Off campus, there was another place I hoped to see. A few blocks away stood Rodef Shalom Congregation. I knew it was a historic synagogue. President William Howard Taft had once spoken there during a Shabbat service. During our lunch break, I decided I could probably make it there and back if I walked quickly.

So I skipped lunch and left.

I remember power walking down Fifth Avenue, past the monumental buildings of Oakland. On the right I saw the Mellon College of Science with its massive Greek columns. Then on the left was St. Paul Cathedral, whose two bell towers soared above the sidewalk. I paused to admire it, but I knew I did not have much time. I wanted to see Rodef Shalom without anyone noticing I had disappeared.

Soon I saw the building’s iconic green roof. I was astonished by its size. While I may have been driven past synagogues before, I had never stood outside one. As I drew closer, I saw engraved above the doors on the front of the building words from Isaiah:

My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

I stood there and thought about why someone had chosen to put those words on a synagogue, prominently and in English. Ten years of Catholic education had taught me that religious buildings are inherently symbolic. Someone had selected that verse for a reason.

I had heard the words before, but I associated that message with Christianity. I had heard that Jesus paved the way for the message to be realized. I did not know Judaism had much interest in teaching non-Jews about the God of Israel. Yet here was a Jewish congregation presenting a very different message to anyone who passed its building.

I could have stood there thinking all day. I wanted to go inside, but I needed to hurry back.

When I told my teammates where I had gone, one of our coaches overheard. She (rightly) scolded me for missing lunch and said she hoped it would not diminish my playing abilities.

It would not be the last time a quiz team trip led me to a synagogue.

At the end of my sophomore year, we traveled to Atlanta. I had discovered before the trip that The Temple, a historic congregation, was within walking distance of our hotel and I knew that the holiday of Shavuot would take place while we were there.

On a free morning, I got up before my teammates and walked about three miles to the synagogue. It took nearly an hour. I was on time.

I wore the blue dress shirt and dark dress pants I had brought specifically for the visit. Fastened to my shirt was a pin displaying crossed American and Israeli flags, which I had mailed to a Catholic friend’s house two years before. I also wore a black kippah. It was a cool, sunny day. I was excited to see The Temple’s historic sanctuary, though, unbeknownst to me, services that morning would be held in a smaller, more contemporary part of the building. I’ve never seen the main sanctuary, and I was too nervous to ask.

There were awkward moments. At one point, someone approached me and said, Chag sameach. I had read the words before, but I had never heard them spoken and was not sure I could say them back. I said, “Thank you.” She smiled slightly and walked away. I sat by myself toward the back. I heard the Book of Ruth read. “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

As I was leaving, I noticed a stack of copies of the Atlanta Jewish Times near the entrance doors. I was fascinated. I had never seen a Jewish newspaper before. I did not know a city could have one. I took a copy and kept it for years.

As I lingered near the exit doors, I also spoke with an older man. I told him I had been thinking about converting to Judaism but was reluctant to discuss it with my family. I hesitated before telling him this. Years before, my school had one student from an interfaith family. They never seemed to understand my interest in Judaism. I remember being told, “You can’t convert.”

This man, however, seemed impressed. With seriousness in his voice, he encouraged me to talk with my family.

I already had. The initial conversations had not gone particularly well. There were reasons I was reluctant to revisit the subject. For a time, I kept my interest in Judaism mostly to myself at home, even as I continued talking about religion at school and felt a growing kinship with the histories I read. Yet the man’s advice encouraged me to stop relying on omission. In time, this led to reconciliation.

Several years later, at age 19, I became Jewish. My Christian godparents were there. Two Jewish friends I had invited were unable to come at the last minute.

Inside the House of Prayer

Seven years after that, I returned to Pittsburgh, this time as a resident.

I moved there in June 2022 after graduate school to work for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. The city was not an easy place for me to live. My husband and I were trying to recover from the pandemic and save for our wedding. For part of my time there, I worked two jobs. My primary work also complicated my Jewish life. In some Jewish spaces, people had strong opinions about the Federation or seemed to see me primarily as a fundraiser. It could be difficult simply to arrive as another Jew looking for community. I eventually changed positions, but community did not come.

Still, I remember my excitement when I learned I would be living near Rodef Shalom. The synagogue I had hurried to see as a teenager was now the closest synagogue to my apartment.

Almost immediately after moving to Pittsburgh, I submitted my membership application. I still have the booklet and Shabbat candlesticks the congregation gave me as a new member.

I hoped to find community, particularly among other Jews around my age. At one point, I attended a gathering of Rodef Shalom’s Brotherhood. I was probably the youngest person by decades. Most of the men were older than my parents. The meeting was on Zoom and the only other young man popped on briefly as a guest speaker and vanished.

I was asked about my work. I was encouraged to bring some of my friends.

Later, I mentioned the experience to a younger Jewish coworker.

“Holy God,” he said.

He thought I should have known better. That was not where I was going to meet young Jews.

I remember thinking: Where was I supposed to meet them? He did not suggest anywhere else.

I had gone to a group called the Brotherhood hoping to find a bit of brotherhood.

There were other invitations to participate. Because of my interest in Jewish history, I connected with the archivist at Rodef Shalom and did some work with the Rauh Jewish Archives. People saw ways I might help tell the stories of Jewish Pittsburgh.

I was glad to help. I still am.

But I increasingly wanted someone to ask something about my story.

I have spent much of my adult life listening to other people’s stories. As a historian, I have spent years reconstructing the lives of people I never met. In another role, I now regularly listen as people talk about illness, grief, family, and the experiences that have shaped them.

In Pittsburgh, I sometimes felt useful without feeling particularly known.

Even my work with the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, could feel that way. I helped perform tahara, the ritual preparation of the dead for burial. I was quickly given responsibility because the members saw that I already had the training. Yet I struggled to form relationships with the people beside me. Most were older. They asked me about work. Some had opinions about the Federation.

One day, I worked alongside a younger person. Life had been busy for him, and he had not volunteered for some time. I asked if he would like to get coffee. Over our cups I discovered that he, too, had converted to Judaism. We did not meet again. Life got busy, and I soon moved away.

There were other happy memories.

One of my favorite memories of Pittsburgh began when an Orthodox rabbi invited me to spend Shabbat with his family. After services, there was a lively oneg. Later, I went to his home for another meal. I talked with his children. People discussed Torah. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry.

My phone was in my car and Shabbat kept going.

By the time I finally returned home, my husband had begun wondering what had happened to me.

I do not know whether a close Jewish peer friendship would have kept me in Pittsburgh. In fact, there are several people I’ve kept in touch with. One man I met in Pittsburgh has become one of the warmest supporters of my writing. I remember fondly the driving tour he gave me of Pittsburgh’s historic “Jewish East Side,” including the former B’nai Israel, where he once prayed. I could almost see the building from my third-floor apartment, but I had never known to walk over on my own. He acknowledges every Substack essay I write and has encouraged me on many occasions.

Pittsburgh has good people. Life is complicated. Pittsburgh was difficult for us financially, and we were still establishing ourselves professionally. In May 2023, we left for an opportunity my husband had been presented with. It later turned into disaster.

When I think about my year in Pittsburgh, I wonder.

But Another Year Has Passed

Sensing the balagan to come, we moved again to Rochester in 2024. Here difficulty has followed and also hope. We have hung on, and I’ve now lived in Rochester for more than two years. Yet I continue to face questions similar to those in Pittsburgh.

Last Yom Kippur, I wrote about my search for belonging in Jewish community. I reflected on the moments when people had questioned my Jewish identity and the moments when others had embraced me. I ended by writing that belonging was not something another person could grant or withhold because of my name or background. It was carried in “the choice to stand with a people and say: we.”

I still believe that.

But another year has passed.

I have continued to show up. I have attended services, classes, social events, and interfaith programs. There have been difficult moments, and I have met kind people. I have asked others if they know another person who might want to study with me. I have even quoted Pirkei Avot: “Appoint for thyself a teacher, and acquire for thyself a friend.” I have told more than one rabbi that this is what I am trying to find in my life. I have received sympathy, but few suggestions about where to look.

I have tried to explain that what I am looking for is something spiritual: a peer with whom I can learn and think about how to live a better life. To become more of a mensch. I have come to believe that helping people find relationships like this is part of what religious community is for.

Sometimes the response has been another opportunity to volunteer. In those spaces, I generally do not meet people who would consider themselves my peers. I’m often asked what I do for work but rarely asked why I do it. I say I write for The Forward, but few people ask anything about it.

I understand why religious communities need people willing to give their time. I have benefited from the labor of countless people who built the institutions I have entered.

Still, there are moments when I wish someone would first ask another question.

Recently, at a synagogue mixer, someone asked why I converted to Judaism. I explained that I grew up attending Catholic school but had been baptized Protestant. My family was not Catholic, but Catholicism was the only Christian tradition in which I was meaningfully socialized. I could attend Mass but could not fully participate in the religious life of the church.

That experience raised questions. As I grew older and studied more, I found myself increasingly drawn to Judaism.

Eventually, I converted because I believed. The four people around me, all older than me by a decade or more, just stared. I pivoted the conversation.

There was no Jewish spouse who led me to Judaism. Despite many assurances from some Jews that I must have Jewish ancestry, I had not discovered any evidence of a forgotten family chapter.

There is much more to my story. But telling someone more requires trusting that they were listening to the first part.

I wish more people asked, “What did you find?”

Over the years, I have learned to speak many of the languages of American Jewish life. I understand why Jewish culture, history, Israel, and the continuity of the Jewish people matter deeply to others. All of it matters to me too.

But I sometimes want to talk about God.

Not long ago, a rabbi in Rochester gave a sermon that impressed me. He discussed Josephus’s account of the events preceding the destruction of the Second Temple. Josephus described the decision to stop accepting sacrifices offered by non-Jews, including on behalf of the Roman emperor, as a pivotal step toward the First Jewish–Roman War. The rabbi drew from this a larger lesson about Jewish particularity and the wider world. Much of Judaism, he said, is open to everyone.

I found the idea fascinating.

More than once, I tried to talk with members of the congregation about what their rabbi had said. The conversations never went very far. Most did not seem to remember it. No one asked why it had caught my attention or followed the threads I offered.

Not long ago, I had a very different conversation. Shortly after moving to Rochester, I met a Muslim elder at an interfaith program I participated in through the Jewish Federation. We have met a few times since. Most recently, he had given me a book to read, and we got coffee to discuss it. He had also read the essays I published in a Muslim publication. Usually, I listen more than I speak.

