Jews as Cowboys and Frontiersmen

Shalom Sherman’s act, the Jewish Cowboy (Jan. 12) is sure-fire humor. What could be more laughable than a Jewish cowboy? Jews should stick to their funny beanies and schleppy gestures and accent and stay in their little niches and let the he-men of the world do the jobs that take guts and brawn and grit! This guy is an Israeli?

His act is hardly novel. Bigots have been doing it for years. I don’t know why he never got a better grip on what this country is all about, but I’d like to tell him a Texas story.

I had a distant cousin who was quite a hero. He was a Texan, something of a gunslinger. He fought the only battle this side of the Atlantic in World War I. His name was Al Scharff and he single-handedly (he had a couple of Indian guides) found a German radio installation on the Mexican Sonoran coast and wiped it out in a gun battle.

Garland Roark, a well known Texan writer (“Fair Wind to Java”) describes this in his biography of Scharff, “The Coin of Contraband.” Scharff later became involved, as an agent of this country, in other adventures. He found a Texas girl, Ida Nussbaum, to fall in love with and marry. Her father, Joe Nussbaum, had come to Texas in a covered wagon. Among other things, Joe ranched, and, in the early 1880s, he and his brother Julius ran 4,000 longhorns on 33,000 acres in Limestone County. Now old-timers will tell you that nursemaiding longhorns--who would kill you if you gave them the chance--took some doing.

The Nussbaums were highly respected there in Limestone County and did a lot for their fellow Texans. So much that they wanted to name a town after them. Joe didn’t want a town named Nussbaum, so the citizens named it after another Jew--Ben Hur. It’s there still, you can find it on your atlas. Sherman ought to know of other Texans who just happened to be Jewish: Sam Cohen, trail rider and Comanche fighter (I doubt anyone ever called him Sammy); Don Adolfo Sterne, who was a close friend of Sam Houston, and some of those skinny kids who stood up with me and raised their right hands that day in December, 1941, before we entrained for San Diego and Marine Corps boot camp. Most never came home to Texas.

I’m sure the many Jewish citizens of Kerrville, which is not that small a town, will be surprised that Sherman gave the locals their first glimpse of a Jew. Space won’t permit even a sketch of Jewish pioneer history of Texas and the West--I suggest he journey around to some of the frontier and mining area’s Jewish cemeteries and read up on folk like Aaron Stein (shotgun rider for Wells Fargo). Does he know that the first sheriff of L.A.--and it was a tough town--was Jewish?

No one says we shouldn’t poke fun at our own, but we should know something about them, too.

HENRY L. SCHARFF

Thousand Oaks