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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Jews on the Texas Frontier
From department stores to frontier towns, the Jewish experience in Texas reveals a fascinating but often overlooked dimension of the state's cultural landscape. In this conversation with Dr. Bryan E. Stone, professor at Del Mar College and author of The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas, we'll learn about Jewish Texans as an often overlooked story.
Despite their small numbers, Jewish Texans wielded remarkable influence, Stone's explains that Jews are a "quintessential frontier people". His observations offers a fresh perspective on their experience as cultural navigators who defined themselves against majority cultures while building bridges between different worlds.
This conversation fills a crucial gap in Texas historiography while reminding us that history isn't merely an academic subject but the living context that shapes our everyday lives. Listen now to discover this hidden dimension of Texas heritage that challenges conventional understandings of the Lone Star State.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Sosbeck and I'm Gene Preuss, and this is Talking Texas History. Scott, we have a new show planned for everyone. We've been on a little bit of a hiatus here. You've been on sabbatical and I've been sick with some respiratory problems, actually since about December of 2024. Gotten better, gotten worse, gotten better, gotten worse, gotten better. So we're ready to get started with some new shows and, scott, I'm going to let you introduce this one. Okay, why don't you introduce our special guest today?
Speaker 1:Well, gene, we have with us today Brian Stone. He's at Delmore College, correct, brian? That's correct. So, just as we do with all of our guests, brian, how about you just get us started? Tell us about yourself, your background, your education, your current position, all that good bio stuff.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure. My name is Brian Edward Stone. I am a professor of history at Del Mar College, which is the two-year community college in Corpus Christi. I have been here now for 21 years. Wow, I have to remind myself. I know I have to go back and count it up on my abacus, otherwise I forget. But yeah, 21 years Before that I did a five-year stint at a community college in Montana and I was doing my grad work in Austin before that, at UT. So I have a doctorate in American Studies from University of Texas and Native Texan generations. Where'd you grow up, Brian? Dallas Grew up in Dallas, Although I was born in Houston. Grew up in Dallas. Sometimes say I grew up in Austin because that's where college is.
Speaker 1:There, you go. We all grew up when we were in college, right? Yeah, you know, that's one of those things we Texans know. You know, if you're living in Dallas, you don't want to tell people you're from Houston and vice versa, because they'll make fun of you, Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, I never. I never had that problem I love.
Speaker 1:I love how my friends Jean one of them that are from Houston they call Dallas North Oklahoma or South Oklahoma. Yeah, which, which you know, and so I just tell my that's West Louisiana. He doesn't call you a Yankee, does he Sometimes? Gene's from New Braunfels.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh, yeah Well.
Speaker 1:Brian, you're unique for being on here. No-transcript in the Lone Star State. Although it's actually very vibrant and very varied, it's not exactly the first thing that comes to mind for many people when they think of Texas and its history. And with all that in mind, why don't you give our listeners a few things that you think they should know? If you said you, our listeners a few things that you think they should know, if you said no, we had a great Paul Carlson junior in mind, mentor at Texas Tech. Every time we were in class and he was testing, he would say give me three things that I need to know about. So how, about three things that we need?
Speaker 1:to know about Jews in Texas.
Speaker 3:Good, I'm going to give you a fourth unrequested.
Speaker 1:That's even better.
Speaker 3:There are other scholars of Texas Jewish history and I don't want to take all of the credit. There's a sort of small cadre of us doing a lot of really good work, including some grad students who deserve not to be overlooked. But as far as sort of what I would summarize it, I would point out that there has been a Jewish population in Texas since there was Texas. It's been here the entire time, 1836 and beyond. It's a very small community. It always has been Best.
Speaker 3:Statistics put it at roughly about half a percent of the Texas population, One half of 1%, 0.6% roughly, which is very small. But it's had, I guess I'd say an outsized influence that because of where Jewish Texans kind of placed themselves, this kind of economic niche that they found, they tended to be far more visible than their numbers would kind of suggest. They were running Main Street stores, they were running well-known businesses, they were Neiman Marcus, they were Sanger Brothers, and it gave them kind of a visibility above and beyond what they ordinarily would have had with such a small population. And so that would be another thing. I'd also say there's been a little more inroad being made in terms of awareness of this community. I happened to pick up a copy just the other day of Ben Johnson's new book on Texas and it's got several references to the Jews in the state which is oh, is that right, I've got it.
