8 | NOVEMBER 4 • 2021 

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
My Superior (Wis.) 
Jewish Genealogy: 
 
From Historic
Baseball Diamonds
to Bob Dylan
I

’m a singer by name and 
by trade. I am neither a 
sports fan nor an expert on 
the subject. But this summer, 
after seeing the Associated 
Press report that 
“no practicing 
Orthodox 
Jewish player 
has made it to 
the big leagues,
” 
I challenged 
sports journalists 
to recognize the 
most observant 
Orthodox Jew to 
have played and won the World 
Series, Morrie Arnovich. 
I never imagined the article 
about my hometown heroes 
from Superior, Wis., would have 
led me to discover Morrie was 
also my blood relative.
I didn’t know why I cared so 
much about Morrie Arnovich. 
After the Forward published my 
article, I heard from journalists 
and sports fans who questioned 
my research and politely cast 
doubt on Morrie’s religious 
observance, as well as from 
some of his family who had 
thanked me for correcting the 
record.
While I was able to accurately 
answer most questions in the 
spirit my father, a reference 
librarian, would have, I was 
surprised to discover that 
Arnovich, like the recently 

drafted Arizona Diamondbacks 
pitcher Jacob Steinmetz, 
actually did play in some games 
on Shabbat and other holy 
days while he was in the major 
leagues. But Arnovich still 
proudly considered himself to 
be an observant Orthodox Jew. 
As I dug even deeper, I 
found that, according to the 
oral history delivered by his 
first cousin, Rabbi Alex Hyatt 
(originally Arnovich), in the 
Litvak shul Agudath Achim 
in Superior, the strictest 
observance of Shabbat — 
shomer Shabbos — was 
especially required of the 
chazzan. This tradition had 
gone all the way back to his 
hometown of Wilkomer, 
Lithuania. 
I intentionally avoided 
questioning any of the players’ 
claims to Orthodoxy. But 
from these conversations with 
family, journalists and critics, 
I learned that while Rabbi 
Hyatt undoubtedly expected 
everyone to observe the 
Sabbath, he also recognized 
the reality of ministering to a 
remote industrial town where 
Jews worked for non-Jewish 
businesses and could not always 
be shomer Shabbat. 
Morrie’s father was a gas 
station attendant and his 
family observed to the highest 
extent that they could under 

the circumstances. But Rabbi 
Hyatt had to require at least 
the minimum requirement 
of the chazzan being shomer 
Shabbat from all of those who 
observed in the community. I 
also learned that prior to 1950, 
far fewer Jews were shomer 
Shabbat than today, including 
the Orthodox. Labor laws 
eventually allowed for a two-
day weekend and Orthodox 
Jews later made greater efforts 
to encourage universal Shabbat 
observance.

ZIMMERMAN’S BLUES
Responding to my last article, 
one journalist felt that the 
crossroads between Bob Dylan 
and Civil War hero Gen. John 
Henry Hammond’s family, 
Superior’s founders, was the 
most interesting part. 
 In the last year of his life, my 
father helped to research David 
Engel’s acclaimed 1997 book, 
Just Like Bob Zimmerman’s 
Blues. It was Gen. Hammond’s 
grandson, music producer John 
Henry Hammond II, who was 
key in launching Dylan’s career. 
The first chapters include 
many details on Dylan’s Jewish 
upbringing in Minnesota, just 
accross Duluth Harbor from 
Superior, Wis. 
Superior’s Jewish community 
was founded by the Kaners 
who also were from Wilkomer. 

Many of them went by the first 
name Shabsie, a Yiddish name. 
There were so many Shabsie 
Kaners in Superior, they had to 
distinguish them by their street 
name or other distinguishing 
characteristics: “Shabsie 
Downtown,
” “Shabsie Connor’s 
Point,
” “Shabsie the John Kaner,
” 
and so on.
Tugging on that thread, I 
learned that Bob Zimmerman 
was given the Hebrew 
name Shabtai to honor his 
grandfather Benjamin David 
Solemovitz (Stone), whose 
Russian patronymic surname 
was taken from his great-
grandfather, Sholem Karon. 
Shabtai is the Hebrew form 
of Shabsie in Yiddish, which 
means “a child of Shabbat.
”
The Shabsie name was 
carried down in the family for 
generations from Dylan’s sixth 
great-grandfather, Girsh Shabsel 
Karanovich. The Karanovich 
family became the Karons, 
Kaners, Canners, etc., and 
the Arnovich rabbis were all 
cousins who had encouraged 
one another to escape Russian 
pogroms in the solace of 
Superior.
My father never could have 
discovered this in his day. His 
research as a librarian preceded 
the internet. It was before 
the digitization of countless 
genealogical records, digital 

Cantor 
Daniel 
Singer
Times of 
Israel

‘New’ mishpachah: Cincinatti Reds left fielder Morrie Arnovich and singer Bob Dylan.

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