//essays//
Spring 2019
Spring 2019
Spiritualists and the City
Sam Glauber-Zimra
West 83rd Street, 103rd Street and West End Avenue: these are streets I have traversed from the very beginning of my sojourn in New York City this past summer, whether carrying my new pots and pans to be immersed in the mikveh or making my way to the dear departed Big Bang Burger for a late-night meal. When I came to this city six months ago, I did not realize that my own path would intersect so intimately with a certain group of individuals, the Jewish Spiritualists, whom I have been researching. These Eastern European Jewish immigrants who, upon arriving on the shores of New York, came to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to seek communion with the spirits of the dead walked the same streets that I do now. Little did I know that in telling their story, I was in some ways writing my own.
At first glance, Judaism and Spiritualism have little in common. The latter movement—now an obscure historical curiosity—charted a meteoric ascent during the mid-nineteenth century, acquiring millions of followers due to the appeal of its simple doctrine: that spirits of the dead live on and may be contacted through mediums. Judaism, meanwhile, recoils from necromancy and all such attempts to converse with those no longer among us. Deuteronomy states, “There shall not be found among you…an inquirer of ghost or familiar spirit or one who seeks out the dead.” The passage concludes with a ringing denouncement: “For whosoever does these is the Lord’s abhorrence” (Deut. 18:10). A movement as wide-spread and popular as Spiritualism could hardly escape the attention of an entire group of people, however, no matter how harshly their leaders might subject it to condemnation, and in fact, there were Jewish spiritualists to be found. Two of these Jews, the Yiddish writers A. Almi (Eliyahu Khaym Sheps) (1892-1963) and Yitskhok Even (1861-1925), left behind personal accounts detailing the encounters they had with mediums on the Upper West Side, all within walking distance from my apartment.[1]
Both Almi and Even, each in their own way, had long been drawn to the otherworldly. As a young man living on the streets of Warsaw, Almi suffered from hallucinations and found himself drawn inexorably to a belief in the spirit world which he longed to disavow. He would come to characterize his conversion to Spiritualism as “literally against my will,” because “one existence is quite enough”—he didn’t want to believe that there was life beyond this one.[2] Even, a Hasid by birth, regaled himself with tales of Hasidic wonder-working and miraculous deeds performed long ago by rebbes and tsaddikim which he believed were no longer possible. “That which once was,” he writes, “will no longer be.” For him, Spiritualism was an opportunity to renew his belief in the hidden powers of the Hasidic past. It is no coincidence that the account in his memoir of his initiation into Spiritualism, which sprung from a chance encounter with a young Jewish Spiritualist woman on a rainy day in the Catskills, is juxtaposed with a wondrous story about Maggid of Mezeritch, an early figure in Hasidic history.
Each of these men, one haunted from his youth by spirits he could not escape, the other in search of the lost wonder of the now-dormant hasidic faith of his childhood in rural Galicia, sought answers in Spiritualism. Each, as a result, attended séances on the Upper West Side, leaving behind accounts riddled with motifs of dissonance and dislocation.
Almi writes that his Upper West Side séance, which took place in 1945, came about by accident. Travelling to meet a friend at his West 84th Street residence, he took a wrong turn and found himself unexpectedly on West 83rd Street when a sign in a window bearing the words “Spiritualist Medium” caught his eye. Entering a large empty room “bathed in sunlight,” he soon met the medium, a tall Jewish woman who spoke English with a Hungarian accent. As Almi sat and awaited the spirits, the medium muttered words under her breath, “as if she were reciting a prayer.” She provided accurate descriptions of Almi’s long-deceased father, Shloyme Zalmen, as well as his grandparents, whom she claimed to see in the “Other World,” even as her attempt at depicting his brother Leyzer, who had disappeared in California in 1929, fell short.
Almi’s other séance accounts are likewise marked by the appearance of dead figures from his past in Eastern Europe. He writes that in 1917, the spirit of the recently deceased famed Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz—Almi’s first literary sponsor in Warsaw—materialized before his eyes, while in another encounter, this time facilitated by a non-Jewish medium, he received a message from his former love interest, Sarah Perle, who had committed suicide in the wake of the scandal wrought by her illicit relationship with Almi. Appearing “like smoke” before his eyes, Sarah proclaimed in “sonorous and melodious Yiddish” that Almi was not to be held guilty for her tragic demise.
