Cleveland's West Side Synagogues

	Cleveland's West Side Synagogues

A MAP OF ETHNIC NEIGHBORHOODS IN 1923 can be found as an exhibit on the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website, as a resource in "IMMIGRATION'. It is displayed below. It shows four Jewish neighborhoods:

Around East 55th Street, south of Euclid Avenue, rapidly shrinking as its Jewish residents were moving east.
Glenville (northeast) which would become home to perhaps 80 percent of Jewish Clevelanders
Mt Pleasant - Kinsman (east), a diverse neighborhood with a significant Jewish population and many Jewish synagogues and other Jewish institutions .
One small west side neighborhood, about two miles west of the river, around Ohio route 10 (Lorain Avenue in Cleveland).

Source: Encyclopedia of Cleveland History See map on their website.

CLEVELAND'S WEST SIDE SYNAGOGUES

B'nai Israel 1924-ca 1930s	B'nai Israel 1940-1953	Beth Israel 1953-present

Haymarket to the Heights

This e-book by Jeffrey Morris has been archived in Cleveland State University's growing collection of digital historical materials. Only a few thousand of our city's 80,000 Jews lived on the west side. They could sustain only one synagogue. His well researched book devotes a chapter to it, as it evolved and moved farther west over the years.

His book is a collection of Adobe Reader (pdf) documents. To access the book, click here. Then open Map (chapter) 9: West of the River. For one click access, click here.

The three images above were copied from Haymarket to the Heights.

Jeffrey Morris also maintains www.jewishhistorycleveland.com

Beth Israel — The West Temple

Beth Israel. a Reform congregation, is located at 14308 Triskett Road in Cleveland. Its website is www.thewesttemple.com

The Beth Israel History page mentions the other earlier west side congregations and explains how Beth Israel's original building, which has been expanded by the congregation, had been erected by B'nai Israel, whose name can still be seen on the building's cornerstone.

If it was in my power to erect an Ohio Historical Marker, I would place one in front of The West Temple building. It would say:

IN THIS BUILDING IN 1961 WAS FOUNDED THE GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENT THAT HELPED GIVE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TO MILLIONS OF SOVIET JEWS

The story of that movement and Cleveland's leadership role in it is available in the Soviet Jewry section of this website, notably in the memoir of Dr. Louis Rosenblum and pages by Dr. Herbert Caron, both members of Beth Israel.

Arnold Berger March 22, 2019

Update March 29, 2021
The small text box shown above was the suggestion that sparked a determined effort to secure an Ohio Historical Marker. Learn more on our Marker page.

Beth Israel — The West Temple

Photos Arnold Berger 2012	5715 began on September 28, 1954