CHAPTER XXVIII.
NEW SYNAGOGUES AND TEMPLES. IMMIGRATION FROM RUSSIA PRIOR TO 1880.
Continued increase in the wealth and importance of the German-Jewish congregations—New and spacious synagogues and temples erected in various parts of the country in the “sixties” and the “seventies”—Problems of Russian-Jewish immigration prior to 1880—Economic condition of the Jewish masses in Russia worse in the “golden era” than under Nicholas I.—Emigration from Russia after the famine of 1867–68 and after the pogrom of Odessa in 1871—Presumption of the existence of a Hebrew reading public in New York in 1868—The first Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals.
The charitable institutions which were founded or enlarged in this period were not the only indication of the improved and settled condition of the Jews who came here in the preceding half century. These institutions were later to be even more enlarged, and numerous others were to be established to meet the demands made upon them in the following quarter century. It is to the synagogues or temples which date from these times that we have to turn in order to gain a true conception of the general condition of the Jews. In this respect there is a striking similarity between the condition of the Sephardim at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the German Jews at the end of its third quarter. In both cases the numerical growth almost stopped with the cessation of immigration from the home country. The small number of arrivals and the natural increase were barely enough to replace the losses through death and through estrangements which were caused by outright defections or by the slower process of mixed marriages. And just as the Spanish and Portuguese element in American Judaism, which had barely held its own after the suspension of the Inquisition, permitted the surviving Marranos to remain where they were, and improved conditions in Western Europe obviated the necessity of the Sephardim of Holland, France or England looking for new homes, so did the much larger and more active German element practically stop growing numerically after the emancipation of the Jews in the German States. The number of Jews who arrived here from Germany after 1880 is insignificant, and the same may be said of the relative number of German-Jewish synagogues which were established after that time.
As a matter of fact the formation of German congregations stopped several years earlier. The better cohesiveness and discipline among the Americanized Jews made splits a very rare occurrence. Only in large cities the removal of many members of a congregation too far from the location of its synagogue caused the formation of new congregations, consisting mostly of members of older bodies, with some accessions of immigrants from the Slavic countries. In the smaller cities there is even now only one German-American congregation, usually dating from before the Civil War or from the decade following it. In the larger cities there may be several of them of about the same age, except in some communities, like Charleston. S. C., where the Spanish and the Germans are fused in the one Reform congregation, or in New York, where each section of the community is sufficiently large to have several congregations of its own.
It is therefore not to the increase in the number of German-Jewish congregations, but to their increase in wealth and importance, as demonstrated by the increase in the size and splendor of the synagogues and temples, that we have to look for proof of the great progress which was made in that period. The most representative congregations of New York have been described in the preceding parts of this work. In Philadelphia a new, spacious synagogue of its oldest congregation, Mickweh Israel, was dedicated in 1860, and the new beautiful temple of the Congregation Rodef Shalom, “one of the earliest German-Jewish congregations in America,” was built in 1870. Kehillah Anshe Maarab of Chicago had its first large synagogue ready (converted from a church) in 1868. The second oldest congregation, Bene Shalom, erected its first temple, on the corner of Harrison street and Fourth avenue, in 1864, “at that time the handsomest Jewish house of worship in Chicago.” The third eldest, Sinai Congregation, purchased the site of its temple in 1872 (after the fire of 1871 had destroyed its former house of worship), and the structure was finished four years later. In distant California, Temple Emanuel, of San Francisco, was dedicated in 1866. In the District of Columbia (Washington) the first synagogue was dedicated in 1863 and the second in 1873. The old congregation of Savannah, Ga., erected a new and much larger synagogue in 1876.
Temple Achdut we-Shalom of Evansville, Ind., which was erected in 1856, was replaced by a more costly one in 1874. In Indianapolis, the capital and largest city of that state, a new temple was dedicated in 1868, about three years after the cornerstone was laid. The first temple of the Congregation Adath Israel of Louisville, Ky., was finished in 1868; about three years later congregations were organized in Owensboro and Paducah, in the same state. Temple Sinai of New Orleans, La., of which Dr. Maximilian Heller (b. in Prague, Bohemia, 1860), has been rabbi since 1887, dates from 1870. In Monroe, in the same state, a congregation was organized in that year, and in Shreveport, La., several years before. The synagogue of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, which was erected in 1845, was enlarged in 1860, while the “Chizzuk Amoonah,” which seceded from it in 1871, erected its synagogue on Lloyd street five years later.
The older synagogues of both Boston, Mass., and Detroit, Mich., date from the same period. Mount Zion Congregation of St. Paul, Minn., was founded in 1871. Meridian, Natchez, Port Gibson and Vicksburg, in the State of Mississippi, have synagogues which originated within the decade of the war. The same is true of Kansas City, St. Joseph and St. Louis, in Missouri, and of Temple Israel of Omaha, Neb. The first houses of worship of Hoboken and Jersey City, N. J., were established about 1870, while in the largest city of that state, Newark, the synagogue (built 1858) of the Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (organized 1848) was replaced by an imposing temple which was dedicated in 1868.
In the State of New York, outside of its chief city, the same can be seen. The first considerable synagogue of Albany, that of Congregation Beth El, was erected in 1865. The first congregation of Buffalo, organized in 1847, built its own synagogue in 1874. In both of these cities, like in many others, larger and more costly temples were erected later; but there was much less wealth in the country in general after the Civil War, and a building costing fifty thousand dollars which was erected in the “sixties” or the “seventies” represented perhaps a further advance from preceding times than one three times as costly indicated in the “nineties.” In some instances, like that of Rochester, where the first Jewish community was organized in 1848, the purchase of a spacious church building early in its career (1856) postponed the necessity of a large edifice until later. It was not until Rabbi Max Landsberg (b. in Berlin, 1845; a. 1871) had been with the Congregation “Berith Kodesh” of Rochester for nearly a quarter century that the present fine temple was erected (1894). In other communities divisions or splits made it impracticable to build large houses of worship until a later time; so we find that in Syracuse, where the first religious organization was formed in 1841, and the first synagogue was opened in 1846, a building erected in 1850 sufficed for the needs of the congregation more than half a century afterwards. This was because a new congregation was formed in 1854; another secession took place in 1864 and one more congregation was founded in 1870. Brooklyn, on account of its proximity to New York City, could not develop a really independent communal life until it had a very large Jewish population, and in some respects has not done so even yet. The Keap Street Synagogue, which dates from the period which we deal with in this chapter, was the largest of its kind in the city for many years.