Reading Almi’s accounts, I am struck by the great distance lying between him and his visitors from the spirit realm. Living in New York City thousands of miles away from the graves of his family members and significant others buried in Poland, Spiritualism allowed him to overcome the physical dislocation from home and family that is the lot of any immigrant. I think of my parents living in Israel and the physical distance which separates us as I’m in New York. Though the distance is mitigated by WhatsApp and other innovations which were not available to the lonely Jewish immigrants who preceded me in New York City, it is a distance nonetheless.
Even’s Upper West Side séance, which took place around 1919, was marked by the dissonance between his ornate environs and the more ethereal purpose for which he had travelled to the neighborhood. Leaving the 103rd Street subway station—two stops down from my own subway stop at Columbia University—on a Wednesday afternoon, he emerged on Broadway before walking over to West End Avenue, lined, as today, with stately apartment buildings. “This disquieted me,” he writes, “for I had always imagined that a medium, the modern baalas-ov [necromancer], lives somewhere in a forlorn locale, where the bare surroundings already have people trembling from fear…and now I was led to a dwelling on the West End, the richest and most splendid area of New York.” Here too, I find myself nodding as I read Even’s account. His bewilderment and discomfort at the gilded trappings of New York Spiritualism have been mine as well, albeit in a slightly different context. Having been raised in a Jewish community in Portland, Oregon, whose economic profile was decidedly not upper-class, I am learning to feel comfortable in a religious community whose members often attend services dressed in designer suits and other expensive finery. And, like Even, I too have happily learned that the spirits can be found even where they appear least likely to reside.
Reading the memoirs of the Jewish Spiritualist, I see myself in their story of dissonance and dislocation, as I am yet another Jew living far from home in the raucous urban jungle of Manhattan. Although the circumstances of our lives in New York are starkly different—I am a grateful newlywed enjoying the opportunity to study in the United States, while Almi and Even fled poverty and persecution in the hopes of a better life in America—as I walk the streets of the Upper West Side I sense their spirits, in whatever manner, alongside me.
At first glance, Judaism and Spiritualism have little in common. The latter movement—now an obscure historical curiosity—charted a meteoric ascent during the mid-nineteenth century, acquiring millions of followers due to the appeal of its simple doctrine: that spirits of the dead live on and may be contacted through mediums. Judaism, meanwhile, recoils from necromancy and all such attempts to converse with those no longer among us. Deuteronomy states, “There shall not be found among you…an inquirer of ghost or familiar spirit or one who seeks out the dead.” The passage concludes with a ringing denouncement: “For whosoever does these is the Lord’s abhorrence” (Deut. 18:10). A movement as wide-spread and popular as Spiritualism could hardly escape the attention of an entire group of people, however, no matter how harshly their leaders might subject it to condemnation, and in fact, there were Jewish spiritualists to be found. Two of these Jews, the Yiddish writers A. Almi (Eliyahu Khaym Sheps) (1892-1963) and Yitskhok Even (1861-1925), left behind personal accounts detailing the encounters they had with mediums on the Upper West Side, all within walking distance from my apartment.[1]
Both Almi and Even, each in their own way, had long been drawn to the otherworldly. As a young man living on the streets of Warsaw, Almi suffered from hallucinations and found himself drawn inexorably to a belief in the spirit world which he longed to disavow. He would come to characterize his conversion to Spiritualism as “literally against my will,” because “one existence is quite enough”—he didn’t want to believe that there was life beyond this one.[2] Even, a Hasid by birth, regaled himself with tales of Hasidic wonder-working and miraculous deeds performed long ago by rebbes and tsaddikim which he believed were no longer possible. “That which once was,” he writes, “will no longer be.” For him, Spiritualism was an opportunity to renew his belief in the hidden powers of the Hasidic past. It is no coincidence that the account in his memoir of his initiation into Spiritualism, which sprung from a chance encounter with a young Jewish Spiritualist woman on a rainy day in the Catskills, is juxtaposed with a wondrous story about Maggid of Mezeritch, an early figure in Hasidic history.
Each of these men, one haunted from his youth by spirits he could not escape, the other in search of the lost wonder of the now-dormant hasidic faith of his childhood in rural Galicia, sought answers in Spiritualism. Each, as a result, attended séances on the Upper West Side, leaving behind accounts riddled with motifs of dissonance and dislocation.