Eventually, I told him something of the questions I had been carrying.

He did not rush to tell me I needed another program. He did not tell me I needed to socialize more.

He listened.

After hearing some of my story, he told me that I had done nothing wrong. Ultimately, he said, the relationship for which I was responsible was my relationship with God.

He encouraged me to keep praying and to pray often.

I have reflected again and again on his words.

It is Elul now. Nearly another year has passed. Soon I will hear Kol Nidrei again.

I do not know where I belong.

For now, I am taking the advice of a Muslim elder. I am praying. I am trying to listen. I am thinking about what God is asking me to do.

And I have been thinking again about a building I first saw as a teenager, after skipping lunch and hurrying down Fifth Avenue in the big city of Pittsburgh.

My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

Earlier that June, a group of businessmen from Richmond and nearby cities traveled to City Point, Virginia, a busy postwar depot along the James River. They had obtained permits from military authorities, in some cases after paying substantial fees, rented cabins, and opened stores to sell clothing and other goods to newly arrived troops.

One of them, a Richmond merchant named Mr. Bear, had been assigned a guard.

On Thursday, June 14, sometime between 11 and 12 o’clock, soldiers entered the business district. One Richmond account later reported that the men had already been heard threatening to “clean out the Jews” that night.

An eyewitness account, printed in another Richmond newspaper, described what followed. Soldiers broke into stores, stealing goods and money. At his shop, Bear was awakened by the sound of doors being forced open. He seized a pistol and fired, wounding one of the intruders. The soldiers withdrew, then returned in greater numbers.

This time, under the authority of an officer, Bear was arrested and taken to the guard house. His store was left behind. “The officer of the guard then gave permission to every man to help himself,” the eyewitness wrote. By morning, nothing remained of Bear’s stock, which had been valued at several thousand dollars.

Others were attacked that night. Mr. J. Greenwald, described as an old man, was assaulted with the butt of a musket. J. Greenhow, a clerk in his employ, was also beaten, wounded by a bayonet, and robbed. Another man, Mr. E. Falk was stripped of his clothes and his money, papers, and watches stolen.

The violence did not end with the night. The next day another man, William Flegenheimer, was attacked by a group of soldiers who tried to seize a bag he carried. One report said he resisted until he was blinded by blood from a wound over his eye. Goods that had been taken from the stores the night before were offered for sale in public, “under the eyes of the officers,” at a fraction of their value. One report said the soldiers remarked that because the goods had cost them nothing, they could afford to sell them “cheap.” Mr. Nenbil, a businessman who attempted to recover what remained of his property, was stopped by a guard and taken to the guard house.

The eyewitness in City Point, who said he had served in the Union army, described the episode not as an isolated disturbance but as part of a pattern. “I never yet saw such wholesale robbery,” he wrote, “even in time of war.”

Other papers carried shorter notices. A report printed in Cleveland stated simply that a riot had taken place at City Point, that stores and dwellings had been robbed, and that some residents had fled for safety. No reference was made to Jews being targeted. In other papers, the violence was wrongly attributed to Black soldiers rather than white troops.

Southern papers provided more details. One account, identifying the victims as Jewish merchants from Richmond and Petersburg, reported that soldiers had spoken openly, within hearing of their officers, of their intention to attack “the d—n Jewish Christ-killers.” That night, the report said, those threats were carried out.

The same account named Lieutenants Triplett and Keys as the officers who were present and described their conduct. When the merchants asked to return to their stores to protect what remained, one officer drew his sword and threatened them. Another, when told that a merchant had come to secure his goods, replied that a guard had been left in place and that it would take “good care” of what was there.

By the next morning, the goods were gone.

A separate editorial, reprinted in southern states beyond Virginia, condemned the conduct of the soldiers. It compared the episode to the persecutions of Jews under King John in medieval England and described Jews as “a harmless race” subjected to indignity and abuse. At the same time, it insisted, “We are not the special champion of the Jews.”

Taken together, the reports do not agree. One account said the shot fired in the first encounter came from Bear himself; another attributed it to a Black employee in the store. Some emphasized a wider breakdown of order affecting multiple groups, noting that non-Jewish businesses were also attacked, while others centered the experience of Jewish merchants more directly.

The most extensive accounts agree on several points. Businessmen who had been granted permission to conduct trade were robbed and beaten. Officers charged with maintaining order failed to protect them. Property taken in the attacks was sold openly the next day.

They also preserve something else: how quickly the meaning of the event began to shift.

In places like Buffalo and Rutland, the riot was briefly mentioned in newspapers. Longer reports in places like Cincinnati recorded threats against Jews in explicit terms. A South Carolina editorial condemned the violence, but echoed older language about Jews and commerce.

Within days, newspapers disagreed about who was responsible, whether Jews had been specifically targeted, and other basic facts of the event itself. The violence remained. The stories surrounding it did not.

Much about what happened at City Point still deserves further research. I have not found the episode discussed in histories of American Jewish life, and the surviving newspaper accounts leave questions unanswered. But they preserve something: not only an attack on Jewish merchants in the first years after the Civil War, but a record of how that attack was understood, contested, and remembered almost as soon as it occurred.

Growing up in southeastern Ohio, I remember visiting Zanesville for high school quiz team competitions and wanting to see the local synagogue, Beth Abraham. At the time, I imagined it might be somewhat like St. Mary’s, the Catholic church where I had attended Mass since kindergarten. At St. Mary’s, something was happening almost every day. My family was not Catholic, but it was the church that felt most like home, even when I rarely felt I fully belonged. In that space, my spiritual imagination wandered. As a freshman, I wondered what it would be like to pray at Beth Abraham.

I did not know as a teenager that, even if I had made it there, I almost certainly would have found the doors closed. By then, services were held only occasionally. Beth Abraham closed just a few years later, in 2017, while I was in college. I remember how hopeful it made me to see Beth Abraham listed among the “churches” in a local phone book. My hometown had no organized Jewish community, but Zanesville did. While I knew of Jewish congregations in Bexley, a suburb of Columbus, Zanesville was closer to my own world.

In 2020, I wrote a history of Zanesville’s early Jewish community. While researching it, I found the following resolutions from 1867. After the High Holidays, the city’s “embryo” Jewish congregation thanked Rev. Isaac Shoenbrun of Cincinnati for coming to conduct their services. They wrote that his visit would remain in their memory “as a green spot in the desert, to the lonely traveler on the Sahara.”

I understood something of those words then. After three moves between 2022 and 2024, something in them continues to move me now. At Catholic school, my closest friends inspired me to live a better life. They loved and pushed me, and they knew I was drawn to Judaism. In college, I embraced Judaism for myself. Much of the Jewish life that followed has been self-driven and lived without many peers beside me. When I have found a peer who also wanted to become a better mensch and could share something of that journey with me, even briefly, I have remembered him.

Here is what the congregation at Zanesville wrote in 1867.

As published in the November 15, 1867 edition of The Israelite

Congregation at Zanesville, O.

At a meeting of the Embryo Hebrew Congregation of Zanesville, held Oct. 13, 1867, the following resolutions were unanimously passed:

Resolved, That the thanks of this body are eminently due and are hereby tendered to the Rev. Mr. Isaac Shoenbrun, of Cincinnati, for the very able manner in which he conducted our divine services during the past Holy-days, and particularly the very eloquent English sermon delivered on the evening of Koll Nidro [sic].

Resolved, That the Rev. Gentleman has, by his inestimable qualities of heart and head won our everlasting affections, and his visit to us will live in our memory as a green spot in the desert, to the lonely traveler on the Sahara.

Resolved, That a copy of these Resolutions be published in THE ISRAELITE and DEBORAH.

Benj. S. Dryfus, Secretary.

The congregation recently sold its synagogue. Terre Haute’s Jewish community, which numbered more than 1,000 people in the late 1940s, is now estimated at fewer than 100. The congregation has about 45 member families and continues to hold Friday night services in rented space at a Unitarian church.

It is a familiar story in contemporary American Jewish life. Small Jewish communities that once sustained congregations of their own have grown smaller or disappeared altogether.

In many Jewish spaces I hear assimilation invoked to explain this trend. I hear about intermarriage and declining religious affiliation too. Reading about Terre Haute made me reflect on the place itself.

In 1970, Terre Haute had 70,335 residents. Today, it has about 58,000. Vigo County had 114,528 residents that year. Today, it has about 106,000. The Jews were not the only people who left.

Across large sections of America, smaller cities and towns have spent decades losing people, industries, institutions, and, for far too many, opportunities. It is a migration I’m familiar with. Its consequences are evident in our politics. How often do we consider what this transformation has meant for the religious and civic communities these places once sustained?

American Judaism has not been immune.

After reading the Forward story, I went looking through old newspapers for Terre Haute’s Jewish community. Among the accounts I found was one published in The American Israelite on October 1, 1891, describing the dedication of the city’s first synagogue, whose congregation would later become part of the United Hebrew Congregation.

Jews, it was reported, had lived in Terre Haute since 1850. Several attempts to organize a congregation had failed because they “were never numerous enough to sustain an organization.” Eventually, thirty-seven families succeeded.

They purchased a former German Reformed church and transformed it into a synagogue. The dedication drew a crowd beyond the seating and standing capacity of the building, including many Christians. The American Israelite marveled at what such a small group had accomplished. These families, it argued, had sacrificed proportionately more “of time and treasure” than Jews in large cities spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their institutions.

More than a century later, I find the faith of those thirty-seven families deeply moving.

Here is how The American Israelite described Jewish life in Terre Haute in 1891.

As published on page 4 of the October 1, 1891 edition of The American Israelite. Original spelling and grammar have been retained.

The First Temple In Terre Haute, Ind.

The first temple in the beautiful city of Terre Haute, Ind., was dedicated last Friday, September 25th. The building was a German Reformed church, the Congregation Israel purchased it and renovated and decorated it in elegant style, put a new organ, pulpit and ark into it, also new chair-seats and the usual covers of altar and ark, so that the house now presents a rich and pleasant aspect to the visitor.

The dedication was conducted by the lately elected Rabbi, Alexander Lyons, supported by a choir of volunteers from the congregation, four young ladies, two gentlemen and a skilled organist. Rabbi Wise delivered the oration. The audience was very large, far beyond the seating and standing capacity of the house, consisting largely of Christians from the best society of the town. The service lasted about two hours and was quite solemn and edifying, as was also the divine service of Sabbath morning.

