Small (Jewish) World

I received this from one of the lists I subcribe to:

In eejh@yahoogroups.com, "--" wrote:
Comments received from my friend's friend.

In reading the New York Times which I get via the Internet, I saw that the new nominee for the Federal Reserve Chairman is Ben S. Bernanke.

I had a student pulpit in Dillon South, Carolina, for the Yamim Noraim of 1966. I went alone as my wife was expecting our first child and stayed until after Yom Kippur. I stayed with the nominee's parents and remember Ben very well. He helped me roll the Sifrei Torah and was very interested and involved in everything about the shul. He was post Bar Mitzvah. His parents, Philip and Edna, had a strictly kosher home. They had two younger children, Sharon and Seth. His mother was originally from New England and her parents had relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina, where her father was the kosher butcher. Meat was sent via the bus that traveled from Charlotte to Dillon. Ben's father was a pharmacist and he and his two brothers were the only pharmacists in Dillon.

Ben's full name is Ben-Shalom and his parents, who I recall as most gracious and kind, told me how they gave him that name. It was the tradition in the South that the first born son received his mother's maiden name as his first name. Thus, in Dillon there were people with the name Smith Williamson and Brown Jones. The Bernankes translated Edna's maiden name - Friedman to Ben-Shalom.

His grandparents were both physicians in pre-war Vienna. They came just before the war to the states but their medical degrees were not recognized. As they had to make a living and were too old to sit for exams etc. and had three children, they came to Dillon where they operated a pharmacy.

The area synagogue was located in Dillon since the town had made rooms available to the area Jews to hold services in the 1920s. The synagogue dated from before World War I. They never had a permanent rabbi and were served by numerous JTS students for the Yamim Noraim over the years.

For many years, Rabbi Murray Alstett, the brother of Rabbi Philip Alstat, served their religious needs when he had a pulpit in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The sisterhood was proud ofits support of JTS and was a member of Women's League. I have fond memories of the almost two weeks in Dillon 39 years ago.

Just think, the youngster who helped me prepare the Sifrei Torah and gave me numerous insider pointers is now the nominee to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Well, it's a small Jewish world.