Almi writes that his Upper West Side séance, which took place in 1945, came about by accident. Travelling to meet a friend at his West 84th Street residence, he took a wrong turn and found himself unexpectedly on West 83rd Street when a sign in a window bearing the words “Spiritualist Medium” caught his eye. Entering a large empty room “bathed in sunlight,” he soon met the medium, a tall Jewish woman who spoke English with a Hungarian accent. As Almi sat and awaited the spirits, the medium muttered words under her breath, “as if she were reciting a prayer.” She provided accurate descriptions of Almi’s long-deceased father, Shloyme Zalmen, as well as his grandparents, whom she claimed to see in the “Other World,” even as her attempt at depicting his brother Leyzer, who had disappeared in California in 1929, fell short.
Almi’s other séance accounts are likewise marked by the appearance of dead figures from his past in Eastern Europe. He writes that in 1917, the spirit of the recently deceased famed Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz—Almi’s first literary sponsor in Warsaw—materialized before his eyes, while in another encounter, this time facilitated by a non-Jewish medium, he received a message from his former love interest, Sarah Perle, who had committed suicide in the wake of the scandal wrought by her illicit relationship with Almi. Appearing “like smoke” before his eyes, Sarah proclaimed in “sonorous and melodious Yiddish” that Almi was not to be held guilty for her tragic demise.
Reading Almi’s accounts, I am struck by the great distance lying between him and his visitors from the spirit realm. Living in New York City thousands of miles away from the graves of his family members and significant others buried in Poland, Spiritualism allowed him to overcome the physical dislocation from home and family that is the lot of any immigrant. I think of my parents living in Israel and the physical distance which separates us as I’m in New York. Though the distance is mitigated by WhatsApp and other innovations which were not available to the lonely Jewish immigrants who preceded me in New York City, it is a distance nonetheless.
Even’s Upper West Side séance, which took place around 1919, was marked by the dissonance between his ornate environs and the more ethereal purpose for which he had travelled to the neighborhood. Leaving the 103rd Street subway station—two stops down from my own subway stop at Columbia University—on a Wednesday afternoon, he emerged on Broadway before walking over to West End Avenue, lined, as today, with stately apartment buildings. “This disquieted me,” he writes, “for I had always imagined that a medium, the modern baalas-ov [necromancer], lives somewhere in a forlorn locale, where the bare surroundings already have people trembling from fear…and now I was led to a dwelling on the West End, the richest and most splendid area of New York.” Here too, I find myself nodding as I read Even’s account. His bewilderment and discomfort at the gilded trappings of New York Spiritualism have been mine as well, albeit in a slightly different context. Having been raised in a Jewish community in Portland, Oregon, whose economic profile was decidedly not upper-class, I am learning to feel comfortable in a religious community whose members often attend services dressed in designer suits and other expensive finery. And, like Even, I too have happily learned that the spirits can be found even where they appear least likely to reside.
Reading the memoirs of the Jewish Spiritualist, I see myself in their story of dissonance and dislocation, as I am yet another Jew living far from home in the raucous urban jungle of Manhattan. Although the circumstances of our lives in New York are starkly different—I am a grateful newlywed enjoying the opportunity to study in the United States, while Almi and Even fled poverty and persecution in the hopes of a better life in America—as I walk the streets of the Upper West Side I sense their spirits, in whatever manner, alongside me.
[1] A. Almi, “Mayne Spiritualistishe Derfarungen,” in idem., Heshbn un Sakhakl (Buenos Aries: G. Kaplansky, 1959), 218-229; Yitskhok Even, "Mayne Erfarungen Mit Di Spiritualisten," Der Morgen Zshurnal 21, no. 6272 (May 11, 1922): 6--7; 21, no. 6274 (May 14, 1922): 4, 6.
[2] Almi, My Credo, 10.
[2] Almi, My Credo, 10.
//SAM GLAUBER-ZIMRA is a student in the School of General Studies. He can be reached at srg2179@columbia.edu.
Photo courtesy of "My Experiences with the Spiritualists" by Yitskhok Even.
Photo courtesy of "My Experiences with the Spiritualists" by Yitskhok Even.