This Congregation Israel is, in fact, but four years old, and consists of thirty-seven contributing members (families), a few of which reside outside of the city, like Mr. Hamburger, of Paris, Ill. Most of the Israelites living in adjoining towns did not join the congregation. The burden of the expense was borne by the people of Terre Haute, so that these men taxed themselves very heavily, and the ladies, both mothers and daughters, did their very best to accomplish the task of having a congregation, a rabbi and a house of worship of their own.

There have been Israelites living in Terre Haute ever since 1850. They made several attempts to have an organized congregation; they purchased a piece of ground and established a burial ground at an early date, but were never numerous enough to sustain an organization, till, as said, they finally succeeded about four years ago to accomplish it, and electing two years ago Mr. Max Joseph as their president, he pressed the matter to an issue and succeeded in building up the Terre Haute Congregation “Israel” with all the institutions of a well organized member in American Judaism. It must be noticed that these few families of our co-religionists sacrificed in proportion more of time and treasure in the sacred cause than those of the large cities, who spent hundreds of thousands for temples and salaries, and show an enthusiasm by far superior to that of our merchant princes.

It is now a matter of history that thirty-seven men with their wives and daughters have established the seventh temple congregation in the State of Indiana; the others are in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Wabash, Evansville, Lafayette and Ligonier, with unfinished attempts to the same purpose at Vincennes, Madison, Peru, Laporte and Logansport.

The Israelite sends congratulations and kindly greetings to our co-religionists of Terre Haute, Ind., their rabbi, president and officers, also to the Terre Haute Evening Gazette and the liberal citizens of the beautiful city.

During a portion of last week special invitations were circulated among the friends of Henry Danziger, to distinguished military and civic personages, and to the representatives of the press, to attend the Synagogue Ohabai Shalome, on the corner of Geary and Mason streets, and witness the ceremony of circumcising his three infant sons, products of a single birth. The hour for the performance of the ancient and solemn rite was fixed at half-past eleven, A. M., yesterday.

Before the hour appointed arrived there was a large throng of people in waiting about the doors of the Synagogue, but none were allowed to enter who did not present the cards of invitation. At an early hour the building was crowded to excess, and a large number of ladies occupied the galleries. General McDowell and Hon. John Conness were present, as was also Governor Henry H. Haight, but he was obliged, by another engagement, to leave before the ceremony was finished. The various Jewish religious and benevolent associations were fully represented, as follows:

Of religious --- Emanu-El, by Isaac F. Block, acting President; Sherith Israel, C. Meyer, President; Ohabai Shalome, A. N. L. Dias, Vice-president.

Of benevolent societies -- Wm. Steinart, President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society; J. M. Martin, President of the First Hebrew Benevolent Society, and Joseph Bein, G. N. A. of the Independent Order of B’Na; were also present on the occasion; furthermore, the Chebra Achim Rachmonim had its representative in the person of its worthy President, Louis Ehrlich. The altar was occupied by Rev. Dr. H. A. Henry, Rabbi of Sherith-Israel; Rev. Dr. Elken Cohn of Emanu-El; Jacob Frankel, Reader, and A. Galland, Surgeon in attendance.

Surrounding these persons were tables on which were placed goblets and medals of beautiful design, gifts to the triplets, glasses of choice wine, etc.

At about the hour of noon Mr. Galland advanced to the front of the altar and exclaimed in the Hebrew tongue, “Boruch Habo,” which translated signifies “Blessed by the comer.” Upon this the doors of the Synagogue were opened, and three ladies, wives of Presidents of Hebrew Churches, bearing each one of the babes, came down the isles, and delivered them at the altar to the God-fathers selected for the ceremony. The infants were dressed in elegantly ornamented dresses and caps. They were named respectively Abraham Lincoln Danziger, Isaac Andrew Johnson Danziger and Jacob John Conness Danziger -- Major General Irvin McDowell held Abraham in his arms, Mr. Wasserman, for Mr. Haight, held Andrew Johnson, and Hon. John Conness supported John Conness in his arms. A few preliminaries were had, and then the appointed surgeons performed the ceremony of circumcision. While it was in process each Rabbi christened each babe as he held it in his arms, and placed a medal of gold about its neck. The infants were then handed to their nurses in attendance at the side of the altar. The medals were of solid gold, and were inscribed as follows:

1st. On the one side pillar of strength, with inscription (name of child, Abraham Lincoln,) and on the reverse “Abraham offering up his son.”

2d. Same design, (name Isaac Andrew Johnson,) and on reverse “Isaac’s blessing to Jacob.”

3d. Same design, (name Jacob Conness,) and reverse Jacob sleeping, and the angels ascending and descending the ladder.

These gold medals were presented by Progress Lodge No. 125, F. and A. M., through their Secretary, Louis Kaplan, Esp. Their value is at least $150.

The Banquet

After the ceremony was concluded the invited guests repaired to the basement of Synagogue and partook of a sumptuous banquet, at which Rabbi Henry presided, where appropriate speeches were made by Rev. Dr. Henry, General McDowell, Senator Conness, Rev. Dr. Cohn, and Jacob Benjamin. Three successive goblets were then presented to the children by Louis Ehrlich, President of Chebra Achim Rachmonim, who accompanied the presentation with a fitting speech to which the father feelingly responded. The goblets were inscribed with the words:

“Presented by the members of the Chebra Achim Rachmonim, San Francisco, September 1867-5627.

On the reverse side the names of the children were engraved in Hebrew letters.

The festivities finally closed with grace by Rev. Dr. Cohn.

###

P.S. Buy me a coffee and help power the next discovery.

One afternoon in September 1891, school let out in Wheeling, West Virginia.

The boys from Clay District School wandered over to watch workers prepare the cornerstone for a new synagogue on Eoff Street. Before long they were climbing around the foundation while neighbors lined the sidewalks waiting for the ceremony to begin. The local paper remarked that “all evinced an eager interest in the proceedings.”

When the time came, Rabbi Benjamin Aaron Bonnheim led the Sunday school children in procession from Chapline Street, where the congregation met. A sealed box was placed beneath the cornerstone containing newspapers, coins, and other items chosen for their significance.

Included among the symbolic items placed inside were the names of the students from the Clay School, a public school.

I sometimes wonder what such a day would have meant to someone like me.

Over twenty years earlier, in May 1870, another newspaper described a very different scene in Columbus, Ohio.

By two o’clock in the afternoon, the streets were already alive with people waiting for the laying of the cornerstone of the city’s first synagogue.

The Odd Fellows assembled on East State Street. Members of Zion Lodge No. 62 of the Independent Order B’nai B’rith gathered nearby alongside the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Masons formed on Town Street. Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, Mayor George W. Meeker, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, members of the city council, and other guests arrived in carriages. Neave’s Band led the procession, while another band marched with the Masons.

The newspaper estimated that between six and seven thousand people watched as the procession wound through Columbus toward the synagogue site. Looking back from the corner of Friend and Third Streets, the reporter described the crowd surrounding the foundation in a “solid mass.”

For the past several years, I’ve spent much of my free time reading old accounts like these. Again and again, I find scenes like them. They keep bringing me back to the same question. Why, after eleven years as a Jew and working with multiple Jewish organizations, do these stories seem so absent from the conversations I am hearing about American Jewish life? I find myself wondering what became of that habit of invitation. I remember how during my college years in Columbus, many of the people who helped carry a nine-foot menorah across campus to be set up for Hanukkah weren’t Jewish. Most of those who gathered for the inaugural lighting weren’t Jewish either. I recall how non-Jews helped reinforce our sukkah when we worried it might collapse in the wind. Years later, while working at one Jewish nonprofit, I remember colleagues expressing genuine surprise when a Christian organization made a contribution in support of the organization’s work. The assumption seemed to be that such generosity was unusual. The newspapers kept suggesting something different. None of this diminishes the reality of antisemitism. It reminds me that the American Jewish story has always been more complicated than I sometimes hear it described.

Over the past few months, I have written three different essays. All are variations on the same historical observation. Liberal Currents, The Dispatch, and Law & Liberty are publications with different editorial perspectives and different audiences, yet each accepted an essay built around essentially the same pattern I had been finding in the archives.

In one essay, I wrote about an 1886 episode in Nashville. A Baptist congregation found itself displaced from its church. For nine or ten months, the members of First Baptist worshiped instead in the synagogue on South Vine Street.

When the arrangement ended, the church published a notice thanking Rabbi J. S. Goldammer for his “constant and unflagging kindness” and the members of K. K. Ohavai Sholem for the free use of their “spacious and comfortable house of worship.” The synagogue had accommodated them, the Baptists acknowledged, “even at their own inconvenience at times.”

The church members closed by wishing their “Israelitish friends” a biblical blessing: “the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof, and the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush.” (Deuteronomy 33:16).

Many such arrangements left little mark beyond the local papers because, at the time, they did not seem extraordinary.

In Law & Liberty, the story began with the dedication of a synagogue in Little Rock in May 1897.

Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise told those gathered that worship allowed people to draw nearer to God. He spoke of “universal salvation and the fulfillment of God’s promises.” Rabbi Charles Rubinstein followed his former teacher, describing Judaism as “a tower of strength” and “a religion of peace and love.”

Then, inside the new synagogue, Rabbi Rubinstein read the Constitution of the United States. Governor Dan W. Jones rose afterward. It was, he acknowledged, the first Jewish house of worship he had ever entered. He praised the congregation, Jewish charity, and what he described as the Jewish people’s “love of law and order.” Speaking as the head of Arkansas’s government, he assured those assembled that both their new temple and their congregation would receive the “approval and protection” of the state’s constituted authorities.

The idea that a minority place of worship might need to be reassured of “protection” was not abstract in the American South of the 1890s. These stories do not preserve a utopia. Almost certainly, a white Protestant church would not have needed to be assured of the state’s protection.

Despite the realities of antisemitism, Jewish leaders themselves often described the synagogue in remarkably expansive terms. At the dedication of a new Orthodox synagogue in Washington, D.C., in 1908, Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes traced the synagogue’s origins back to Abraham and argued that God was “not only God of the Jews, but a God for the world.” He concluded that “a synagogue, therefore, should be a place of worship for all mankind, not alone for the Jew. Every Gentile is welcome to enter the portals of the synagogue and pray to the God of mankind.”

Twenty years later, newspapers in Portland described what such a welcome could look like in practice. During the dedication of Congregation Beth Israel’s new synagogue in 1928, Christian ministers participated in the services. One hundred sixty-eight non-Jews contributed toward a stained-glass “Good Fellowship” window for the sanctuary. The window bore the words of the prophet Malachi: “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us all?” Above the verse were two clasped hands.

