Treasures Tell of Jewish History Date: May 10, 2000 By: Dawn Fuller Phone: (513) 556-1823 Archive: General News The University of Cincinnati's Hillel Jewish Student Center holds treasures that have lured representatives of the Smithsonian Institution - treasures that Rabbi Abie Ingber wants his congregation to use and appreciate, rather than preserve on velvet behind glass casing. At first glance, many of these antiques would not catch the eye of a highbrow collector, but Ingber sees more than a piece of broken glass or splintered wood, or a battered table coated with mud and oil. Each layer of grime he scrubs away, each piece of brass that is polished until it gleams, reveals to Ingber the Jewish history of Cincinnati, the Midwest and even of Europe. What's even more amazing is how Ingber has built the Hillel collection one piece at a time, as people nationwide go out of their way to find Ingber, after hearing about the rabbi who collects the stuff found in garbage piles. One example is a Star of David that covers the middle of a wall in Hillel's chapel. The star was abandoned on a pile of junk in Cleveland. "A man drove by it in the eastern part of Cleveland and drove two more blocks before guilt overcame him," says Ingber. "He turned around, strapped it on top of his car and took it home. His wife says, 'Where are you going to put it?' He says, 'I don't know, but I can't leave it on the garbage pile.' She says, 'It's not coming into this house.' He says, 'How about the garage?'...the traditional Jewish compromise. So it goes into the garage and at some point he opens up an Ohio Magazine with an article about this guy in Cincinnati who collects Jewish junk, and this man, Steve Greenwald, reads this article and says, 'Here's a guy who wants my junk.'" "It was eventually brought to Cincinnati and to Hillel when a lady strapped it on top of her Jeep Cherokee," Ingber continued. "We took something from a garbage pile in Cleveland and made it a focal point in our chapel." Precious pieces in the collection include two stained glass windows from the second home of Cincinnati's oldest Jewish synagogue, dedicated in 1852 on Broadway street by the B'nai Israel congregation. Ingber says the building was torn down in 1979 to make room for the international headquarters of Procter & Gamble. The first Jews in Cincinnati were from England and were later joined by a large influx of German immigrants. These immigrants established B'nai Yeshurum and invited Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise to serve as its spiritual leader. Wise founded Hebrew Union College and The American Israelite, the nation's oldest Jewish weekly publication. Ingber says Wise reportedly came to Cincinnati to leave a scandal in Albany, New York, where legend has it, he was involved in a fistfight in the temple on Yom Kippur. Ingber has chairs that Wise sat on when he taught his students in the basement of Plum Street Temple. In 1853, one year after Wise's arrival in Cincinnati, Ingber says Wise's friend Max Lilenthal was appointed to a more traditional congregation which split apart over Lilenthal's reforms. Lilenthal dedicated the Mound Street Temple in Cincinnati's West End in 1869. Ingber proudly shows off the table that belonged to the temple. Ingber's students read the Torah from the same table, which between temples had been crammed into the storage shed of a cemetery. "When we found it, there was a lawnmower on top of it, along with cans of oil and rock salt. We worked on cleaning it up all night, using Murphy's Oil Soap and toothbrushes. I came back early the next morning and there was the table, covered in mud. We had put so much oil on it the night before, it sucked out all of the mud. From that point on, we've never had to use anything to clean it." Ingber says a curator from the Smithsonian wanted the Torah table for an exhibit about 19th century life in America. He told her she was welcome to borrow it, but he wanted it back. "She wanted to keep it, so I told her that if she could find someone from the congregation of 1869, they could decide who keeps the table. Look who still has the table." Ingber says as the curator left, she caressed the brass door knobs in the chapel. The doorknobs are in the shape of rams heads associated with the Jewish New Year. "They're from the oldest Jewish congregation in Kansas and they sat on someone's front porch for 30 years." Most of the time, Ingber somehow manages to talk people into donating the pieces as well as hauling them to Hillel, but there have been some instances when he needed friends to help with more than a moving van or some elbow grease. An ark curtain, used during the Jewish High Holy Days, hangs on a wall at Hillel, after generous friends of Hillel donated the money to buy and conserve it. The intricate thread work is spun in silk and gold and was handmade in Romania. On the back of the curtain is a Nazi confiscation stamp. "Hitler wanted this for his museum," Ingber, the son of Holocaust survivors, explains. "After the war, when Hitler got rid of every Jew, he wanted to build a museum to 'the Jewish race (sic).' In his sickness of ego, he wanted to collect the greatest artistic and cultural expressions of the people he murdered." Part of another ark curtain is missing. A piece of the artwork was carefully cut out by a knife. "It's believed a Hungarian Jew cut this to save a piece of the family history, which probably died with that Jew in the death camps," explained Ingber. It's also an eclectic collection, with a 19th century Torah scroll from Morocco and what Ingber calls a "campy" neon Star of David that glows during services. The scoldings from envious museum collectors do not deter Ingber from handling his precious antiques and letting others do the same. He says his students will learn more about their future by using the pieces of their history.