Up
That battle for freedom is still
ressed for battle, Leonard
being fought today, nearly every
Steinberg looks the part
weekend when the weather is fine.
of the Union infantryman
All around the country, Americans
from head to toe.
(and they mostly are men) spend
A black slouch hat and graying
thousands of dollars and untold
goatee frame his features. A dark-
hours dressing the part of Union and
blue, four-button jacket and sky-blue
Confederate soldiers. They march to
trousers gird his 5-foot-6 frame. His
the drums, they form into ranks and
ankle-high leather brogans glint
raise their rifles and fire.
darkly. The musket slung over his
They tramp for miles in the dust
shoulder completes the picture.
and the heat, they shud-
When he charges into
der at the cannon's roar
Leonard
Steinberg
combat this Fourth of July
and they die the death of
relaxes
at
a
weekend, as a member of the
soldiers, every weekend.
Michigan
Volunteer
17th Michigan Volunteer
Nobody dies better than
Infantry
Infantry, Steinberg will be
Company E Union Peter Levy, a sailor in the'
asserting a historical truth —
Navy stationed in
tent site.
that 8,500 Jews served, and
Mountainview, Calif To
many died, in that conflict
understand why Jews might get
that defined the nation and that
involved in Civil War games (and
helped shape the Reform movement.
anecdotal evidence suggests that at
A 51-year-old building survey spe-
least several hundred do each year),
cialist who lives in Canton, Steinberg
you have to hear Peter Levy die.
says he, and the 20,000 other Civil War
"There are times when I am lying
re-enactors and 100,000 spectators
wounded on the field and I'll be look-
expected to gather in Gejysburg for the
ing up at the sky and a nurse or a
135th anniversary of that famous battle,
preacher will'come over to me, and if
will not be glorifying war.
I have a fatal wound, they will begin
They will be honoring freedom.
to do last rites, and I say — 'No, I am
"This war was not for glory or for
a Jew.' Then they will just hold my
territorial acquisition. Like the
hand, or try to give me a little bit of
Second World War, this was a war of
water, and as I breathe my last they
survival," said Steinberg, who is not
will say, 'Here goes a good, brave lad.'
affiliated with a synagogue at pre-
"Sometimes, it is very moving to
sent. "Many of these soldiers were
die as a Jew that way," said Levy,
immigrants. They had come over
who wields a rifle for the 1st
here following the dream of freedom,
Regiment of the U.S.- Sharpshooters,
and they saw this as a war to preserve
Company C.
that ideal."
D
Endless Fascination
S
omewhere back about the
seventh grade, Robert
Aronson dove deep into the
19th century, and it looks
like he is never coming up.
"I find it endlessly fascinating,"
Aronson said of the Civil War. "It is
an episode that brings out every
aspect of the human character, from
the greatest to the lowest and every-
thing in between."
The 46-year-old executive vice-
president of the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit said he delves
into the great Blue and Grey shadow
dance nearly every night before turn-
ing in; he has accumulated nearly
100 books on the topic in addition
to countless magazines.
Aronson can reel off Civil War
anecdotes, many relating to Jewish
7/3
1998
66
involvement in the conflict, faster
than most people can spell their own
names. There's the time Confederate
General Robert E. • Lee conferred with
his Jewish solders, for instance, on
whether they ought to hold out for
kosher food in a season when rations
were scarce.
There's the story of how Southern
synagogues during the war prayed,
not for the "nation," but for the
Confederacy. And there is Aronson's
tale of a modern-day southern syna-
gogue whose members tried to find a
descendant from any of the congrega-
tion's founding families for a celebra-
tion marking its 200th year of exis-
tence.
They looked long and hard and,
in the end, the only living descen-
dant of those intrepid Civil War-era
Savannah or Augusta, there is a feel-
Jews turned out to be an Episcopal
ing that someone who comes down
minister. The moral of the story:
from New York already has
While the Civil War sure-
three strikes against them,"
ly helped the Jews of that
he said. "It is not like they .
time galvanize their iden-
are running around with
dry as Americans, it may
Confederate flags, but
not have done much to
many of theseJews do feel
strengthen their vision of
like northerners don't real-
themselves as Jews.
ly understand them and
"It certainly hastened
how their communities
the process of assimila-
have evolved."
tion," said Aronson, who
It hardly surprises
attends Adat Shalom
Aronson
that such feel-
Synagogue. "Jews became
t Aronson
Rober
ings
should
linger so long
not just southerners or
after
the
fact.
The Civil
northerners, they became
War, he said, was "a crucible that
Americans."
America passed through, and it left
In his travels, Aronson has heard
no life unaffected." ❑
echoes of that long-ago conflict still
resonating among the Jews of the
contemporary South. "If you live in
-