Speaker 1:I just got it. I haven't read it. Well, you know, the index was the first thing I looked at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I was thrilled to see that, as far as I know, the first Texas history survey that includes anything of substance at all about the Jewish community. So I was really glad, really grateful to see that and that's a sign, I think, that as a field it's becoming a little more familiar and a little more acknowledged by Texas historians, which I'm glad for.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great. You know, this popped in my head. A question. I think about this and I always, you know, when we think about the experiences of so many groups in here. When we think about the experiences of so many groups in here, I think the perception of so many people is that Jews, particularly in the United States, aren't urban people and they tend to congregate in urban areas. But that's not always necessarily the case in Texas, is it? They also have an experience outside the city.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's a good point. It wasn't true. It mostly is now. And today the Jewish population is probably 90% urban or suburban. But at the beginning and through really World War II you're absolutely right it was dispersed throughout the state. I think around 1900 it was like maybe 30 or 40 percent urban and the rest were scattered, little towns, little communities all across the state. I mean literally hundreds of towns um the, the move to the suburbs and the move to the cities, of course, since world war ii is pretty universal, uh, and they've been part of that, yeah, um, but but yeah, in the 19th century and early 20th they were quite scattered.
Speaker 1:And we could even call them a frontier people.
Speaker 3:Well, you could. Somebody should write that they should, couldn't they?
Speaker 1:You know, one part of this that's very prominent when you talk about the history of the Jewish people in Texas, of course, is the whole experiences of the Galveston movement and Rabbi Cohen that's going on in that. So, and I think that's another thing it's I mean it's a significant part of late 19th century Texas history. That is other than a couple of books, and I know I'm in an article here and there and some of the things that you've come up with. It's not discussed that much. So why don't we also talk a little bit about that? Where I was, the Galveston Movement, sure Sure.
Speaker 3:So let me describe what it is first and kind of talk about it historiographically.
Speaker 1:I'm going to let you do that instead of me. I might screw it up, I'll do it.
Speaker 3:Starting in 1907, this was an organized effort led out of New York City to try to divert Jewish immigration that was coming from Europe at that time and, of course, enormous numbers to try to divert it from New York to the American West. The goal was to try to disperse this flow of immigration away from the big cities, particularly the Lower East Side of New York, and to try to spread it more broadly throughout the United States. The concern of the movement's leaders was that the kind of large urban center of the Lower East Side was going to give rise to anti-Semitism. It was lack of opportunity for the Jewish immigrants who arrived there and the hope was that they might do better in a place like. They selected Galveston as the recipient destination, started selling the idea to potential Jews in Russia, people who were planning to come but hadn't selected a destination yet, and encouraged them to buy their ticket to Galveston instead of New York. If they did, then they would be matched with a job somewhere in the interior, sent there on the train at no cost to them and sort of connected to the Jewish community in that place that would look after them, take care of them, get them situated.
Speaker 3:And so from 1907 until it stopped in 1914, this brought about 10,000 Russian Jews directly through Texas to more than 200 places around the United States, but about a quarter of them stayed in Texas to more than 200 places around the United States, but about a quarter of them stayed in Texas.
Speaker 3:And so they helped to kind of support or augment Jewish communities in Dallas and Houston and San Antonio, certainly El Paso, but also big communities in Kansas City and Minneapolis and Denver, los Angeles got this kind of influx of Jewish migration that helped them build institutions and to support those communities. And so it is a Texas, it is a piece of Texas history, no doubt because Texas was the center of it. And Henry Cohen, who you mentioned, who was the rabbi in Galveston for 60 years, I think was really a focus of the movement. He was not really its leader or organizer, but he was kind of the main ambassador. He was the guy who met the ships at the dock, welcomed everybody in, spoke to them in Yiddish, which not a lot of Texans could do and sort of helped them navigate through the customs process.
Speaker 3:The immigration process, eased their concerns, found them kosher food and lodging if they needed it and sort of took care of them for the day or two they were in Galveston. So it is a very interesting moment in Texas history and in American Jewish history.
Speaker 1:It's a significant moment. You know there's large areas particularly, but even things. For example, marshall in East Texas. Significant Jewish population in Marshall Two mayors.
Speaker 3:Two Jewish mayors of Marshall married to each other but nevertheless and you could see something similar in a lot of towns throughout Texas the Galveston movement put them in probably 25 or 30 Texas communities and some of them stayed.
