and Notices of Jewish and Christian Sects and Heresies.” It also included an Alphabetical Table of the Proper Names in the Old and New Testaments with “their proper pronunciation and the chief meaning or significance of each word in the original language,” as well as tables of weights, measures and money mentioned in the Bible, statistics on the religious denominations in the United States according to the 1850 census, a Biblical atlas with numerous maps, and a “Scripture Gazetteer” with engravings of ritual objects and priestly vestments as they were then imagined to have been.43
The new American edition of this tome reflected the growth of Christians’ interest in ecumenism, a positive development despite its purpose being that of conversion. Browne probably considered the encyclopedic volume interpreted by and for Christians as a useful tool for implementing his facility in relating to them. Sophie’s intellectual curiosity and dedication to her future role as rabbi’s wife likely suggested that she would derive both pleasure and benefit from it. Rabbis’ wives were often asked by Christians to elucidate remote points of Scripture that have little relevance for Jews, and this biblical dictionary readily provided authentic answers.
On the lighter side, puns were popular, and Sophie was the target of one published in the Evansville Journal, submitted by J. S. Lowenstein, secretary of the congregation. It posed the question of why Miss Sophie Wile (sic) was like an oyster being fried. The answer was, “because she will become Browne after a Wile.” The pun sheds light on popular culture as well indicating a degree of successful “fitting in.”44
Sophie and Ed were married on March 12, 1872, in a ceremony typical of those then in vogue with increasingly affluent, middle class Jewish families. Five bridesmaids and five groomsmen attended the couple. Wise and his wife Theresa journeyed from Cincinnati, he to officiate and she to stand under the chuppah, the bridal canopy, as surrogate mother for the groom. It was customary for Christian friends to be invited and for relatives from distant cities to attend, as many of them did. As reported in the local newspaper, “There was not room enough in the Sixth Street Temple last evening for the people who came to see the Rev. Dr. E.B.M. Browne married to Miss Sophie, daughter of Moses Weil, Esq.” The same newspaper recalled the event fifty years later.45
The lavish wedding gifts that the Brownes received testified to the acculturation of immigrant Jewish families who benefitted from the post-war economy. A pair of three-pronged Tiffany crystal candelabra, a large insulated hand-painted porcelain pitcher framed in silver on a stand with two silver goblets and drip bowl, a six piece silver coffee service with oil lamp warmer for the urn, and countless other items of heavy silver supplied what those of the Weils’ milieu considered standard necessities for the household of an American rabbi. Remarkably, Sophie preserved them intact through the many moves that characterized her life with Browne.46
For their honeymoon, the newlyweds boarded a river boat and plied the Mississippi, going ashore in several cities where Browne had been invited to speak. Leisurely days on the water provided time to reflect, perhaps inspiring the young rabbi to look back on his seven years in America, and assess his career to that moment.
His experiences had brought him knowledge of six post-Civil War Jewish communities, two of them Southern, and introduced him to a very negative aspect of Jewish public life as rabbis competed for control of American Judaism. After quickly failing in two congregations, he met great success in another, became initially recognized as a public orator and earned a law degree which gave him access to American courts. He had almost finished translating the Talmud so that Christians could better understand Judaism, and he had become an American citizen, married to an American-born daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family. If he had been truly circumspect, he should have perceived where his strengths and interests lay, where to watch for pitfalls, and how to deal with the exigencies of married life.
A few months after their marriage, Browne gave his bride a gold locket inscribed “To my Sophie, Ed, July 30, 1872.” Although the date itself has no identifiable significance, the anchor embossed on its cover could have been intended to carry a message. Still choosing the sea as his metaphor, Browne may have been suggesting that he was ready to drop anchor permanently in Evansville.47
III - EVANSVILLE
Browne came to Evansville well prepared for the diverse duties of an American rabbi. Already an acclaimed public speaker, he fulfilled the highest hopes of his congregants as their representative to the gentile world. He led them in intellectual activities by organizing the Evansville Literary Society and encouraging study among young adults. He pursued scholarly projects on his own, writing, translating, teaching and publishing. Most significant of all insofar as pleasing his congregation was concerned, he married Sophie. She was intelligent, personable, and one of their own. From all appearances the two were securely set to live “happily ever after.”
For his inaugural sermon at B’nai Israel, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, 1871, Browne chose the text of Jeremiah 1:47, wherein the prophet seeks God’s help with the words, “Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a boy.” Humbly acknowledging his own youth and inexperience, the rabbi reminded his listeners that the injunction to teach was meant not only for Jews but “unto the nations” and that he would welcome their guidance in this endeavor, clearly indicating outreach to the gentile community. He then spoke of a rabbi’s duties to his congregation and those of the congregation to its rabbi. Citing the instructions given to Moses in Exodus 27:20 and Leviticus 24:2,3 for the Israelites to bring to Aaron, the high priest, pure oil of olives for the eternal light, Browne drew the parallel to himself and his Evansville congregants. It was his duty to tend the lamp of enlightenment, but theirs to supply the oil.1
The subject was not unusual for rabbis of that era, but its message is worth noting for its relation to the times and the man. Addressing women especially, Browne invoked the Jewish view of motherhood. By asking them to help him educate their children, he drew upon the biblical injunction for mothers to introduce their children to the Torah. Also, with the intense patriotism typical of new Americans, he conjured the image popularized by novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe of mothers as primary purveyors of moral authority, charging them to “enlist as soldiers in the great army of the republic which shall free the mind from the sway of old despotic views.”
To illustrate his role as principal teacher, he drew from his medical studies a tongue-twisting ophthalmological metaphor about people “afflicted with photophobia... myopia and presbiophia,” (meaning that they either hated light or were farsighted or nearsighted) and concluded that they “contracted those morbid tendencies by bad habits, by looking either too much at the sun and becoming dazzled, or by closing their eyes altogether.” Such patients, he said, “must have an artificial light overseen and regulated by a good oculist. The priest has to be the optician here. He must shape lenses... which will gather the eye beams in the right focus, and thus assist their vision to behold things in the true light.” The imagery, reflecting his continued fascination with science, also suggested the presence of the eye disease that soon manifested itself and plagued him throughout most of his life.2
No sooner was Browne installed as Evansville’s rabbi than he announced a series of public lectures. He opened with “The Genesis of Christianity,” which the city newspapers asked him to repeat. Entering community affairs, he headed the Charitable Burial Association, served by his father-in-law, Moses Weil, as treasurer. He also began publishing an English periodical, the Jewish Independent, headquartered in Chicago. Within a few months the Evansville Medical College offered him faculty chairs in medical jurisprudence and diseases of the mind, and dispatched him as its delegate to the United States Medical Convention in Philadelphia.3
Rabbis were often called upon by Jewish communities other than their own to officiate at weddings, dedicate new synagogues, and deliver lectures for charitable purposes. In Petersburg, Indiana, Browne conducted its county’s first Jewish wedding. Celebrated in the Presbyterian Church, church bells summoned all residents to the ceremony and the church choir provided music. At the luncheon that followed,
