During the 50th anniversary year of the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware (JHSD) we are presenting three articles about the JHSD founders. The articles were written by Marla Brown Fogelman, daughter of Faith and Lou Brown z”l, who interviewed founders. This first article is about Rabbi David Geffen formerly of Wilmington who has been living in Israel since the 1970s. Rabbi Geffen keeps in touch with the JHSD through frequent email messages.
Rabbi David Geffen: The Force Behind the Founding of the JHSD
Marla Brown Fogelman
Rabbi David Geffen—a writer, historian, and former spiritual leader of Wilmington’s Congregation Beth Shalom—is widely considered to be the driving force behind the establishment and growth of the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware (JHSD). Yet, while proud of his role, Rabbi Geffen gives much of the credit not only to the other JHSD founders and early board members, but also to the greater Delaware Jewish community.
“The Jews of Delaware, in this last 50 years . . . took all of this seriously, and that’s the key to all this,” he said.
Love of History
A native of Atlanta, Georgiaj, Rabbi Geffen arrived in Wilmington in 1968, taking a position as a High Holidays rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom while working on his doctorate at Columbia University. “I loved doing research,” he said, noting that he even enjoyed working with microfilm, which was the research method of choice in those days.
So perhaps it was no surprise that, in 1970, in addition to becoming Beth Shalom’s full-time rabbi after Rabbi Jacob Kraft retired, Rabbi Geffen also began doing another type of research—this time in conjunction with the celebration of the synagogue’s 50th anniversary. But he also said that looking into Beth Shalom’s history was far from a solo effort and that it helped that “Ronnie Lauder, married to a Wilmingtonian, had donated many volumes of the Encyclopedia Judaica [to the synagogue], which covered these five decades.”
Geffen said he then began recruiting volunteers to join him in combing through records at Wilmington’s main downtown library and look for “anything that mentioned Beth Shalom in the last 50 years.” Later, with the aid of the synagogue’s then-financial secretary, Hilda Coder (the wife of Ben Coder, who was the first executive director of the Jewish Federation of Delaware), he put together a “historical sketch” of the shul for the 50th anniversary celebration. While looking through library microfilm, he also became more motivated to learn about the history of the Jewish communities in Delaware.
Making Connections
During his tenure at Beth Shalom, Rabbi Geffen forged a number of connections with both his congregants and other community members, including Wilmington News Journal writer, Bill Frank, who helped Geffen dive even further into the study of Delaware Jewish history. He said that Frank arranged for him to have a meeting with prominent Wilmington Jewish community member, Emile Topkis, a descendant of one of the community’s founding families, who, beginning in the 1940s, began conducting a mammoth search-and-rescue effort to collect news clippings, old records, notes, and other odds and ends pertaining to the state’s Jewish history.
Astonished by the mass and breadth of items that Topkis had unearthed, Geffen said he initially pondered how to move forward. “But I knew what I had to do,” he said, adding that this cache from Topkis was “the key factor” in pushing him toward the creation of what would become the JHSD. “I wanted people to know about the Jewish history of Delaware.”
Establishing the Collection
In addition to Bill Frank, the other JHSD founders included Charlie Keil, a Wilmington lawyer and judge; Harry Bluestone, who served as executive director of the Jewish Community Center from 1945 to 1960 and who had a wealth of knowledge about the state’s Jewish history; and Rabbi Simon Krinsky, who “taught at all the synagogues” and started Delaware’s first Jewish newspaper. “There were five of us,” Geffen said, in describing how they all contributed to the establishment of the JHSD in 1974.
In 1975, Geffen put together a Board, which included historian and writer Toni Young, who would go on to write the definitive history of Wilmington’s early Jewish community—Becoming American, Remaining Jewish—and whom Geffen would later recruit to be president of the JHSD.
To generate more interest in and donations for the collection, Geffen asked two of his Beth Shalom congregants, Drs. Martin Yalisove and Ralph Tomases, to help put on a slideshow at the JCC called “Sights and Sites: The History of the Jews in Delaware.” He said that more than 400 people attended the event, which included slides of some of Topkis’s items and other artifacts, and during which Geffen made a pitch for more materials. “It was very exciting!” he recalled.
A First Home for the Archive
The idea of finding the right home for the collection, other than the JCC, came about after Geffen invited noted historian Jacob Marcus, who had founded the American Jewish Archives, to speak at Beth Shalom. Geffen said that Marcus advised him to place the materials within a more suitable and secure facility for archival material, such as the Delaware Historical Society.
Geffen related how, in 1975, after the JHSD was officially incorporated, Bill Frank set up a meeting with Delaware Historical Society (DHS) Executive Director, Dale Fields, to explore whether the JHSD material could be housed within the DHS. He said that Frank told Fields, “We’ve got this material, which pertains to Wilmington. I hope you can find a place in your archives where we can put it.”
Fortunately, their request came at the right moment. According to Geffen, the DHS had wanted their first “ethnic group” exhibit to come from the African American community. However, after the African American community declined the offer, Geffen said that the DHS agreed to house the JHSD collection.
With the cooperation of the DHS, Geffen helped to orchestrate an event at the Town Hall Museum to both showcase and spur further growth of JHSD’s collection. He also gave particular credit to Lillian Robertson, a Wilmington native, for her work in this effort. Describing her as the “heroine of the exhibit,” Geffen said that Robertson was “a moving force in the Jewish bicentennial work.” She also later served as a president of the JHSD.
The exhibit, which opened on a snowy day on January 2, 1976, featured artifacts and artist-drawn pictures related to Jewish history as well as an installation depicting a Passover seder. A painting of 19th century Jewish educator and philanthropist, Rebecca Gratz, on loan from the Delaware Art Museum, was also hung on the wall. “We had Gratz looking over the Seder,” Geffen said. And despite the inclement weather on the opening day, Geffen was pleased with the turnout. “More than 2,000 people visited,” he said.
That same year, Geffen and his group held another successful community event—a slideshow at Adas Kodesh Shel Emeth for the “Dear Mollye” collection, which featured the letters that YMHA secretary Mollye Sklut had written, during WWII, to many of Delaware’s Jewish servicemen. Geffen said that as soon as they began showing slides of various GIs from the community, the audience of roughly 1,000, started screaming with delight and recognition.
A Bright Future for the JHSD
From his home in Jerusalem for almost five decades, Rabbi Geffen has continued to be a tireless advocate for the JHSD and believes that it has a bright future—especially now that the archive has a brand-new home at the Delaware Center for Jewish History at the Coxe House.
He also considers himself “lucky” to have had the Topkis repository as well as the support and dedication of the community in founding the JHSD. As he said, “I believe that I was so taken by Delaware Jewry because being Jewish and being a Delawarean was so important to them. It was an inspiration.”