Speaker 3:A lot of them moved on, but Tyler got like 80, you know just these sort of ridiculous numbers of people coming to small towns, and so it certainly has some impact on those towns. That is something that, frankly, has not been studied. The movement from the sort of ground level. How did this affect towns like Tyler or even Houston? How did it affect the Jewish communities in those towns? That's research that I'm actually trying to do now. I haven't made a ton of progress, but I'm working on that. It's been looked at sort of from the big level, the national movement. It hasn't been looked at as how did this actually affect communities and individuals, and that's something I really would like to look at.
Speaker 1:When you get it all worked out. I know a journal, stephen F Austin, that would really love to have an article.
Speaker 3:That's good to know.
Speaker 1:I'm working on it.
Speaker 3:The problem is it's 10,000 people and it's 236 communities. Yeah, God, just having time to do these things is just yeah. The granular research on that takes some time, so I'm working as many classes as you have to do it.
Speaker 1:you know your day job takes away from doing some of that right yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm curious about is there's probably not a large Jewish population. How do you maintain in those situations? How do you maintain your faith? How do you maintain your culture? You know, I guess they could maybe have temples in the homes, meeting in the homes at first. How do you do it? Do you join other faiths? Do you let you know the question of you know, reform Judaism, which is, I've heard some people say, is very akin to Protestantism, that a lot of Americanisms have joined into that, and I know that some more orthodox or conservatives may not be as agreeable to that in today's world. But how did people maintain their faith in those days?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean that's a big question and that's obviously one of the critical ones. I mean that's a big question and that's obviously one of the critical ones. The first thing that I'd say is that those who came to Texas, those who were willing to come here in the 19th century, when there were hardly any Jewish institutions and a very small community and no rabbis, maybe one or two and particularly if they're going to move out to some little town, they're not going to have a very significant community those people are not the most diligent in their practice, right. Those are not the most pious. The people who come under those circumstances are the ones who are willing to be flexible and willing to adapt, at least up to a point. Right, they're not going to adapt away everything, but they'll do those things, those observances that they can maintain within that environment. Sometimes they would sort of travel long distances to get to synagogue, at least once in a while. Sometimes they would order kosher food if that was important to them and bring it home. But for the most part they just, in those kinds of circumstances, just had to adapt. You know, adapt had to do what they could. One of I think the most part they just in those kinds of circumstances, just had to adapt. You know, adapt had to do what they could.
Speaker 3:One of, I think, the most important narratives here, though one of the most important stories, is how effectively they did that even under those circumstances that sense of Jewish identity was not lost, at least by a critical number of them.
Speaker 3:In bigger cities obviously it's easier, and once larger numbers of immigrants start to come in it does get more complex.
Speaker 3:But not really until after 1900 or so around 1900, was there a significant Orthodox community. The early immigrants who came, or migrants who came, were predominantly Reformed, which, as you say, was the group that is somewhat more, I guess, progressive maybe is a word or reformist adaptable less rigid in sort of their understanding of their observance them were literally right off the boat from Russia and were much more traditional in their views and they were going to have to find communities that would support that. Often they did, as you said, practice in their own homes If there wasn't a synagogue. The Riskin family who I've written about recently ran a sort of, I guess, an informal kind of temple worship space above the store in their apartment in downtown Eagle Pass and brought in a Torah, the scroll, to worship with and held services there regularly that they led themselves and that was a pretty typical experience. That was in the 1950s and 60s, but that kind of thing went on all the way back.
Speaker 1:They would do what they could given their circumstances. Yeah, in this, this whole experience, whole experience, is uh something, something you've written about. I'm gonna kind of ask you know you might think we can go ahead, it's kind of my segue before we get into this. You've written about how Jewish immigrants fit in to a dominant Anglo society in Texas. You know, in finding that place, that they could fit in. Give us kind of a glimpse at what you found about how that worked and what some of the development Sure.
