An offhand remark, a choice bit of gossip, a curious object, obituaries, marital notices – you never know where you’re going to find a juicy historical revelation.
Just the other day, while making my way through the Vows column of Sunday’s New York Times – something I do religiously – I came across a fascinating nugget of history.
There, in a story about the nuptials of one Kramer Morgenthau and his bride Tracy Fleischman, which took place in a former Roman Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles, the reporter referred, in passing, to how the young couple ceremonially drank from a kiddush cup that had been in the distinguished Morgenthau family for generations.
A gift – a gift(!) – from Herbert Lehman, a former governor of New York State, a United States senator and a member in good standing of American Jewry’s elite, whose comings and goings were chronicled in Stephen Birmingham’s celebrated book, Our Crowd, this delicious little tidbit or grace note personalized the mighty Morgenthaus and the redoubtable Lehmans.
To know that they valued a kiddush cup, passing it down from one generation to another, not only made me smile. It quickened my resolve to be on the lookout for history even in the most unlikely of places.
