Our Hudson Story: Sermon from Rosh Hashana

 

Does anyone here recognize the name Solomon Holland?

Solomon’s story is a tragedy—it ended before it could be told. He died in 1864 at the age of two and is buried in the old Jewish section of Cedar Park Cemetery here in Hudson.

But his story lives on, not only in the weathered monument that’s survived 160 winters but also in the stories we tell of how our community began and how this congregation has thrived for 136 years, from South Front Street to Diamond Street, Warren Street, and finally here on Joslyn Blvd.

I hesitated to talk about “our” stories because, I admit, I had to look up some of those streets on a map—I haven’t been here that long, and I’m still learning the neighborhood. But then, even though it’s Rosh Hashanah, I thought about Passover and the wicked child in the Haggadah, asking what all of this means “to you.” It would have been stranger if I said it was “your” Hudson story, not mine as well.

One lesson of Rosh Hashanah is that how we tell our stories matters. How we tell Solomon Holland’s story matters, and how we tell Hudson’s story matters too. Take the creation story we celebrate today. If you get bored during services, which I know happens, grab one of the stone chumashim. You’ll notice, in the first chapters of Bereishit, the book of Genesis, we find two very different stories. First, God speaks the world into existence in six days, saying, "Let there be light," and it happens. After six days, God takes a day off after declaring it all "very good." This is a God who commands the universe. Whatever God wants, God gets.

The second story, about the Garden of Eden, is different. God acts more human, planting a garden, watering it, shaping Adam from the earth, and walking around. Here, God is hands-on, but things don’t always go smoothly. God says it’s “not good” for Adam to be alone, tries to fix it by creating animals, and even that doesn’t work.

Many have tried to reconcile these stories, but I think they were never meant to be consistent. Instead, they offer two different ways of seeing God: powerful but distant, or present in the messy details. And if you read a little further, there’s a third mention of creation that barely focuses on God at all, just a list of Adam’s descendants and their accomplishments—a more human-centered story. The Torah gives us three different ways to tell the creation story because how we tell our stories matters.

So, what can we learn about how we tell our stories here in Hudson, starting with little Solomon Holland and the founding of this congregation? Let’s turn back the clock to Clara Koweek, of blessed memory, the first woman ever on our synagogue board, who passed away in 2003. She wrote a history of the community for the dedication of this building in 1968 and again in 1988 for Anshe Emeth’s 100th anniversary. In her account of Hudson’s first Jewish settlers, she mentions not knowing the names of the original families who founded Ohav Shalom, the first synagogue in Hudson that only lasted about a decade. She notes that the earliest tombstone was from 1864, likely Solomon’s, though she doesn’t name him.

Another historian from our congregation, Blanka Glickman, of blessed memory, who passed away ten years ago, also mentioned the 1864 grave. In a 2005 article, she described these first Jewish settlers as part of the so-called “German” Jewish migration. She found the names of a few of the founders of Ohav Shalom, though most of this first wave moved on to Albany or further west. The families that founded Anshe Emeth came from a second wave of Eastern European Jews from Russia and Poland. Blanka also found a Jewish woman from that period, “Mrs. Holland of 42 Chapel Street, whose daughter died in 1864.” Blanka believed the monument in the cemetery was for this daughter.

Curious, I looked for more information and found a photographer and geneaologist named Ada Green who uploaded details about the Holland family onto the cemetery website. It turns out that Mrs. Holland’s name was probably Rachel Rose Dias Holland, and her son was Solomon, not a daughter. Solomon died at two and is buried in section 4-A, the old Jewish section of Cedar Park. His parents, Rachel and David, were from the Sephardic community in England. They put up a monument for their son, and maybe they planned to be buried nearby, just as David’s mother, Esther Holland, is also buried there. But Rachel was eventually buried in Bloomington, Illinois, and David, who remarried, was buried in South Bend, Indiana.

Interestingly, Ada mentioned that two other Sephardic Jews from England, Benjamin Van Praagh and his wife, Sara Holland Van Praagh, lived in Hudson in the 1860s in the same house as Esther Holland. They are also buried in South Bend, Indiana. David Holland and his sister Sarah seem to have moved together with their families, settling in the Midwest.

People have speculated about why the first wave of Jewish settlers left, but the second wave did something just as remarkable—they stayed and put down roots. They saw that Hudson had something to offer: opportunities to build businesses, shops, and a sense of community. If you haven’t yet seen the excellent video our president, Arlene, created for our 125th anniversary, you can find it on our website. Watching it, you’ll see how the Jews in this rural town, for generations, agreed with Dorothy—there’s no place like home. While some families left, generations of families stayed. They, along with newcomers, helped build a thriving community including this synagogue building.

More recent generations found that the opportunities in Hudson weren’t the same, or they left for other reasons. That’s not unusual—people move where they see opportunity, and for a time, many didn’t see that here. Factories close, new generations become lawyers and doctors. One could say that if Dorothy had lived a few decades later, she might have left Kansas after all. I’ve heard some describe this community’s story as one of decline. It grew from those Russian and Polish immigrants and their families, but they say it peaked long ago, with fewer Jews staying here as the years passed. On the other hand, just as people once left, a new wave of migration has come to Columbia County, including many Jews.

And that’s one reason why Solomon Holland’s story matters. It reminds us that the legacy of this community is an amazing inheritance for everyone here, even for those of us who are new. Little Solomon barely had a chance to live here, and for his family, who left by 1876 (the year of Rachel’s burial in Illinois), Hudson was just a stop on the way to settling somewhere else. And yet, his monument still stands, in a part of a cemetery that now belongs to Anshe Emeth. His story, or at least his monument’s story, is part of how we tell our synagogue’s history—a history that shows that Hudson has always been a place where Jewish stories are woven into the fabric of the town. That legacy is something we can all be proud of, no matter how long we’ve been part of it.

So, what kind of story should we be telling? I believe it has to be a different one than decline because Hudson isn’t just a place that members of the Jewish community eventually chose to leave—it’s a place many of us keep choosing to come back to. Something keeps drawing us here. I think the stories we need to keep telling more of are about what makes this place so special, whether you are the 5^th generation of your family here or the pandemic drove you out of Brooklyn. That is the driving force behind the heritage of our people here in Hudson, which includes Jews and non-Jews and extends beyond the town borders to our neighbors and sister institutions in Columbia County and nearby and the Catskills. This part of the world holds a special place in the hearts of those who come here. Those are the stories we need to start collecting and telling, both old stories and new, as part of the ever-growing legacy of our community, And may that incredible legacy serve the community here and inspire all of us to share our stories for many more generations.