Speaker 3:Well, it opens a very complicated thing, because Jewish racial identity is extremely complex and difficult to define. There are Jews who are members of virtually every racial group that we would recognize on the planet. There are Black Jews, latino Jews, asian Jews, you know, but here in the United States, and particularly in Texas, the majority are Ashkenazic, meaning of European background, and so they're white right, or at least as Texans understand what white means. You know, jews are white Right, but Judaism is, of course, not a race unto itself. It's, it's a religion and therefore it can, at least primarily it is, and so there's an element of choice, of, of selection. A person can choose their degree of observance, or can choose to convert in or convert out, which are generally not thought to be true of race racial groups. And so it's a race but it's not a race. It's kind of like a race but it's kind of not like a race. And so, placed within this framework of Texas history and Texas society, they tend to fall into the Anglo category, just because Texas historians, unfortunately, have not permitted very many categories, right, you're basically, you're white or Anglo, you're Hispanic, you're Mexican, or you're Black or you're Native, and there aren't really a lot of ways to fit into the interstices between those.
Speaker 3:And Jews really are in the middle sort of among those. They're white but not quite. As it's often said, white but not white the same way that other Anglo groups are. There's always a difference, there's always an awareness that we're in that group but not in that group. And so, on the one hand, being white of course gave them, in a place like Texas, tremendous advantage, tremendous privilege. They were white in a segregated like Texas tremendous advantage, tremendous privilege. They were white in a segregated society for much of the 20th century and that certainly gave them advantage over being black or Latino. But at the same time, within white society they tend not to fit as well, you know, as comfortably as they might wish. And so trying to sort of navigate those lines, to be in a group but not in the group at the same time, or of a group and not of it at the same, time was kind of always the difficulty.
Speaker 1:It brings up something you know cause it probably in Texas, but of course nationwide also. When you talk about the Jewish experience and this whole idea of you, know where do you go in the society. The civil rights movement, brian kind of, was a watershed event for jews to some extent, because it was almost like, okay, we've had this white and I may be getting a little wrong white privilege to some extent, but now we identify more with the oppressed in this situation, because there were so many jews that were prominent leaders in the civil rights movement. Did that go on in in Texas? How much tech did that?
Speaker 3:happen.
Speaker 2:Before you get to that, let me ask another question which I think probably needs to be addressed first. So you're saying that most are Ashkenazi, but were there Hasidic that came in at all? We don't see that very often, except in more modern times.
Speaker 3:More recently. Yeah, I mean, I'm not aware of any Hasidic communities. I mean Orthodox communities, meaning more traditionally minded, but not Hasidic, which is a particular sect.
Speaker 2:And which is mostly Russian, and they themselves in the 1870s had experienced pogroms and other things in europe. So I mean we unfortunately in our history have a long there's a long story of anti-semitism that traces back thousands of years. So you know sc Scott's question about how Jewish people in the civil rights movement, I mean in Southern history, there is a rich tradition where Jewish groups often sided with civil rights organizations. However, there were some that did not. So now I guess I wanted to get that out there and throw that into the mix before you answer the question.
Speaker 3:Okay, very good, it's all a little, I think, a little more nuanced than we're able to get here, because I mean, yes, there were Jews in the South and nationally who did certainly advocate on behalf of civil rights. When we think about Jewish involvement in civil rights in the South, though, we're usually thinking of people who came from the North, activists who came down during Freedom Summer, or attorneys who came down and worked in legal practice to defend civil rights. The local Southern Jewish communities were, maybe understandably, but a little wary, to say the least, of sort of getting out in front of that issue. There were, as I'm sure you know, there were many acts of violence against Jewish institutions throughout the South. The synagogue in Atlanta was blown up, jewish community center in Nashville was blown up.
Speaker 3:There were bombings here and there all through the era, and that had the intended effect of getting Jewish communities whose synagogues, those, were to be a little reluctant to put a target on themselves, and so, whatever their personal views might have been, which, I do think, leaned certainly in favor of civil rights, but they were not usually among the activists, at least those who were located in the South, and that's true in Texas, there were certainly sympathizers of civil rights, and some very vocally, but by and large the Jewish community tended to be under the radar, whatever their views might have been.
Speaker 3:I think an important element there too to remember is that because of, again, the economic niche that they were in, where Jews tended to be store owners, shopkeepers, department store owners, they were the ones doing the segregating. To a great degree right, it was their businesses where segregation occurred and that put them in a very difficult position because they couldn't really go against the tide of public opinion if they wanted to survive and they couldn't break the law if they wanted to survive. But at the same time that could not have been comfortable for people who are aware that they also have a difference and that in a society where difference is mistreated, you don't want to be on the on the downside of that, on the opposite side of that, and so it makes. The civil rights era was an extremely fraught one, you know, for everybody, but but in this kind of particular way, I think, for the Jewish community yeah, they had to.
