THE WEDDING OF HOUDINI'S FATHER

                    The only known writings of Houdini's father, catalogue page.

Houdini once said that his favorite writings were those of his father. Today we reveal, for the first time, a unique fragment of those writings. We found them buried in the archives of the Outagamie County Historical Society in Appleton,Wisconsin, where Houdini grew up.

In 1879, Houdini's father, Rev. Dr. M. S. Weiss performed a wedding ceremony for Joseph Ullman and Pauline Weinfeld of Appleton.

Joseph Ullman was the son of one of the town's leading citizens, Gabriel Ullman, a co-founder of Temple Zion, Rabbi Weiss's congregation. Ullman father and son both partnered in the horse-dealing business with David Hammel, future mayor of Appleton. Hammel, according to Houdini, is the man who convinced his father to move out to Wisconsin and become a professional rabbi.

In other words, this wedding would have been the social event of the season.

The wedding words, written and spoken by Houdini's father in Old High German, showed great originality and creativity. Rabbi Weiss told the couple something that does not appear in traditional Jewish writings about marriage, nor in traditional wedding texts :

Marriage is a paradisiacal gift. After paradise was lost for man, marriage was the only thing he saved, that he took - that he was allowed to take - with him.

Perhaps this attitude explains the great love expressed for Rabbi Weiss by his own wife, Houdini's mother, despite all the hardships of their later lives. We wonder if the highly-educated Weiss may have drawn his ideas not from the Books of Moses but from the poetry of Milton - "the paradise within and happier far" promised to Adam and Eve by the archangel Michael in Paradise Lost.

As for the Ullmans - they had six children and, as far as can be determined, lived happily ever after.



[Images courtesy Outagamie County Historical Society.]