{"id":35965,"date":"2014-05-12T19:34:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T19:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=35965"},"modified":"2014-05-12T19:34:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T19:34:50","slug":"oconnors-grandfather-rabbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/news-op-ed\/oconnors-grandfather-rabbi\/","title":{"rendered":"O\u2019Connor\u2019s Grandfather A Rabbi In Bridgeport?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"O'Connor
O’Connor with former NYC Mayor Ed Koch (Credit AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>This article first appeared in The Jewish Week<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

First, Catholic New York<\/a> reported that the sister of Cardinal John O\u2019Connor, the late archbishop of New York, had recently discovered that their mother was a Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism at the age of 19. Thus, O\u2019Connor was technically Jewish.<\/p>\n

Now, a Dix Hills, L.I., genealogist has found that his mother\u2019s father was a rabbi \u2014 in Bridgeport, Conn. It appears he may have also served as the local kosher butcher and perhaps even the shochet, a person trained and licensed to slaughter animals and birds in a manner prescribed by Jewish law.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd like many of us, he even had an Aunt Minnie,\u201d said the genealogist, Renee Steinig.<\/p>\n

Steinig, a former president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island and a professional genealogist for the last 20 years, came upon the information after reading the story about O\u2019Connor\u2019s mother, Dorothy, and \u201cout of curiosity\u201d decided to look further.<\/p>\n

Steinig said Catholic New York<\/em> reported that O\u2019Connor\u2019s sister, Mary O\u2019Connor Ward, found that their mother\u2019s family had lived in Bridgeport, and that her father\u2019s name was \u201cGustav Gumple.\u201d So Steinig said she turned to ancestry.com and checked Bridgeport city directories \u2014 similar to phone books but containing only addresses of residences and often a person\u2019s occupation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI searched for all listings of Gustav Gumple in Bridgeport, but I searched in a way that allowed for spelling variations, which are so common,\u201d she said. \u201cAs it turned out, almost all of the records I found spelled the name \u201cGumpel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how she could be sure it was the same person, Steinig replied: \u201cYou still have to be cautious, even when a name strikes our ears as unusual and the person lived in a relatively small community. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe article mentioned that Gustav\u2019s wife\u2019s name was Tina, and I found a family with similar names in the 1880 U.S. census. \u2018Gustave and Denna Gumple\u2019 were living on the Lower East Side of New York City with four daughters. \u2026 I found \u2018Rev. Gustave Gumpel\u2019 listed in an 1882 Manhattan directory. [His wife, Tina, died in 1890.] Gustave, widowed, appeared in the 1900 and 1910 censuses living in Bridgeport. Several of the kids\u2019 names recurred, and some were born in New York, so I suspected that it was the same family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Catholic New York<\/em> said Mary O\u2019Connor Ward and one of her daughters, Eileen Ward Christian \u2014 who had encouraged her mother to conduct the search \u2014 found that Mary\u2019s mother\u2019s family had immigrated from Prussia.<\/p>\n

Steinig said she checked Hamburg emigration records and found a \u201cTine\u201d Gumpel who came from Inowroclaw, a once Prussian town that is now in Poland, near Poznan. Tine, who may well be the mother of the cardinal\u2019s mother, sailed to New York with five children in February 1880 and arrived in March. She probably joined Gustave here.<\/p>\n

Steinig said it was not uncommon for immigrant fathers to come first and send for their families later. Nor was it uncommon for families whose first stop was New York City to stay there initially.<\/p>\n

The oldest Gumpel children were listed as 9, 8, and 6 years old, so Steinig said she believes they weren’t born to Tina, who at the time was 21.
\n\u201cThe two youngest children could have been hers,\u201d Steinig added.<\/p>\n

Other records revealed that the couple did not stay in New York City very long, because they had a daughter who was born in Connecticut in 1883. Cardinal O\u2019Connor\u2019s mother, Dorothy, was probably born in either 1887 or 1888 \u2014 Social Security records list her birthday at August 1888. Steinig said her name was listed on the 1900 census as Dora.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my experience, the name Dora was often an English variation of Devorah,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bridgeport city directories from 1887 to 1904 listed a \u201cRev. Gustave Gumpel,\u201d and many referred to him as a \u201cJewish clergyman,\u201d Steinig said she found. \u201cIn 1890 and 1891, directories also listed as his place of business a \u2018meat market.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That suggests, she said, that he might have served as both the spiritual leader of Congregation B\u2019nai Israel, and as the local butcher. The congregation\u2019s current rabbi, James Prosnit, said it would not have been unusual for the rabbi to hold two jobs and that there was a \u201crelatively sizeable\u201d Jewish population in Bridgeport at that time.<\/p>\n