Speaker 1:There was a thin line that you had to traverse there. Well, you and I we gave a little. We gave a little humorous nod, of course, in our discussion earlier, but I want to go back to it to some extent, because you're the author of a very important book, I think, in Texas history, one that you're going to pick up and start reading about Jews in Texas. I always tell everybody this is the first one to pick up to give you some insight. It's, the title is the Chosen Folks. Jews on the Frontiers of Texas Come up from the University of Texas Press and in the book and this is what always brings up to me and, being somewhat of a Western historian, it always hits me this way you call Jews a quintessential frontier people and I think that's just utterly fascinating. Why do you say so?
Speaker 3:Give our listeners some reason why you say that when I started trying to write this book and it was my graduate, my dissertation in grad school, that became a book and I was trying to sort of figure out how to explain a lot of what we've been talking about, about how Jews kind of place themselves within this matrix of other groups and of Texas society, and I found the frontier kind of a useful metaphor, I guess, or a frame of reference, not so much the way that of course, it used to be used, that, frederick Jackson Turner, this is a line with civilization on one side and you know, not that, but the kind of new Western historian way, which was pretty new actually at the time. I was doing this work of thinking of it more as sort of a conceptual space. That's like the place that contains the differences between the groups on either side. And so the frontier is the place where there's one kind of people on one side and another kind of people on the other side and they're interacting or competing or confronting each other. And they're interacting or competing or confronting each other and, as I thought about that, I sort of realizing Jews are in that sense always among these groups of others.
Speaker 3:They're navigating these frontiers all around them, everywhere, almost everywhere they've ever lived, they've been a minority. I think this is true. They've been a minority group in more places than probably anyone else who's ever lived, and so that experience of having to interact with a majority culture and define yourself in contrast to that majority culture, is in a way kind of a very distinctively Jewish experience. And that's the frontier experience. And so I sort of realized, in this sense they're like on a frontier, and I found all kinds of ways throughout the book to kind of extend that metaphor to a lot of the experiences they had later, the historical experiences, to realize this is a case of navigating that contrast or understanding that difference.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of what I meant by that and, like I said, it's outstanding folks.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that I appreciate that and you've got a book that's just come out, a unique work that you just edited. On your latest book it's I. You know. It's one of those fascinating and valuable historical studies that are hard to do, where you take someone else's work that they did at their during their contemporary time to some extent, and then you edit it and offer analysis of it. The title it's it's a. It's a journal that you took up that was kept by Morris Riskin, an Eagle Pass merchant right. It's titled Neither Fish Nor Fowl, a Mercantile Jewish Family on the Rio Grande, and, of course, eagle Pass. We don't think about Jews in Eagle Pass, do we?
Speaker 3:No, no, nobody does.
Speaker 1:So give us an overview and an insight into that work and how you came about it and all the not-appropriate things about a new club.
Speaker 3:Sure, well, I mean very fortunately, this one was brought to me. It was published by the Texas Tech University Press and they received the manuscript and wanted to publish it, but it needed editorial work. It was in pretty good shape, but it just needed academic paraphernalia and all of that, and so they were looking for somebody to do it, and I had done a similar book a few years before. This is actually the second memoir that I've edited, and so I was thrilled to be invited in, because the book is amazing. It was written by Morris Riskin, r-i-s-k-i-n-d, who was born in Eagle Pass in 1911. This is a little town on the Texas border, of course, with Mexico, and his parents, who were both immigrants from Russia, had arrived in Eagle Pass by way of Chicago. You know, as one does the direct train from Chicago to Eagle Pass.
Speaker 1:The cultural shock picture I can't even imagine.
Speaker 3:Morris's dad started the department store clothing store, the cultural shock picture 50s and 60s and 70s. And he writes about being Jewish in this sort of unexpected place and how they maintain their practice and identity with a very small number of other Jews in the area, connecting with other communities in Del Rio and McAllen and Brownsville and sort of trying to kind of hold the community together on the border. And it's a really it's his life story, it's Morris's life pretty much beginning to end, but it's got so much detail in it about what it's like to just live in this particular environment, not just as Jewish, but what Eagle Pass was like in the teens and 20s and 30s and during the war and it's, I think, really interesting from that standpoint. But of course it is about a Jewish community sort of holding it together under difficult circumstances, how they connect with the non-Jewish community, which is of course a much larger community, and also the store, the history of the business and what it was to sort of run a downtown department store, how they acquire merchandise, how they make selections about what to carry, relations with employees and clientele who come up from Mexico to either work for them or shop with them and sort of treating this as a history of a border business, and so it's very interesting from that standpoint as well. It's a good border history.
