Henry L. Scharff’s letter of Feb. 7...

Henry L. Scharff’s letter of Feb. 7 was one of the most fascinating I have ever read, about Jewish pioneers and settlers in early Texas. You ought to hire him to write a weekly historical column. He wrote about a distant cousin, Al Scharff.

Perhaps fewer have heard of another great Jewish “gunslinger,” Chaim Moshe Solomon, who left Russia in the 1880s and settled in Palestine. The rulers then, the Turks, like the British later, refused to let Jews arm themselves. But Solomon, who lived with Bedouins and learned their ways, ignored them and hired himself out as an armed guard at outlying settlements. There he protected Jews from Arab raiders.

Back in 1977, when I returned to the United States after 25 years on Israeli kibbutzim, a popular song was written about him and played on Israeli radio.

S. I. MESTMAN

Canoga Park