These accounts were never the whole story. In 1924, the United States dramatically restricted immigration through a system of national-origins quotas, virtually excluding immigrants from Asia and sharply limiting arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe, regions that included many Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Jews. After World War I, the influenza pandemic, and the growth of nativist and isolationist movements, many Americans had grown wary of immigration. When European Jews later sought refuge in the 1930s and 1940s, the restrictions enacted in 1924, along with similarly restrictive policies in many other countries, would prove disastrous.

Yet history cannot only be a rebuke. If we teach about antisemitism only through examples of atrocities and exclusion, we risk handing down a moral memory composed entirely of warning and fear. We tell students what hatred looks like, but not always what neighborliness looks like. We show them what America has done wrong, but not enough of what Americans, in town after town, at their best, did right.

In June 1939, the United States turned away 937 Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis. Two hundred fifty-four passengers would later die in the Holocaust. Yet only two years later, when a new synagogue was dedicated in Hebron, Connecticut, The Hartford Courant ran the story under the headline, “New Synagogue Is Dedicated By Many Faiths.”

As the conditions facing Europe’s Jews grew more desperate, the United States left its immigration quotas unchanged. At the same time, local newspapers continued to record scenes that have largely faded from memory. In November 1942, The State in Columbia, South Carolina, reported that the new Ohav Shalom synagogue in Dillon was “filled to capacity by hundreds of every religious belief of the two Carolinas.”

From May through August 1944, the United States War Department repeatedly refused requests to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz. Yet in August 1945, Mayor Frank Krebs of Dayton accepted a Torah scroll at the opening of Beth Jacob Synagogue. Two months earlier, at the dedication of B’nai Israel in Rochester, Minnesota, Rabbi Ralph DeKoven declared that “to turn the faces of man one to another is the purpose of this institution... But we must look beyond our community. The spirit must inspire us to turn our faces to our brethren all over the world, whose faces are now turned toward us.”

The older record helps clarify what is at stake. Pluralism is not only tested when a synagogue, church, mosque, or temple is attacked. It is also tested when one is built, entered, dedicated, borrowed, supported, or welcomed as part of the community. What does it mean, now, to show up for one another when agreement is incomplete? The answer may begin with remembering the habits of neighborliness.

Around a year ago, Benyamin Cohen, a senior writer at The Forward, met me in Lancaster, Ohio, at the only synagogue my hometown has ever had.

By then, the building was no longer a synagogue. It was a vacation rental, with couches where congregants once prayed and a kitchen near the place where the ark and bimah had been. Photos of the building during its time as a synagogue, and earlier as a church, hung on the wall alongside paintings, some by an art professor who lived in the building after B’nai Israel disbanded. Amber light came through the stained glass windows, which were cracked in places. A binder sat on the coffee table with a history of the building inside, an abbreviated version of a story I had first written years earlier, when I was a college student trying to prove that my hometown, and by extension myself, had a place in America’s Jewish story.

I had imagined that room for most of my life.

As a child, I used to pass the building and ask what it was. My father once told me it had been a synagogue, “with men in little hats.” Others told me it had been a church. The mystery lasted for years. While I knew the names of some Jewish families in Lancaster, I had no personal relationships with any. I had never been inside the synagogue. The congregation had closed before I was born. But the building remained on East Chestnut Street, still looking like a place of worship. Its doors never seemed to open.

Years later, at the public library, I found a copy of Jewish Literacy with a sticker inside: “B’nai Israel of Lancaster Jewish Book Fund.” The synagogue was gone, but the book fund was still teaching. That small act of care became the first of many I would receive from Jewish institutions, and I remain grateful. As I’ve grown older, I’ve also come to understand that institutional welcome is not the same as personal belonging.

Benyamin’s article for The Forward traced the outlines of the story. He wrote about the closed synagogue, the library stamp, the Star of David on the war memorial, my conversion, my years of writing about small-town Jewish communities, and my work with the chevra kadisha. He treated Lancaster’s Jewish presence not as an obscure curiosity, but as something that had shaped the town and was still, in some real sense, shaping it.

The piece gave me a measure of confidence during a difficult time. Significant challenges were unfolding in my life, and I was also trying to understand where I belonged in a new city. Yet a Jewish reporter had listened to a story almost no Jew had ever asked me to tell. The Forward, no less, had made room for it. That mattered. It did not end every feeling of uncertainty or unwelcome in certain Jewish spaces, but it gave me something steadier to hold. It allowed me to see my Jewish life not as an exception to be explained, but as part of a larger Jewish story worth telling.

I had been interviewed about my work before, mostly in small-town Ohio newspapers, and I had already been writing for years. But this story made the labor of Ahavas Yisrael visible in a new way. It showed that I was not only writing about closed synagogues and forgotten landmarks. I was asking where Jewish life remains when the usual structures are gone, and whether someone who comes to embrace Judaism rather than inheriting it can also help carry its memory. It allowed questions I had long been carrying, often alone, to enter a larger Jewish conversation.

A year later, my gratitude to Benyamin has only grown. But I also understand more clearly what the profile could not yet show. I was trying to understand what forgotten Jewish communities still have to teach us, and how their stories might continue to shape the living.

In the absence of an inherited Jewish family tree, I am creating one through memory. I remember Jews who lived in towns like my own, faced challenges familiar to me, worked ordinary jobs my family might have known, and prayed. I write about them because they deserve to be remembered. I write because I am looking for people who might answer back.

The Forward answered back, and my Jewish life changed in ways I could not have anticipated.

This does not solve everything, of course. A news outlet is not a synagogue. An editor is not a chevruta. Publication does not create a circle of Jewish peers. But The Forward gave the work a place in the Jewish public square. It later gave me new assignments, deadlines, edits, ideas, readers, and the discipline of becoming clearer. The work has been a gift to my neshamah.

At times, The Forward was the place where my Jewish life felt most alive and most received.

Stories Remembered

The first essay Benyamin helped me publish under my own byline in The Forward, in September 2025, was about my past work with the chevra kadisha. I wrote about what I learned from preparing the dead for burial, including the sacred obligation to care for someone who can never repay you.

Some days I performed taharot back to back before going on to work two jobs. I often felt spiritually exhausted, but the memories from that season remain among the most meaningful of my life. Those lessons became a key to the work that followed.

After that essay, I began regularly contributing to The Forward’s Shiva section. Memory guided me as I returned to graves, funerals, burial customs, and the moral questions remembrance asks of the living.

Over the months that followed, the column carried me from Tupper Lake, New York, where an Episcopal minister spoke at the funeral of his Jewish friend while holding a siddur he treasured, to funeral trains that carried small-town Jews to larger cities when no Jewish cemetery existed in their communities. I wrote about Jewish women in Richmond, Virginia, who, for generations, cared for the graves of Jewish Confederate soldiers after the Civil War, a story that made clear that remembrance is not agreement.

In February, I wrote about Rabbi Yechiel Meir Burgeman, a modest teacher in Rochester whose grave has become a place where people leave notes, light candles, and pray. That essay was different from the others. It was about the endurance of holiness, and about the possibility that the dead can still teach. I included a memory from my teenage years, when I sent a written prayer to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because I felt it would help and did not have the means to go myself.

Someone else carried it. In time, I came to believe that prayer had been answered in ways that continue to shape my life and my sense of Judaism.

Other stories emerged. In Newport, Rhode Island, Touro Synagogue and its cemetery survived through the care of Christians who honored a sacred inheritance even when the local Jewish community had faded. In Aurora, Indiana, a Jewish mayor died in a town with no Jewish cemetery, and his neighbors insisted he belonged there and created a Jewish burial ground for him. In Fairbanks, Alaska, six graves in the Jewish plot of Clay Street Cemetery endured long before Alaska had synagogues or settled communal infrastructure.

Again and again, I found Jewish life beginning before institutions arrived. I found memory carried by Jews and non-Jews, by towns and families, by civic leaders and grieving friends, by people who inherited the obligation and by people who chose to honor it.

In June, I wrote about PFC Frank Kurzinger, a German-born Jewish refugee who fled Nazi persecution, returned to Europe in an American uniform, and died in Italy while trying to help his Christian friend Del Riley. For decades, Kurzinger was buried beneath a cross. Operation Benjamin helped restore a Star of David to his grave. Researchers from the organization also found the family of the man he had tried to save. Eighty years later, the two families met in Italy.

The Riley family later carried a challenge coin bearing both men’s names, one side with a cross and one side with a Star of David, to the summit of Mount Belvedere.

I could not have invented a clearer image to convey what those months of reporting had revealed.

Placed side by side, the pieces reveal a profoundly American story. Together they suggest that the history of Judaism in North America cannot be understood only through its largest cities or most prominent institutions. They also ask how memory continues to shape the living. Those questions are not academic for me. The Forward helped me make them public. It helped me turn private searching into reported scenes, memory into argument, and personal loneliness into sentences that could carry more than my own life.

What A Newspaper Asks

A newspaper asks for facts. It asks what happened, where it happened, who was there, what was said, what object or gesture carries the meaning. It does not let the writer float forever in abstraction.

The discipline was not new to me, but The Forward applied it more rigorously than anyone had before.

The Forward trained me as a reporter. More than one person there has invested time in making my work better, and Benyamin in particular has helped me become clearer, sharper, more concrete, and less roundabout. He has reminded me to trust the image and the fact. While I had long preserved Jewish memory through local history essays, public talks, and media pitches, The Forward helped me learn how to preserve it as journalism.

Newspapers have long formed the foundation of my historical work. They preserve the ordinary details that formal records often lose: who celebrated, who mourned, who welcomed, and how a community understood itself. It is humbling to think that these essays now enter that same archive. Years from now, someone may find them while searching, just as I once searched for others.

“Shepping Nachas”

Taken together, the Shiva pieces are also becoming a national record of subjects that remain underdocumented in American Jewish history: Jewish life beyond major cities, burial and mourning as expressions of belonging, interfaith representation in organized Jewish life, memory after institutional decline, and the people who preserve Jewish memory without having inherited it themselves.

After I wrote a Thanksgiving reflection last year about my gratitude for Jewish newspapers, Benyamin sent me a brief note that read in-part “All of us here at the Forward are shepping nachas.”

I remember the feeling it gave me. It felt like being embraced by a community. It carried a kind of Jewish pride I imagine some people receive from their own Jewish families.

Much of my work with Benyamin has been what editorial work often is: short emails, edits, questions, shifting publication schedules, and the ordinary back and forth of making stories better. It is journalism, with its deadlines and limits.