Speaker 3:My role was to basically take Morris's manuscript that his son, peter Riskind, had kind of worked up into something publishable and just kind of the narrative needed some tweaking, it needed a little cutting and pasting, but mostly to write an introduction, write footnotes, try to explain what all these things are. Morris was an extremely knowledgeable guy for living where he lived. He was extremely well-read and extremely worldly, traveled a lot, lived in Los Angeles for 16 years, was a lawyer and had a very sophisticated outlook on things, and so some of what he throws into the text has to be kind of explained. He drops these references and it's like you know what is he talking about. So I wrote a lot of footnotes sort of explaining every reference and person and the Texas history that he refers to, and that was a big part of what my role was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did a good job. It's very well cited and noted about this that you get a good sense on that. You know, it's kind of an amazing thing. I mean, when you say we come into Eagle Pass, I mean there couldn't have been that many Jews in Eagle Pass other than the Ritzan on this, but the acceptance there seemed to be. They didn't. You know, looking at the book, then you look at this, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of lack of acceptance amongst people in Eagle Patch of the Ritz Because in fact they were considered very prominent members of the community.
Speaker 3:That's true, the population there, the Jewish population, was never more than 60. 60 people at its peak, and that was around World War Two, when there were soldiers stationed there from around the country, some of whom were Jewish, which augmented the number, but there were only three or four families that were there for more than a few years.
Speaker 2:So it was a very small community, so so. So go ahead. How? How, when you're, when you've got a community that small and you're kind of isolated, how do we marry?
Speaker 3:Oh boy, there's. That's a great. There's a great story in the book. Morris's parents were married before they got here, as were most of the other Jewish families. They married wherever they came from. Morris met his wife during the years he was living in Los Angeles and she was born and raised there. He went to college and law school in LA high school and college and law school and he met her in Los Angeles and then, after he moved back to Eagle Pass, he started writing her letters trying to sort of you know woo her long distance and she bought it. I mean, he somehow convinced her leave Los Angeles, marry me, move to Eagle Pass.
Speaker 1:I'd like to have been the person looking at her face when she got off the train in Eagle.
Speaker 3:Pass, or what a hero he must have been, I mean like the seducer of all time, I don't know. But he persuaded her and they married and she moved to Eagle Pass and she lived there her whole life. She learned Spanish and fit into the community there, and so his children. They raised four kids. He and his wife Ruth raised four kids in Eagle Pass and I think they all married people they met at school. They all went out of state to college, and so I assume that's where their spouses came from. But it was always, of course, a concern, and not just in Eagle Pass. I mean, we were talking about all the little Texas communities. A lot of them had to travel to find spouses. They'd take a trip up north somewhere and come back with a wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that went on quite often, you know, yeah Well, all the fascinating folks. It's that the latest book, neither fishing or foul, a mercantile Jewish family on the real grant. You don't have it yet. Pick it up Texas tech press. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:John Brock, if you're listening, I'm selling books for you, that's right. I want a commission, john. I want a commission. So, brian, we ask people a question, we ask everybody this as Brian Stone.
Speaker 3:What do you know try to get across to students about history and teaching and education is that history is not a subject of study. History is our lives, that we live in it, that everyone experiences it, everyone is a participant and a creator of history, that it's not a subject isolated from our experience, but it is our experience and therefore it, hopefully, is something that they can connect to on a more personal level, rather than just memorize these names or memorize the names of these battles or whatever, but to realize that it's a living thing that sort of surrounds them. And that's certainly true now, I mean, we are in the middle of it. I think we're experiencing a lot more history than we would like, and I think to understand the subject that way helps make it more meaningful and more relevant and also, I think, helps, hopefully, people understand what's happening to them.
Speaker 1:Well, that's you know what. That's much more profound than I could come up with. So I think that's great. I didn't know that's much more profound than. I could come up with, so I think that's great. Ron, thank you so much for coming back and doing this. This is this has been great. It's a great, one of our great podcasts. I appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 3:So thank you all very much.
