Nebraska's Panhandle Families: Faith in a Faraway Place

Nebraska's Panhandle Families: Faith in a Faraway Place

Northwest Nebraska's panhandle includes 11 counties that cover 20 percent of the state's total geographic area. The panhandle's five largest towns range from Kimball, with 2500 residents, to Gering/Scottsbluff, with slightly less than 23,000 people.

In a region not known for its heavy population, it most certainly is not known as a hub of Jewish activity.

But when the Irving and Clara Shapiro family moved to Gering, Nebraska, in 1956, they found a surprisingly active, though small, Jewish community in which to make their home.

Gering was the Shapiro family's third stop in North America. Irving and Clara had survived the Holocaust, met in a displaced persons' camp, and gave birth to their first daughter there. Because a post-war quota system limited the number of displaced persons who could enter the United States, they had moved first to Montreal, Canada, with the help of an international relief agency. Under the sponsorship of Joseph and Leah Mandelberg in Alliance, an hour northeast of Gering, the Shapiros were then able to leave Canada. Irv worked as a salesman, traveling throughout Nebraska and neighboring states, for Joe Mandelberg's auto parts supply business.

When Irving, Clara, Tania and Marlene Shapiro moved to Gering/Scottsbluff, they joined a Jewish community that included the families of Harry Rushall, Victor Nufeld, Abe Liberman, Sam Cohen, Dieter Nashelsky, Gunter Nashelsky, Harry Shamberg and Paul Nathan.

By drawing on their own resources and those of the Jewish communities of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver, Colorado, these families were observing their faith and honoring their parents' wishes that children grow up knowing Judaism. They organized a Sunday School for their children that met in the Nathan's basement, took turns hosting holiday services at their homes, and shared Seder meals at the VFW. When Reva Nathan learned that a new couple in town, Dick and June Segal, were Jewish, she invited them to dinner and recruited them to teach the Sunday School.

The Segals didn't feel qualified to accept the assignment, but Reva could be persuasive. Dick taught the older kids and June taught their younger brothers and sisters.

Tania Shapiro Moore, who today lives in Omaha, was nine when her family moved to Gering. Her brother, Herschel, was born the same year.

The Shapiros moved to Gering under the sponsorship of Sam and Esther Cohen. Irv worked in Sam Cohen's hide processing plant and eventually would buy the business when Sam retired.

"Father drove to farms and ranches, buying hides of cattle that had been slaughtered," Tania Moore said. He also had arrangements to purchase hides from local slaughterhouses. The hides would be soaked in foul-smelling vats that to Tania seemed to be the size of swimming pools. Workers salted, folded, tied and stacked the soaked hides on pallets for shipping by railroad to tanneries.

The tanneries were on the East Coast and often Jewish-owned.

"What was really great about the hide business, my father used to say, was that he never had to work on Saturdays or (Jewish) holidays because the tanneries he dealt with were closed," Moore said.

Being Jewish wasn't a "secret", Tania recalls, but it wasn't something to talk about in casual conversation, either. She was a cheerleader at Gering High School. Her parents were active in local fraternal organizations and bridge clubs. Both of her parents enthusiastically embraced the busy life of being involved in their children's school activities.

"But the sense of being different was always present," Tania said. At 15, she attended a Jewish summer camp and also felt "different." Being around other Jewish kids wasn't something to take for granted, but for the kids from Denver, it was just part of their daily life.

If her parents ever regretted moving to Gering, Tania never heard them say so.

"They really loved living in a small town. My father arrived there with nothing and was able to become quite successful, the great American Dream," Tania said.

Paul and Reva Nathan also embraced the advantages a small town could offer. Paul moved to Scottsbluff in the late 40s to work at Scottsbluff Pipe and Supply Company, his brother-in-law Harry Rushall's metal salvage business. Paul had hesitated to propose to Reva, a Brooklyn native, because he didn't know how she'd feel about living so far away from her family, but she didn't hesitate in accepting his offer of marriage. She learned to love Scottsbluff and Scottsbluff learned to love her.

Reva's initial intention was to keep a kosher kitchen, but she gave up on the impracticality and expense of importing meat from Denver that arrived by bus, packed in dry ice.

Sons Ira and Allen Nathan were born in 1949 and 1952. To keep his promise to Reva's father that the Nathan sons would be circumcised, Paul arranged for the services of a mohel from Denver, at a cost equal to two weeks' wages.

For the Sunday School, Paul and Reva made an appointment with a rabbi in Cheyenne, who supplied the books that the Segals taught from.

When the time came for Ira's and Allen's bar mitzvahs, they traveled on Sundays to Cheyenne (two hours each way) to meet at the rabbi's home. To celebrate, the Nathan's invited friends to their home.

"At the time, I had no idea of what a Bar Mitzvah party was because I had never gone to one," Ira Nathan said.

Alums of Paul and Reva's Sunday School have scattered to Lincoln, Omaha, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City.

Paul and Reva Nathan moved to Omaha in 1969 when Paul took a job with Aaron Ferer and Sons. Reva died in 1995. From his apartment in west Omaha, he fondly recalls Reva's brothers' awe of a town where locking doors and parked cars was unheard of, and where a nice house with a garage to park your car in could be paid for on a workingman's salary.

"We made many close friends there, both Jewish and gentile," Paul said. "Those were good years."