And yet it is not just work. Sometimes care arrives inside professional forms.

A careful edit and a serious question can feel like a kind of beit midrash. An editor can help carry a piece into the world more faithfully than it would have gone alone. Even from a distance, Benyamin has become one of the people most responsible for helping me become the writer I was trying to be this year.

When I think back to that day in Lancaster, I remember the strangeness of standing in a room I had once imagined so many times.

When I was younger, one of my recurring dreams was that Lancaster still had an active synagogue somewhere. Maybe I had simply not found it yet. Maybe the building on East Chestnut Street would open and I would finally see what had been there all along. In the dream, there was still a congregation waiting.

Years later, when I entered the building, I wondered whether my younger self would have believed the person I had become: a historian of American Jewish history living in New York State, returning to Lancaster with my husband and being visited by a writer from a national Jewish newspaper. My life had moved in directions that child could not have pictured.

Enough remained at the former B’nai Israel to know what the room had been, but it was different too. So much was gone. It would not be the last Jewish space to fade before I arrived. Could memory remain after the congregation had changed or disappeared? I drew close to the people whose faith and lives reminded me of myself and wondered what they could still teach.

I am grateful for the stories I found there. But memory alone does not make a community.

The Forward gave my Jewish life room to breathe and grow. It gave me a place to tell the stories of people who sustained Jewish life in places where few would think to look: from an Episcopal minister honoring his Jewish friend in the Adirondacks to, most recently, a couple who consecrated a Jewish burial ground on the Oklahoma prairie because they had come to love it there. Benyamin first reported the unlikely story of my own search. He then trusted me to help others tell theirs.

A year ago, he met me at the door of a synagogue that had closed before I was born and helped other people see what I had been trying to show for years.

Perhaps, years from now, someone will find one of these essays while searching, just as I once searched for others.

If so, the chain will have continued. I hope they find a door that is open.

While researching nineteenth-century American Jewish newspapers, I came across the following sermon, preached in Cincinnati during the centennial year of the United States. I was struck by the way Rabbi Leopold Wintner brought these two moments of remembrance into conversation with one another.

Tisha B'Av has always been a complicated observance for me to fully understand and make my own. While I mourn the many national calamities that have befallen my coreligionists, I have often wondered what it means to mourn the animal sacrificial system that disappeared nearly two thousand years ago. Wintner approaches the question differently. He argues that Jerusalem is remembered not only because of what was lost there, but because it was the place from which Israel's religious and moral vision entered the world. Whether or not one agrees with every conclusion he reaches, I found his sermon worth sharing nearly 150 years later.

As published on page 5 of the August 11, 1876 edition of The American Israelite.

Remember Jerusalem

A Sabbath-Hazon Sermon, Preached at the Temple B’nai Israel, Cincinnati, July 29, 1876, by Rev. Dr. L. Wintner.

Text. — “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand refuse me, may my tongue cleave to my palate. If I do not remember thee and bring thee at the head of my joy.” (Ps. cxxxvii. 5, 6.)

The first principle and essentialness of poetry is the inspiration of the beautiful and the sublime, by which the thoughts and emotions of the poet are extraordinarily seized and elevated.

As all poetry is intimately connected with the characteristics of its people, so we behold in the Hebrew poetry two principal characteristics which justify it to the name of the holy and divine poetry. The intellectual and emotional powers of the Hebrew poet are excited and elevated chiefly; first by the ideal of Israel’s nationality, and second, by the ideal of Israel’s religion.

These two ideals formed the nucleus of his inspiration. These were the sublime, beautiful and beloved objects which occupied the mind, filled the heart and imbued the soul of the poet with glowing patriotism and a holy fire, and both ideals were comprised in the name “Jerusalem” or “Zion.”

Yes, Jerusalem united in itself the national and religious glory of Israel. Jerusalem it was that excited the inspiration and imagination of prophets and poets and the admiration of the world as a “Crown of Beauty” while she was in her greatness, in her power and in her glory.

Was Jerusalem also remembered after her greatness, splendor and glory had passed away?

The poet in our to-day’s Haftorah (137th Psalm) gives us the answer in the affirmative. But did that spirit of patriotism, attachment and indelible love also prevail in the midst of his contemporaries and the ancient Hebrews at large? Was that holy fire ever aglow in the hearts of later generations?

And let us ask ourselves on this Sabbath preceding the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem, how do we remember it to-day?

Let us see.

Our sages compare three different verses in the Bible which commence with the word “אֵיכָה” and were spoken by different persons, namely, Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah, in which comparison are grouped very ingeniously the three stages of Israel’s national history, flourishing, decay and fall. (Midrash Rab., to Lament.)

In the first complaining words spoken by Moses in the valley of the Jordan when the people of Israel were to enter upon their national life: “How can I bear your burdens and your strife?” (Deut. i. 12); in the reproaching, rebuking and thunder voice of Isaiah, which he, standing on the heights of Zion, hurled down upon Judea’s leaders: “How has she become degraded, the once faithful city of Jerusalem!” (Is. i. 21); and in the heart-rending lamentations of Jeremiah sitting on the ruins of Jerusalem: “How does she now sit solitary the once great city?” (Lam. i. 1); in these three epochs we behold the never changing law of nature like in the physical so also in the national life, namely, no cause without effect and no effect without cause.

Moses warns the people to beware of national sins which must be the cause of national ruin.

Isaiah points out to the corrupted princes, priests and the people the existing causes, the threatening danger, but in vain.

The two conflicting elements, royalty and priesthood, struggled with bitterness for arbitrary power and supremacy, the different evil effects ensured, and the ship of the Hebrew State, which was sailing proudly upon the stormy sea of national existence during over eight hundred years, was at last dashed on the two rocks, national corruption and religious decay, and wrecked!

Jerusalem, the magnificent, has fallen, and the glorious Temple was consumed by the flames. The princes and priests suffered horrible death, and the rest of the people were carried into Babylonian captivity; and Jeremiah witnessed the terrible effects of the national sins, which the prophets so boldly predicted.

Was Jerusalem bewailed?

Never, never was the destruction of a city so bewailed and bemoaned with such tragic pathos as Jerusalem was by “the man who has survived the great catastrophe” in his unrivaled elegies, the Book of Lamentations.

Was the city remembered?

“There at the rivers of Babylon,” says our Haftorah, “Israel sat and wept in remembering Zion.”

And the remembering of a lost city was never expressed with such vehement force, vivacity, enthusiasm, loftiness and passionate and soul-stirring eloquence as the poet in the words of our text did:

“If I ever forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand refuse its power!”

What sunshine is to physical life, dew to flowers and fresh air to the lungs, nationality and religion were to the ancient Hebrew; both were interwoven with, and inseparable from his nature. He could never forget Jerusalem, the embodiment of Hebrew nationality and religion. It was his right hand, his strength. It formed a part of his being, of his material and spiritual welfare.

And in the atmosphere of captivity the exiles learned to appreciate and to cherish the pure and free air of their country. They had yearned for it seventy years, until captivity was at an end.

They returned to their land. Jerusalem has risen from her ruins. Israel has entered upon their second national life, which lasted over four hundred years, when again on the 9th day of Ab Jerusalem was destroyed and the sanctuary reduced to ashes.

Over 1,800 years have passed since the wild cohorts of Titus, and over 1,700 years since the raging legions of Hadrian have done their bloody work.

With the smoke of Jerusalem and Bethar, Israel’s heroic national life has breathed its last, and since then every spark of Jewish nationality was extinguished forever.

And was Jerusalem still remembered?

It was.

Upon the inhabited globe, wherever the dispersed members of Israel have been cast, the fiery words were upon their lips:

“May my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember Jerusalem!”

What? Some may ask, in 1,700 years it was not forgotten?

Ah, my friends, it could not be forgotten, for the calamities, the sufferings, the woe and misery which were connected with the destruction of Jerusalem ever renewed themselves in the life of Israel, and their wounds remained yawning and bleeding during the long and dark ages of history.

And when the months in which the anniversaries of the sad events occurred had arrived, namely, the so-called “Bein ha-Metzarim” between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Ab, there was indeed sadness in Israel of the Middle Ages.

A spirit of gloom and depression pervaded not only the synagogue, but also the social and domestic circles, and penetrated even into the halls of education and learning.

The school hours were chiefly devoted to the studying of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and in the “Yeshiboth” the students occupied themselves with reading those portions of the Talmud which contain the dreadful histories of the siege and conquering of Jerusalem.

On Sabbath-Hazon the plaintive and doleful tunes of the Elegies were already heard in the synagogue, and on the 9th of Ab, the anniversary of so many disastrous events, Israel sat down and wept and mourned.

They lamented over the destruction of the Temple on Moriah, for their own houses of God were devastated by the mobs.

They mourned over the loss of Jewish lives, for their own sons and daughters fell victims to fanaticism and hatred.

They bewailed the loss of nationality, for they themselves were deprived of all rights of citizenship.

And thus we may say the whole year formed one continuous “Tisha B’av” for the Jew in those dark times.

“His tongue would have cleaved to his palate, if he had not remembered Jerusalem.”

Every conversation, every prayer was brought in connection with the destruction of the Jewish national capital. Every event in the Jewish social life had to be marred by “Zecher l’churban,” the remembrance of Jerusalem.

In modern times, thank heaven, things have changed.

The sun of civilization shines with its bright beams of toleration, freedom, justice and humanity over all men, and Israel enjoys equally civil and religious freedom.

Do we still remember Jerusalem?

Have the poetic words of our text any significance for us?

Proud was once the Babylonian of his famous city on the Euphrates, with its brazen gates, towers and wonderful hanging gardens, and at the command of which nations have trembled.

Proud was the Roman of his “City of the Caesars,” which dictated war and peace to the world; and the Hellenian of his Athens with her palaces and temples, academies and philosophers, influencing the human race with her culture and refinement.

Proudly speaks the son of Albion of his “greatest city in the civilized world,” and the Gallican of his beautiful Paris, the “Dictatrix of fashion.”

With just pride the Germans speak of their cities, one of his “City of Culture,” the other of the city of unexcelled sociability and amusements, and still another boasts of his city of art and science.

The American glories in the metropolis of this Western Continent as being one of the greatest commercial cities in the world, and again in another where the cradle of liberty stood.

And Israel should forget his Jerusalem?

It is true we need not and should not mourn over the fall of Jerusalem, for the Israelites all over the civilized world participate in the patriotic feelings in the respective countries wherever they live.

