When I married Roselle 50 years ago, I had no idea how extraordinary she was then and would be in life. She was a grade-school teacher, a middle-school teacher, a high-school teacher and a college teacher. She birthed and raised our two children, Jonas and Sarah, over 40 years ago. She made time to earn a doctorate after teaching and mothering all day long. She is a brilliant collage artist, but what I am writing about today is her ability as a writer of books. She has authored five excellent books, all of which have received high praise. Among them is her anthology on the Holocaust, which was developed to teach high-school students around the country and which has been distributed to tens of thousands of people.
Now she has outdone herself. This time she has written about Elvis Presley and his love of Jewish people and culture. You really owe it to yourself to read this book, no matter what your religious persuasion is. Most people have no idea about what a thoroughly decent man Elvis was. He was long on kindness, decency and tolerance. He was surrounded by Jewish friends, many of whom have written about their relationship with Elvis.
As it turns out, the sense that people have about Elvis being sort of a redneck is just all wrong. He was surrounded, Roselle tells us, by the Memphis Mafia, half of whom were Jewish. He was interested in the Kabbalah, and the biggest surprise of all is his own Jewish roots. Read the book to figure out just how dramatic and direct that lineage is. The book explores so many of his Jewish connections. Of course, two of the men in his life — his father, Vernon, and the always-greedy Col. Parker — were decidedly not Jewish. The major connection to Judaism came through the person he adored the most: his mother, Gladys. She advised him that it would be best not to talk about his Jewish roots, perhaps because of his anti-Semitic father, Vernon. Elvis did what his mom told him: He said little about it. However, it didn’t stop him from maintaining his Jewish connections.
So many of the stories in the book are compelling. My personal favorite is about his connections to his Jewish friend Bernard Lansky. Lansky saw this skinny kid looking through the window of the Lansky Brothers clothing store and Bernard invited him in and told him that he could buy on credit. Elvis never forgot that, and Bernard’s son, Hal, wrote the forward to Roselle’s book — read it but bring your handkerchief.
Then there is the incredible story of Rabbi Fruchter, who lived above the then-poor Presley family. Elvis was the designee to do all the things that Orthodox Jews cannot do on the Sabbath. As Roselle wrote, these tasks involved turning on the lights and running errands for them, including carrying the groceries. Rabbi Fruchter and his wife, Jeannette, sometimes invited Elvis to dinner and Jeannette said that Elvis always had a yarmulka in his pocket for those occasions.
Elvis was a big supporter of the Memphis Jewish Community Center where he played racquetball late at night so as not to cause a stir. He gave generously to support the Jewish Community Center and the Memphis Jewish Federation. In honor of his friendship with Rabbi Fruchter, he also generously supported the Hebrew Academy where Rabbi Fruchter had been the first principal.
These are just a few of the amazing stories and insights that Roselle spent five years researching as she assiduously worked on this project. She had an instinct about Elvis and his Jewish world, and it turned out that she was more than right about that.
It’s “The Jewish World of Elvis Presley.”  Get it — you won’t be sorry, I promise.
