“Being Jewish mattered to him for his whole life,” Pinkert noted. His father sold the Bible when the family was struggling, but Houdini was able to buy it back later in life. The exhibit includes his father’s Hebrew Bible with marginal notes written by Houdini. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Posters “He was trained in Hebrew studies by his father and later by a Rabbi Drachman, but I don’t think he had more than a handful of years of public schooling.” Houdini smiles with the two important women in his life, his mother, Cecilia, left, and his wife, Bess. “It’s hard to imagine, given the success that Harry would have, how little secular education he had,” Pinkert said.

He returned to his father, who had moved to New York looking for a job, and they worked together at a necktie factory, among other odd jobs. “There’s a postcard that he sent to his mom, saying that he was OK and that he would come back.” Not much is known about that year, said museum deputy director Tracie Guy-Decker. Houdini left home at 12 for a year to reduce the family burden.

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