But the memory of Jerusalem must be ever dear to the Jewish heart, as it was the only city in the world that exercised a lasting moral and religious influence upon the human race at large!

Her recollections must be especially dear to us, for we pride ourselves in saying that within her walls the first champions of humanity, the God-inspired prophets, preached not only a universal religion but also the first republican ideas, which were embodied in the theocratic state, which culminated in that constitution for governing mankind which is so tersely and pithily expressed in the words:

“The Lord shall be King over the whole earth,”

and which republican ideas now triumph in the celebration of the centennial by over forty millions of people of different nationalities and sects.

As a religious people we must especially cherish the memory of Jerusalem, for there was the source which provided anew, with free thoughts, Israel’s philosophers and thinkers of all ages, and Israel is now the vanguard of religious reform and advancement.

There we have learned our social and domestic virtues. There the Jew has learned how to be charitable, the Jewish father how to lay out his last penny for the education of his children, and the Jewish wife and mother to be chaste, loving and affectionate to her family, which all virtues are conceded to and admired in the Jewish race by other nationalities.

Yes, there was spun that indestructible cord which bound Israel together and gave it durability to withstand the pressure of the outside world since thousands of years till the present day.

And it is lastly the spirit of the prophetic words,

“From Zion goes forth the law and the word of God from Jerusalem,”

that stimulates anew we Israelites in this Western World to erect institutions of charity and education, to institute Jewish colleges, to form religious and congregational associations for the strengthening and elevating of Judaism on American soil.

And the poetic words of our text have also great significance for the Jew in modern times, in the modern state and in this free land:

“I shall not forget thee, O Jerusalem,”

but also,

עַל רֹאשׁ שִׂמְחָתִי

“At the head of my joy, in happiness and in peace, in prosperity and freedom we will, with feelings of love and devotion, ever remember thee.”

Amen.

More than ten years have passed since my own conversion. I remain grateful that I became Jewish. Yet revisiting the rituals that marked that moment is not simple for me.

Like Mr. Granberry, I discovered that some of the most personal moments of my journey into Judaism later became subjects of discussion, even though they were only a small part of the path. My conversion and the day that marked it were sometimes discussed in ways that left me feeling profoundly unseen. The mikveh and hatafat dam brit were not especially transcendent experiences for me. The day contained its humiliations and awkward encounters. I never met the mohel before that day or since.

I mostly felt self-conscious. Having Jewish friends there would have made the day easier, but the two I had invited were unable to come at the last minute. I remember the sadness of their absence.

I also remember the kindness of the rabbis. I can still see them and hear them singing Siman Tov u’Mazel Tov at the end of the ceremony as I stood there, unable to speak. Yet I did not feel especially close to Hashem. The spirituality of my journey did not fully reside in those moments.

I had been living toward Judaism for years before any ritual formally marked it. My conversion was not born in a single season, but through years of prayer, study, reflection, and ultimately, the belief that my life belonged within the Jewish people. I sought conversion because I wanted to live that faith within a community. The rites gave public expression to a commitment that had already become visible in my life. Months before the mikveh, I had reestablished a Jewish student organization on my college campus and was serving as its president.

The rites had profound value. They affirmed something that had already become true. But they did not create the faith that had already taken root. Even amid the complexity of that day, I knew I was seen by El Roi, the God who sees.

Reading the 1891 article also reminded me of another Jewish teaching: the prohibition against lashon hara, evil speech. The story itself is driven not by the conversion but by rumors. The rabbi found himself answering speculation. The convert, meanwhile, expressed disappointment that what he believed would remain private had become public.

Over the past decade, I have often experienced the responsibilities of Jewish life before fully experiencing its sense of community. There are many reasons for that. Geography has played a role. Timing has played a role. So have the ordinary complexities of finding one’s place in any religious community.

I have also witnessed moments when my coreligionists have spoken uncharitably about other movements within our tradition. It has occurred in both liberal and conservative spaces. How often we forget that our words and our actions can either strengthen or weaken another person’s sense of belonging.

I have long felt caught between Jewish worlds, but more recently, I have been given hope.

This newspaper clipping does not tell us everything about George D. Granberry. It cannot. But it preserves a deeply human moment: a man choosing Judaism of his own accord.

Somewhat exaggerated rumors have been afloat of late concerning an event which recently happened in the Church of the United Hebrew Congregation. The event was the embracing of Judaism by a Christian gentleman. The rumors were that there was some dissatisfaction in the congregation caused by the belief that all the rites of the Jewish religion had not been performed. The rumors were started by a few. The main body of the congregation had raised no question concerning the ceremony, and only a few have been asking questions about it, and representing that all the rites and ceremonies of the church had not been complied with.

An Unusual Ceremony.

On Dec. 21 Miss Minnie Plotke, daughter of Mr. S. Plotke, was married to Mr. George D. Granberry, who is in the office of Coroner Irwin.

The ceremony was performed by Rabbi Messing and the impressive service of the Hebrew Church was duly solemnized. The young people settled down to a quiet, happy life, and thought nothing further about their marriage except that, happily, the obstacles which sometimes act as bars to the union of a Hebrew and a Christian had been overcome.

In this case they were brushed aside by Mr. Granberry, who adopted the faith of his sweetheart and was received by Dr. Messing as a Jew. So far as they were concerned, therefore, the difficulties had all been overcome, but some members of the church have since expressed doubts as to whether he had complied with all the requirements of the Hebrew Church.

It was said that just before the ceremony an officer of the church stepped up to Dr. Messing and asked if Mr. Granberry had received all the rites prerequisite to his acceptance. Dr. Messing, it is said, replied that he had, and the official was satisfied.

The story went further, however, and said that some member of the congregation had since found out that one essential ceremony had not been performed and he proposed to inquire of Dr. Messing what that meant.

These reports were spoken of with freedom among a small circle of people in the congregation, but most of the members were informed on the day of the ceremony that Mr. Granberry was now entirely a Jew. He had taken the name of David, by which he would be known hereafter among the people of the faith which he has adopted.

The reports concerning the admission of Mr. Granberry were somewhat complicated, so Dr. Messing was called on yesterday and asked for a plain statement of the case. He was told what has been retold above and his reply was:

“There is no truth in the statement that there is any trouble in the church. Mr. Granberry had been regularly and properly admitted to the congregation and there is no trouble about it.”

“Did one of the officers ask you before the ceremony if all the requirements had been complied with?”

“No. No such question was asked. Mr. Granberry had complied with all of the requirements of our church. That answer covers everything. All of the ceremonies were not performed then. One took place in Indianapolis some weeks ago. My brother, who is a rabbi, performed it. There is no occasion, no ground for trouble over this matter.”

“Is it not unusual for Christians to adopt the faith of Israel, doctor?”

“No. Not in my experience. Only last Sunday I received a lady, Mrs. Wolf. Her husband is a toy merchant. They were married last May. She was a Miss. Malone, I think. She had been under my instructions ever since last September and on last Sunday I received her.

“But even if Mr. Granberry had not performed all the ceremonies he still might marry a Jewess. I would not marry them; I would have sent them to a Justice of the Peace. The church recognizes a marriage performed by any one legally authorized by the law to perform it. Some rabbis will marry a Christian and a Jew. I will not, but the difference in faith does not prevent their marriage. I do not know how these reports started. I cannot imagine what their origin is. I should like to know, but wherever they started, there is no truth in them. When I married Mr. Granberry and Miss Plotke he had done everything that the church required and that is all I required. The people of the congregation have not raised any such question and I do not expect them to, because there is no reason for it.”

Dr. Messing afterwards said that this was the first time in eighteen years that a Christian man had become a Jew in this city and complied with all that is required. He also said that the changes in faith from one of these very positive creeds to another were usually the result of marriage.

A call was made at the residence of Mr. Plotke, the father of Mrs. Granberry, but he is in Chicago and will not return until Monday. Mr. Granberry was found at the Coroner’s office, and he said that he had seen Dr. Messing, who had told him that the reports concerning the congregation were being inquired into.

Mr. Granberry Not Inclined to Talk

He inquired what Dr. Messing had said and when he was told he said:

“Well if Dr. Messing had gone that far I don’t feel inclined to say anything. I consented to the rites of the church under the condition and the promise that it would be kept secret. I did not want anything said about it and I had solemn promises that nothing would be said. I married a Jewess, a young lady who was in Chicago and brought up here. I am grown and old enough to know what I am doing, and I do not care to say anything more about the matter. I do not know anything about the congregation or any disagreement that may have occurred there. I did not know, in fact, that I was a member of the congregation.”

A case somewhat similar to this one occurred in Kansas City a short while ago, and became the subject of much controversy throughout the country, especially in rabbinical circles. The young man in that case, however, refused to submit to all the rites, and in his refusal he was sustained by many of the leading rabbis in the country.

That conversation sent me back into the newspapers, where I rediscovered a remarkable account of a Jewish wedding held in Lima on New Year’s Day in 1914.

I've reproduced the article essentially as it appeared, adding only paragraph breaks for readability. Some readers will notice places where the reporter misunderstood a custom or interpreted Jewish practice through a Christian lens. Rather than correcting every detail, I've left the article largely untouched, because those moments tell us something too. Read closely, and you'll find a vivid glimpse of immigrant Jewish life in Ohio: a young family beginning a new life in a new country, and a distinctly Jewish moment preserved in the pages of a general newspaper.

An ancient Jewish custom of having a marriage under a canopy in the open air was strangely transposed to fit modern times yesterday at the home of David Epstein, No. 406 S. McDonald street, when two, whose romance began four years ago in Russia, were married under a huge American flag.

The bride and bridegroom were Miss Fannie Pressman, 19, and Robert Gordon, 21, both of whom recently came here from the village of Vlicky, in the state of Vilna, Russia. A marriage ceremony that has long been almost discarded among the Jews and only used by the most orthodox was performed. The christening of Rhea, the two weeks old daughter of David Epstein, preceded the New Year’s wedding. Rabbi I. Lurea led both ceremonies.

Follow Ancient Custom

The ceremony of christening the baby was simple. Neither the child nor the mother had part in it. All of the men of the thirty guests present gathered in one room in silence as Rabbi Lurea chanted a brief service.

The ceremony prescribed by the Mosaic law of the Jews was used in the marriage. It too, was simple. In ancient times the marriage was performed in the open air under a canopy of some fancy material, its richness depending upon the wealth of the bridegroom. A large American flag formed the canopy yesterday. It was supported by four posts, each held in place by one of the guests/ Under its folds stood the bride and bridegroom and before them the rabbi.

Rabbi Chants Service.

