Background
David Lefkowitz was born in 1875 in Eperies, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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David Lefkowitz
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He opposed the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which had been revived in 1915. lieutenant was strongly opposed to immigrants who were Jews and Catholics from eastern and southern Europe. Sadie Lefkowitz was also active in the National Association of Temple Sisterhoods.
A Mason, Rabbi Lefkowitz continued to attend meetings knowing that Klansmen were present.
He discussed incidents of violence to convince other members that the Klan was inhibiting progress of their booming city. There they learned English, started school and grew up.
Lefkowitz graduated from City College of New York in 1894. He completed graduate studies at University of Cincinnati in 1899, and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in the same city in 1900.
Lefkowitz first led Temple B"nai Jeshurun, a congregation in Dayton, Ohio, from 1900 to 1920.
In 1920 Lefkowitz went to Dallas to Temple Emanu-El, where he served until 1949. A growing industrial city, Dallas attracted both black and white migrants from rural areas, as well as European immigrants, making for a volatile social mix. The rapid changes aroused the fears that encouraged growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the city.
Lefkowitz was one of the civic leaders who spoke against the Klan.
He became a Mason and knew that Klansmen attended their meetings He appealed to civic spirit by telling how the KKK"s hostility to newcomers and violent incidents would work against the city"s reputation and growth.
While in Dallas, Lefkowitz helped organize "TAMC Hillel Club" (Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Hillel), the oldest Hillel Foundation organization in the United States, three years before the national Hillel Foundation was organized at the University of Illinois. Lefkowitz became interested in the history of Jews in Texas.
He and Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston interviewed many early settlers and their families, to gather accounts of German Jews as well as later Jews from eastern Europe.
They wrote a historical account of Jewish Texans for the Texas Centennial in 1936.