A check of the 1899 American Jewish Year Book listed Rabbi Gustave Gumpel as the spiritual leader of Congregation B\u2019nai Israel in Bridgeport. And Steinig said a history of Bridgeport identified him as the synagogue\u2019s second rabbi.<\/p>\n

In the 1910 census, Gustav Gumpel is listed as a \u201cretired minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe use of the word minister to refer to a rabbi is not unusual,\u201d Steinig said.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Prosnit told The Jewish Week<\/em> that a check of his congregation\u2019s archival records confirmed that Gustave Gumpel was indeed its second rabbi. In fact, Rabbi Gumpel and his wife, along with several of their children, are buried in the congregation\u2019s cemetery plots.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur congregation was chartered in 1859 and, according to archival material, it was started by 22 men who were immigrants from Germany,\u201d he said. \u201cIts first rabbi, A. Jacobs, was paid a salary of $20 a month. It was a strictly Orthodox congregation that switched to Reform around 1902.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said that \u201cby the late-19th century many members considered themselves to be Reform Jews, and in 1895 some members of the congregation broke away and established Adath Israel, a synagogue more in keeping with their roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unclear how long Rabbi Gumpel remained the congregation\u2019s spiritual leader, Rabbi Prosnit said. All that is certain is that in 1909 the congregation listed Richard Stern as its rabbi.<\/p>\n

It is also unclear why Rabbi Gumpel\u2019s daughter Dora \u2014 then known as Dorothy \u2014 decided in 1908 to be baptized a Catholic at the age of 19, before meeting her husband-to-be, Thomas O\u2019Connor, whom she married in 1909. Dorothy\u2019s daughter Mary told Catholic New York that the research she and her daughter conducted led them to the archives of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the marriage record for Dorothy and Thomas O\u2019Connor. It was those documents that revealed that Dorothy had been baptized at Sacred Heart Church in Bridgeport on April 3, 1908. <\/p>\n

The cardinal\u2019s sister is quoted as saying that she doesn\u2019t believe her brother knew their mother was born Jewish, and that although she suspected her mother was a convert she never discussed it with her.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, noted that O\u2019Connor Ward is a member of his group\u2019s advisory board and \u201cis a major supporter, very pro-Israel and in her brother\u2019s tradition a bridge builder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Potasnik said Cardinal O\u2019Connor \u201cstrengthened the relationship between Jews and Catholics. I remember him standing on the steps of St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral to watch and give support to a Soviet Jewry march\u201d down Fifth Avenue in 1987.<\/p>\n

He noted that it was \u201cnot unusual to have him speak at the Board of Rabbis.\u201d In fact, Rabbi Potasnik said, during the installation of Rabbi Marc Schneier, spiritual leader of The Hampton Synagogue, as president of the board in 1998, Cardinal O\u2019Connor took off his red zucchetto or skullcap and presented it to the Rabbi Schneier as a gesture of Catholic-Jewish friendship and understanding.<\/p>\n

Steinig, the Jewish genealogist, said further research she conducted on the other children of Rabbi Gumpel revealed that another daughter, Della, also intermarried. And in reading the obituary of another daughter, Regina, who died in 1954, there is a curious omission. It said there were only two surviving siblings \u2014 \u201cMrs. Minnie Cohen and Miss Raye Gumpel\u201d \u2014 no mention of her intermarried sisters, Dorothy and Della.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared in The Jewish Week. First, Catholic New York reported that the sister of Cardinal John O\u2019Connor, the late archbishop of New York, had recently discovered that their mother was a Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism at the age of 19. Thus, O\u2019Connor was technically Jewish. Now, a Dix Hills,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82831,"featured_media":35970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-news-op-ed"],"yoast_head":"\nO\u2019Connor\u2019s Grandfather A Rabbi In Bridgeport? - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/news-op-ed\/oconnors-grandfather-rabbi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"O\u2019Connor\u2019s Grandfather A Rabbi In Bridgeport? - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article first appeared in The Jewish Week. 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