Although attired in their best, none of the principals were especially garbed for the occasion. In Hebrew, Rabbi Lurea chanted in a rich baritone, the brief service and received the marriage vows.

At the conclusion of the ceremony cries of congratulation from all of the guests made the scene a happy and a noisy one. Then the entire party was seated at tables running the length of two rooms and was served with a wedding feast of no mean proportions.

Men All Wear Hats.

Throughout both ceremonies the men took the principal part. All wore their hats. The wearing of hats during any religious ceremony is an ancient Jewish custom that has not been strictly adhered to in recent years. The ancient belief was that it was a mark of irreverence to attend religious services with uncovered head. Rabbi Lurea wore a modern derby as he performed the ceremonies.

The courtship which, ended with yesterday’s marriage began when Miss Pressman was 15 years of age in the home village in Russia. Gordon had two brothers in America. He was encouraged to come to the land of opportunity. His two brothers are Aby Gordon who is in New York and Abraham Gordon of Akron. Shortly after his arrival in America fifteen months ago he secured employment at the Epstein shoe repair shop in Lima. Six months ago he sent for his bride-to-be and since she has been with her sister, Mrs. Rebecca Strickstein, in Toledo. The two will make their home in Lima.

The out of town guests who attended the wedding were Abraham Gordon of Akron, Mrs. David Pophail and Miss Rickie Kuhn of Evansville, Indiana, and Miss Ruth Friedman of Dayton. Telegrams of congratulation poured in from friends and relatives all over the country.

Over the past month, I have written three military stories.

The first appeared in MuslimMatters. It told the story of Sgt. Edward Sheronick, a Muslim American from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who served in the Second World War and was killed fighting Nazi Germany. While researching the piece, I discovered another member of Cedar Rapids’ Muslim community, Hassein Sheronick, who reportedly spent half a day persuading Army officials to stamp a single letter on his identification tag: “M” for Muslim. Abdullah Igram, another veteran from the same mosque, never succeeded in being given identification tags that aligned with his faith. Years later, he reflected that “in fighting for democracy it would seem a soldier should have the right to die identified with his own faith.”

A few weeks later, The Forward published my story about PFC Frank Kurzinger, a German-born Jewish refugee who returned to Europe in an American uniform and was killed while trying to save a Christian friend in Italy. Because Kurzinger feared what would happen if the Nazis captured a German-born Jew, he identified as Catholic on his dog tags. Eighty years later, Operation Benjamin helped replace the Latin Cross above his grave with a Star of David and reunited his family with the descendants of the soldier he had tried to save.

Just a few days after that, the Rochester Beacon published my story about the Queer Veterans Project in Rochester. One veteran, Bill Gierchak, described living “two lives” while serving under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He also said “We deserve the right to know we exist.”

The people at the center of these accounts come from different places. One worked as a grocer in Iowa before enlisting. Another was a Jewish refugee whose life ended near Florence at 21. The third brings together LGBTQ veterans in Western New York.

They are not separate American histories.

Each returns to the same question: Will we remember people as they truly were?

These are communities that are often discussed separately. Sometimes they are even pitted against one another in our public conversations. But I do not want these lives to become symbols. I want us to see them as whole people.

Each life reminds us that identity matters, but it is never the whole story.

Memory does not happen by accident.

It asks someone to notice. To ask another question. To listen a little longer than necessary. To believe that a story is worth preserving before it disappears.

The United States will soon mark its 250th anniversary.

Anniversaries invite us to look backward. They also ask what kind of nation we hope to become.

These three accounts have reminded me that our history has always been larger and more complicated than the categories we so often assume. A Muslim immigrant family in Iowa sent young men to fight Nazi Germany. A Jewish refugee gave his life trying to save a Christian friend in Europe. Queer veterans served their country long before they could safely speak about who they were.

These histories deepen the American story.

One of the gifts of writing these essays has been the conversations that followed.

After reading the story of Edward Sheronick, a Muslim reader wrote, “I thank you for sharing the article about the Muslim soldier who sacrificed his life for his country. In Islam loyalty to your country is considered as a basic principle of one’s life.”

After learning about Frank Kurzinger, a Christian reader told me they were moved and wrote, “Every time the story is shared, PFC Kurzinger is again remembered.”

After the Queer Veterans Project story was published, one veteran wrote to me, “Thank you. Thank you so much. Tears of joy and contentment. Thank you for telling our story.”

I have thought about those messages often.

They reminded me that stories have a way of crossing boundaries that arguments rarely can.

We spend so much of our time talking past one another. History, at its best, asks us to do something different. It asks us to hear one another.

Perhaps that is one of the responsibilities of memory.

Not simply to preserve the past, but to help us recognize our neighbors a little more fully than we did before.

People sometimes ask why I am drawn to stories like these.

Part of the answer is that I know something of what it feels like to have parts of my own story misunderstood or left untold. That experience has made me more attentive to the ways other people’s lives are remembered, simplified, or overlooked.

The work of a historian is often described as preserving the past. I have come to think of it a little differently.

Memory is an action.

Archives, interviews, family photographs, weathered headstones, and forgotten newspaper clippings all ask the same question: Will someone care enough to remember?

For me, telling these stories has become an act of avodah, sacred work. It is where I have come to understand that remembering another person's story is also a way of finding my own place within the larger human story.

As our nation marks 250 years, I hope we commit to making room for lives that surprise us, complicate us, and remind us that our neighbors have often carried burdens we never knew. If we pause long enough to hear one another, we may discover that we have far more in common than we imagined.

Perhaps that is one of memory’s greatest gifts. It reminds us that loving our neighbors is not only something we do in the present. We also love them by refusing to let their stories disappear.

The massive compilation of Jewish tradition, law, and practice known as the Talmud cannot be reduced to its harshest statements. Like the legal and theological accumulations of other faiths, it contains both material shaped by its age and insights of lasting value. Jewish communities, meanwhile, are more diverse, internally contested, and historically layered than polemics often allow.

Horowitz often speaks more sharply than I would, but he is asking questions worth paying attention to, even when I would frame them differently. Does Diaspora Judaism have a shared goal beyond bare preservation? What is the purpose of Judaism in the United States? What happens when a religious tradition begins to speak of itself more sociologically than theologically, and guardedness obscures confidence in what Judaism might still say to the wider American public?

These questions are not new. One aim of my conversation with Horowitz was to place some of his ideas within a longer American Jewish history, especially by revisiting the words of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century rabbis who spoke more compellingly than many of my coreligionists do today about Judaism’s purpose, what this faith offers to the world, and why its truths should not remain hidden from those outside it. These convictions are not abstract for me. My own story bears witness to the fact that Judaism can be encountered as something theologically distinct, spiritually fulfilling, and capable of inspiring someone not born into it to build a life within it.

What follows is the text of an 1869 sermon delivered at the dedication of Shaare Emeth in St. Louis, one of the sources I mentioned in our conversation. I have added bolding to a few sections for emphasis but otherwise left the text as it appeared in the original source, including the original capitalization. Read today, it offers a striking example of how openly some American rabbis once presented Judaism to the wider community: as a faith with nothing to conceal, a house of prayer whose teachings should be intelligible to Jew and Gentile alike, and a religious vision grounded in one God, one humanity, moral liberty, and the sanctification of life through just and loving action.

The full interview with Horowitz is linked here. I’m grateful for the opportunity.

And if, as the newspaper wrote of the 1869 dedication, it once seemed “as if a PRESENCE from above had given an audible answer to the fervent prayers of the concourse below,” then I can only hope that both of us, in our different ways, continue to grow in wisdom and spiritual seriousness as we seek to live lives guided by Ahavat Yisrael and love of neighbor.

As printed on page two of The Missouri Republican
Saturday Morning, August 28, 1869

The “Shaare Emeth”

The Dedication of the Jewish Temple

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Gutheim (Rabbi James Gutheim)

“This is the day which the Lord hath appointed, we will rejoice and be glad thereon.” — Ps. CXVIII, 24.

This invitation of the Psalmist to rejoicing and gladness finds a ready response in your hearts in this hour. For four long years have you anxiously looked forward to this day. From the moment that the ground was broken, and active preparations were made for the erection of this sanctuary, the progress of the work was watched with anxious hopes and deep-felt solicitude, and from day to day you asked the question, “When may we enter this house, and appear in the presence of God?” Your exertions and sacrifices are fully rewarded; your hopes and expectations fully realized— for the Temple is now completed, in all its beauty and magnificence; it stands here in its finished artistic symmetry, presenting that “silent harmony” with which architecture delights the eye of the beholder, and “as a thing of beauty, it will be a joy forever.”

In uniting your efforts for this undertaking, you have nobly discharged a duty which you owed to your religion and your God; and, whereas, the faithful performance of duty imparts tranquillity to the mind, and awakens joyous sensations in the bosom, of what a pure and exalted nature must these emotions be, if such obligation involve a holy purpose, if its discharge aim at the accomplishing of an object, that will redound to the benefit and salvation of ourselves and those that will come after us.

To realize an object so grand, to perpetuate that time-honored religion which has been for thousands of years the light, the solace, the shield, the very life of Israel, you have entered on and accomplished this enterprise. With the dedication of this temple a new point of union is created for the scattered sons of Israel, a new sanctuary is established on Freedom’s soil, wherein to worship the God of our fathers, the Lord of heaven and earth, in conformity to His holy will, in accordance with our convictions. With hearts full of gratitude we have, therefore, “blessed the Lord our God, who has preserved us alive, sustained us in health, permitted us to enjoy this season,” and to participate in the sacred rite of dedicating this house to His holy name.

In examining the history of the Jewish settlements in this country, the gradual formation of the congregations already established, or yet is a state of incipiency, that are scattered over these States, it is a gratifying reflection to observe the alacrity which ever were and are still manifested by our brethren to rally round the standard of our religion, to unite in upholding the divine creed revealed on Sinai and designed as the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob. This fact is the more gratifying when the individual and sectional differences of those who unite for religion’s sake are taken into consideration. Not a single case is known where a whole congregation in the old world seized the wandering staff to seek an asylum in the new world as did the pilgrims of the Mayflower. Israelites immigrated as individuals or single families, spread over the country until their number at a particular place warranted the formation of a religious body corporate. Nor had they anything more in common except their religion, but were in most cases in every other respect strangers to each other. But there is something in the soul of the Israelite which prompts him to join his brother Israelite for the consolidation of the religious truths intrusted to him, and that is the consciousness of the importance of his mission for which he is selected to be the bearer and guardian of divine truth for all times and all nations.

