought themselves better than Rus- sian and Polish Jews, but for the Nazis there was no distinction - they killed them all, including the families of Herman and Stefanie. On my mother’s side in Poland, all were murdered too. In 1918, Mrs. Gerard relates, “the [Sag Harbor] Jewish community had financial difficulties and the synagogue’s mortgage was fore- closed. Three members of the con- gregation bought it back at public auction,” and later that year a “new certificate of incorporation was filed. From the names listed,” she relates, “it is clear that by then”— after two decades— “the Russian and Hungarian factions had finally made peace and joined in one con- gregation.” The division between the ceme- teries still exists, but the descen- dants of the Hungarian and Polish Jews are divided no more. One cemetery is owned and run by Tem- ple Adas Israel and the other owned and run under an independent name . I n terms of Jewish numbers in Sag Harbor, Mrs. Gerard cites a 1902 Sag Harbor Express article report- ing “a recent census indicating a total population of 3,438,” then continued: “Our population is cos- mopolitan…there are about 650 adults of foreign birth…. The He- brew invasion, which is compara- tively recent, sums up, men, women and children, about 500.” Thus, nearly 15 percent of Sag Harbor’s population early in the last century were Jews, which is re- markable. The Sag Harbor Express story went on to note that when Jews ar- rived in the town from Ellis Island by steamer, they were greeted at the docks by townspeople crying, ‘Jeru- salem is coming! Jerusalem is here!’” In East Hampton, southeast of Sag Harbor, no one was proclaim- ing, “Jerusalem is here!” There were very few Jews. Indeed, a 2009 story in The Southampton Press to mark the 50th anniversary of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons reported that as late as the 1950, “The East Hampton Jewish community con- sisted of perhaps 11 families, most of whom ran local businesses.” It was at East Hampton’s exclu- sive Maidstone Club that Groucho Marx, after being told that while he could play golf there as a guest, he wouldn’t be allowed to become a member because he was a Jew, fa- mously commented: “My kids are only half-Jewish. Can they play at least the front nine?” (There are sev- eral versions of this story.) Deserving much credit for break- ing the discriminatory flood gates in East Hampton was the late Evan Frankel, a scrappy, tough guy origi- nally from the Lower East Side. I vividly recall Evan telling me how he had become “the sole Jew living south of Montauk Highway in East Hampton.” And on an 11-acre es- tate, no less. South of Montauk Highway was and remains the most upscale part of the village. Evan had come to the East End to build radar facilities during World War II. Steel was in short supply, and he devised a way to use wood to build the frames on which the radar equipment was perched. Some of the few Jews in East Hampton had come to him in the 1950s, he related, wanting “to build a little shul.” Evan characteristically thought in a big way. He bought the stately Borden Estate, on Montauk Highway, the main entrance to East Hampton village, and the four acres on which it sits. Evan, to whom es- tablishing Jewish presence in East Hampton was very important – he said it showed that “Jews had ar- rived” in the town – donated tbuild- ing and land for what became the Jewish Center of the Hamptons. He worked closely with another wealthy Jew, J.M. Kaplan, whose summer house in East Hampton is now The Center for Conservation of The Nature Conservancy. Great architectural and spiritual splendor was to come to JCOH with a new sanctuary named Gates of the Grove. Frankel was central to get- ting Norman Jaffe, the renowned architect from Bridgehampton, to design it. Paul Goldberger, architec- ture writer for The New York Times and The New Yorker , has described Gates of the Grove as a “truly sacred space,” Jaffe’s “greatest work.” It is indeed a masterpiece . T o Sag Harbor’s southwest, in Southampton, the Jewish popu- lation also had been small. But there’s now also the Chabad of Southampton Jewish Center, which notes it is “the first synagogue in historic Southampton since its 1640 founding…” “You can imagine,” related a sto- ry in New York Magazine, “the con- sternation when...a family arrived that clearly hadn’t seen the member- ship brochure. The man…had a bird’s nest of a beard and wore dark suits all day long. He and his wife were young but had a bevy of chil- T he S ag h arbor I nn 631-725-2949 RIGHT IN THE HEART OF THE HAMPTONS WEST WATER STREET SAG HARBOR, NEW YORK ___________ SAGHARBORINN.COM Members of Temple Mishcan Israel in Sag Harbor stand proudly in front of their synagogue, ca. 1900, the first in Eastern Long Island. The Joseph Fahys Watch Case Factory.