Anshe Chesed (now Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple) was
founded as a German Orthodox congregation in 1841 and chartered on 28
Feb. 1842. It is Cleveland's oldest Jewish congregation. It was formed after 30 members
of the Israelitic Society of Cleveland, the city's first
congregation, seceded in a dispute over religious
ritual. Differences were overcome in 1845, and the
groups merged under the name Israelitish Anshe Chesed
Society of Cleveland. More on
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History and
Rabbi Moses Gries history of Jewish Cleveland. "As soon as resources
permitted, the reunited Israelitic Anshe Chesed Society
employed John Wigman, a master builder, to construct
Cleveland's first synagogue building. The Eagle Street
Synagogue, a modified version of the local Baptist
church, was erected on the south side of Eagle Street
and dedicated August 7-8, 1846." The above quotation
and the photo below are from Merging Traditions page
11.
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Leonard Case Senior was an official with
the Connecticut Land Company, which at one time owned all the land of
the Western Reserve. Perhaps Cleveland's first
philanthropist, Case gave land for the building of
several houses of worship. (Twenty-five years later his son,
Leonard Jr., would found what the Case School of Applied
Science which would become the Case Institute
of Technology.)
Anshe Chesed Society received a
lot on Ohio Street (today Carnegie Avenue) which they exchanged for
lot 38 on the
south side of Eagle Street, between Erie Street (now
East Ninth) and Woodland Avenue. There, in 1846, they built
the city's first synagogue. The cost: $1,500. |
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What would $1,500 buy in 1846?
Here are two ways to estimate this. First,
wages for a carpenter were then about $1.30
a day, roughly 1/250th of today's levels.
Second, as recorded in congregation minutes of the
early 1850's, member dues ranged from five to
ten dollars a year. Thus our estimate is
about $350,000 - $400,000 in today's
economy. Buildings in 1846 were
much simpler. There was no electricity, gas
or central heating and no indoor plumbing. |
The building
cornerstone was laid on October 6, 1845, the synagogue
was dedicated in April 1846. (See
a detailed description of the service.)
The sanctuary was designed for
the traditional practice of separate seating of men and
women. A ladies' gallery ran along three sides. Two years later dissension would
split the congregation again and lead to the formation
of Tifereth Israel.
Why was it so difficult to have only one
congregation?
Tensions about separate or family seating,
music in the service and more in the 1870s
and later would split some Cleveland
synagogues. But they
were not why Anshe Chesed
was unable to remain intact.
The most careful study of the early years
of Jewish Cleveland is
Dr Alan Peskin's 1973 monograph "This Tempting
Freedom", which was written in 1973 and
published by Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple..
[It can be read on
CSU's
Cleveland Memory website ].
He
concludes that the split was
caused by differences in custom -- "minhag". The
first members from Unsleben Bavaria had brought
over worship practices from their small
isolated town. Other members, from Bavarian
and other
Central European German-speaking towns, had different
customs. The Unsleben faction had control of
such matters and would not
compromise. As a result, many of the others left.
Update 2023 AB
Not long ago I learned that the leaders of
the faction that left were from northwest
German-speaking cities. That is where what
we call Reform Judaism began. Those in
charge, the Unslebeners, were from a village
in Bavaria, far to the east and south where
traditional practices would be found. To me,
this suggests that the split was over the
desire for change vs. wanting to worship as
their fathers had. Seating, music, singing,
reading the Torah in a three year or one
year cycle, even the location of the bimah
and if the service leader faced the ark or
the congregation.
Anshe Chesed would change, but more slowly.
It would not become solidly Reform until
Rabbi Machol, a graduate of a conservative
seminary in Breslau, retired and
American-born HUC-ordained Rabbi Louis
Wolsey arrived in 1907.
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Anshe Chesed grew and
in 1860 they enlarged the building. (The city had
improved its water and sewage systems and the expansion
probably included indoor toilets.) In 1887 they moved to a new building 18 blocks east,
at Scovill Avenue and Henry (now East 25th) Street. See
history of Fairmount Temple. In 1887 they
sold the Eagle Street Synagogue building to B'nai Jeshurun for $15,000. B'nai
Jeshurun would occupy it until 1906.
See the B'nai Jeshurun history page. In 1927 the original building
became a freight depot.
See a picture. |
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