Enoch Rauh was a local Jewish businessman who later went into politics. He was appointed to the city council in 1911 when the old ward-based system of representation was reformed into the district-based system used today.
Following his death in 1920, a group of boys at the Hebrew Institute asked his widow, Bertha Rauh, for permission to use Enoch Rauh's name for a new club. She granted their request and even bought them new basketball jerseys.
The Enoch Rauh Club was likely the longest-lasting and widest-ranging Jewish club in Western Pennsylvania, continuing operations into the late 1950s.
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Early on, the boys asked a recent high school graduate named L. Daniel Schmidt to serve as their advisor. He remained with the Club for more than a decade. (Schmidt became nationally known in the 1940s as a hypnotist.)
"Well do I remember those early visits to the Rauh domicile on Bartlett Street," Schmidt wrote in 1932, in a reminiscence of the club's founding. "...We would sit in the beautifully artistic library and talk of many things—of the life of Enoch Rauh, his aims and ideals—of the future of the boys and their club—of the general scheme—of cabbages and kings. 'Twas the beginning."
[IMAGES: Jewish Criterion, Nov. 25, 1921, p17; Enoch Rauh Club team portrait, 1920, Jewish Sports Hall of Fame Photographs, (MSP 308)]
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The Enoch Rauh Club soon fielded one of the best Jewish basketball teams in the tri-state area. The team even went professional by the end of the 1920s, a period when Western Pennsylvania had a popular semi-professional program.
As the original members of the Club entered their 20s, they mentored the next generation of younger boys through the Junior Rauh Club. By the early 1930s, the Enoch Rauh Club was overseeing a league with six associated clubs.
[IMAGES: Enoch Rauh Club dance card, 1926 [Richard E. Rauh Papers, MSS 301]; Enoch Rauh Club listing, Pittsburgh Jewish Community Book, 1921; Enoch Rauh Club dance card, 1924 [Richard E. Rauh Papers, MSS 301]
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The Enoch Rauh Club publicized its activities in an annual journal called "Prauhgress." The Juniors also published an annual, titled "Frauhters." The journals were filled with reminiscences, essays, poems, songs, and cartoons.
[IMAGES: "Prauhgress of the Enoch Rauh Club," 1926 and "Frauhters: A Decade of Fraughternity," 1940, [Richard E. Rauh Papers, MSS 301]
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By the late 1930s, the Club had dropped many of its intramural activities. But while most of its peer clubs disbanded and met only for occasional reunions, the Enoch Rauh Club shifted its focus almost exclusively to philanthropic work.
Its signature event was an annual "orphanage party." Each year, for more than 30 years, the Club sponsored a huge holiday shindig for the hundreds of children living in local orphanages—children "representing all races, colors and creeds," as the Jewish Criterion described it one year.
The party featured dances, movies, magic shows, and "liberal helpings of cake, candy, fruit and ice cream."
The Enoch Rauh Club also raised funds for local charities, especially Montefiore Hospital. In 1954, it purchased a "Twin Viso-Cardiette" to assist with heart surgery research at the Jewish-sponsored hospital.
[IMAGES: (top) Enoch Rauh Club Annual Orphanage Party, Dec. 1939; (bottom) American Jewish Outlook, Feb. 5, 1954, p18.]
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In the next issue of the newsletter, we'll continue looking at the clubs of the Hebrew Institute in the early 1920s with the story of the Young Maccabees.
Throughout this year, the Rauh Jewish Archives will be highlighting stories of Jewish club life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate records of a local Jewish club, please contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
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The facts and the truth of historical fiction |
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Sundown is a fictional coal patch along the Connoquenessing Creek, north of Pittsburgh. Only one Jewish family lives in Sundown — the Kahns. Al and Celia Kahn and their children run a small store, known almost universally as “the Jew’s store.”
The town and the family were the creation of Chester Aaron, who lived in North Butler, Pennsylvania, from his birth in 1923 until he left for the U.S. Army in World War II...
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[IMAGE: "About Us," by Chester Aaron, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967] |
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The Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives was founded on November 1, 1988 to collect, preserve, and make accessible the documentary history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania. You can help the RJHPA continue its work by making a donation that will directly support the work being done in Western Pa. |
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Plan a Visit
Senator John Heinz History Center
1212 Smallman Street
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15222
412-454-6000
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A proud affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Senator John Heinz History Center is the largest history museum in Pennsylvania and presents American history with a Western Pennsylvania connection.
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