The ceremony of dedication which we this day celebrate with holy joy and grateful hearts to our God and merciful protector, is of deep importance to ourselves, of abiding interest to the stranger. Simple and solemn in its conception, it is a type of the devotional exercises that will henceforward take place within these walls. No incomprehensible mystery is interwoven in our creed. The absolute unity of God, as erst proclaimed by Abraham and taught by Moses, yet forms the basis and keystone of our belief. God is our father and we are his children; man is created in the image of God and destined to immortality — are cardinal doctrines of our faith. “The Lord is the immutable, eternal Being, the omnipotent God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in beneficence and truth, keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgoing iniquity, transgression and sin.” This heavenly message justifies our hope in salvation. The divine commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the immovable fountain head of our moral law and the invariable guide of our practice. These truths that are within the grasp of the simplest understanding, as we are taught and firmly believe, will one day be universally acknowledged from the spiritual basis of our temple. The spirit of these truths is embodied in every prayer we utter, in every religious discourse that is pronounced from a Jewish pulpit. Amidst all the transformations, which, for thousands of years have changed the race of the globe, amidst the downfall of thrones and the crash of empires, we have preserved the glorious legacy inherited from our fathers— of being the depositaries of the genuine heaven-revealed Word, of being the living witnesses of the living God through all times and in all zones.

These considerations naturally suggest themselves on an occasion like the present. The dedication of this temple bears testimony to the vital power of our religion, the sublime mission of our people, the continuing mercy of God, who has promised that, even in our dispersion, He will not cast us off, nor break the covenant made with our fathers. We stand here as the connecting link between the past and the future. To the past we recur with feelings of pride, mingled with sadness; to the future we look with never-fading hope. There was a time when the stern realities of life assumed so depressing and crushing an aspect for the Israelite, as to leave him no other resource, but his patient trust in God and the hope of brighter days. It is a remarkable fact, that our name is associated with the destinies and the history of almost every nation that ever existed, whilst our religion, taking its rise in the cradle of mankind, and sending forth its branches to the ends of the earth, may be termed the religion of history. May others claim the host and the power, we rest contented with the spirit. “For not by hosts, nor by power, is the salvation of mankind to be accomplished, but through My spirit, saith the Eternal.” Who can deny the potent agency of Israel’s religion, directly and indirectly, in the civilization, the religious and moral training of man? The sanctuary that is this day dedicated to its holy purpose, affords a new guarantee for the perpetuity of our faith; and in the fulness of our hearts we may well exclaim with the Psalmist, “This is the way which the Lord hath appointed; we will rejoice and be glad thereon!”

But this deep and joyous interest which we all feel in the completion of this temple must not grow cold or wane, but receive a new stimulus from this very hour. The outward structure is finished, but the inward structure, the edification of the soul, begins anew this day. With the act of dedication, we lay the corner-stone to the spiritual fabric of holiness, which we are called upon to raise within this house, and which is to sanctify us before God. The object of this temple is, therefore, fully expressed in the words of Scripture, which shall serve as our text: “This is none other but a house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Gen. xxviii., 17.

Far be it from us to suppose that we could rear a temple, and were it ever so spacious, to serve as a special abode for the Almighty. We have no such gross and material notions of the Deity. We pray with Solomon, “Behold the heavens and the heavens of heavens do not contain Thee, how much less this house which we have built!” We exclaim with Isaiah, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Zeboeth [sic], the whole earth is full of his glory!” Indeed the patriarch Jacob, who first employed the term “house of God” in our text, applied it to no structure made of human hands. In a moment of pious inspiration he designated thereby the awful spot where God had appeared and promised to him His heavenly protection. This is precisely the case with us. We call this place a house of God because we are here impressed with a deeper awe of God’s majesty; because His divine promises here speak loudest to our hearts; because we are here more strongly reminded of His omnipotence; because here the thought of His goodness and holiness thrills most powerfully through our souls…

The temple is primarily a house of prayer. “For My house,” says God through Isaiah, “shall be called a house of prayer.” Here we shall praise God in the assembly of the devout; shall pay our vows to the Most High; shall offer to Him the sacrifices of our adoration and gratitude. Here we shall celebrate the Sabbaths and festivals of the Lord, and learn to distinguish between the holy and profane. Here we shall discard from our thoughts our secular pursuits, our cares and our diversions, our hatreds and our envies, and apply ourselves to the improvement of our minds and the ennobling of our hearts. Here we shall draw from the fountain of life, the Word of God, those laws and precepts, those principles and maxims which man must observe in order to enjoy happiness here and salvation hereafter. Here, in the presence of God, we shall form resolutions of amendment that will never be broken, and our faith in God shall increase in purity and strength from day to day.

But the prophet significantly adds: “To all the nations.” The prayers offered, the service performed, here must not be a closed book, but intelligible to all, to the Israelite as well as to the Gentile. We have nothing to conceal. Our religious doctrines need only be known, to win the hearts of all. If Solomon at the dedication of the temple already prayed: “But also to the stranger, who is not Thy people Israel, who will come and pray in this house; mayest Thou listen in heaven, and grant his petition,” (1 Kings 8:41-43) how much greater is our duty, so to conduct our worship, that all who come may understand and feel “that the name of the Eternal is called upon this temple and that it is the house of God!” There was a time, when our fathers had to hide from the public gaze; when the believers in the one and only God, persecuted by prejudice, fanaticism and intolerance, were not permitted openly to assemble for public worship, but were obliged to perform their divine service in sequestered localities, in fear and trembling. That time, happily passed in all civilized countries, never existed for us here in freedom’s happy home. Everywhere throughout the length and breadth of these States magnificent temples are reared aloft, at the side of churches, in honor of the God of Israel, as enduring monuments of equal liberty and freedom of conscience. These temples, therefore, must reflect, not only in their exterior beauty, but in their inward appointments, the march of enlightenment, the light of progress, the sublime spirit of our religion.

If, therefore, as you have resolved, the divine service in this temple shall not consist in mere lip-work, “the acquired precepts of men,” in words and ceremonies without sense or meaning, but shall engage the mind and heart and leave a salutary impression for active lite; if you here worship God in sincerity and truth; if your soul rises on the solemn tones of the organ and the sacred notes of psalmody towards heaven, to draw strength and comfort for its life upon earth; if there lofty arches suggest to you the consciousness of your lofty, heaven-aspiring destiny, of your high dignity as man and moral beings, of your grateful recognition of the goodness of your Heavenly Father… And this house of God shall be called a house of prayer for all nations!

Twenty-five centuries ago did the voice of inspiration proclaim this heavenly message, which has only gained strength with the change of time and the lapse of ages. Israel’s religion alone is capable of furnishing the basis upon which mankind may unite, the banner around which all the families of man may gather. It is founded upon no inexplicable mystery, embodies no doctrine repugnant to reason, enjoins no command at which humanity may revolt. Its truths flow directly from the eternal fountain and will ever remain the living springs of salvation. One God— the Father of all! One humanity— His children all! Moral immortal spirit animating every human being! Moral liberty, the inalienable birthright of every man! Justification by our own works! Can you conceive of a creed more sublime, more worthy of universal acceptance?

And this is the creed of the Jewish religion which is so often derided, and of the Jewish people that have been so long, and in many bigoted and semi-civilized countries are still sorely persecuted. This is the divine revelation, kindled by the spirit of God in the spirit of man, and of which Israel has been the faithful depository throughout the checkered phases of its existence. Silently, but effectually have these heavenly truths been cherished and cultivated under the weight of oppression, in the shades of compulsory seclusion— boldly, fearlessly do we proclaim them under the benign sway of liberty, and challenge the scrutiny of enlightened freemen. And, although the prevailing diversities of creed preclude the prospect of an early religious fraternization, yet we undeviatingly cling to the conviction that a day will arrive “when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and that the Eternal shall be acknowledged One and his name One!”

The house of God shall not only strengthen our faith in the Holy One, not only inculcate truth, but shall impress on our souls those principles of justice and love, which shall ever guide our conduct, our dealings with the world at large. The sanctification of life, which is the principal aim of our religion, can only be attained by a faithful execution of our moral duties as thought by the Word of God. Justice and love are the two adamantine pillars upon which the welfare of society, upon which the peace of communities and of nations is securely established. Acts of injustice, by which the eternal boundaries are removed and the rights of our neighbors infringed, are the prolific sources of unhappiness and of the hatred that alienates man from man. “Justice, only justice, shalt thou pursue.” is the admonition of the first and greatest prophet to his age and to all succeeding generations. Our temple emphatically teaches this lesson. Whenever we enter its sacred precincts, we are reminded that it is dedicated to the God of Justice, and the beautiful words of the psalmist must occur to our minds, “Lord, who may sojourn in Thy tent, who may dwell upon Thy holy mountain? He who walketh uprightly, who worketh justice.” …

But simple justice would be cold and dead, if it is not warmed and animated by love. The pious love to God, and through God to all men, will be developed and fostered in this house. It is our religious home, where we appear as children of our universal Father. Outside of this temple we meet with those unavoidable distinctions, which are towering icebergs between man and man, and alienate the heart. But here, in the light of religion, before the sun of the truth, “that one God has created us — that we have all one Father” — here the icy walls melt away and the cold barriers are levelled to the ground. Here, in the house of God, that leads to the gate of Heaven, we are forced to acknowledge that, as we shall one day be equals in the realms of eternity, so we are equals here before God, and the only distinction that is valid and true, is “the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God, and him who serves Him not.” Prayer is only then of value, if the heart is free from hatred, and the prayer is the expression of genuine love. The contemplation of divine love, which embraces every human being, awakens this love to God and to our fellow man in our soul…

The dedication prayer

Almighty God, Father of all mankind, sole and omnipotent Ruler of the universe, Thou whose throne is the heavens, and whose foot-stool the earth; let Thy glory fill this house, which we this day dedicate to thy holy name, and shelter it under the wings of Thy heavenly protection…

Grant consolation to every mourner, relief to every distressed, comfort to every afflicted, hope to every suffered, a gracious pardon to every repentant sinner, and to all who come in Thy name, Thy heavenly blessing. Open our eyes, that we may see the wonders of Thy law…

Regard, O Father, in Thine abundant favor and benevolence, this our beloved country, and bless its executive, legislative and judicial authorities. May it increase in prosperity and renown; may the helm of state be piloted with judgement; may wisdom resound in the halls of legislation, and righteousness in the courts of justice; may peace, harmony and obedience to the law prevail among the people. We also crave Thy benediction for the State of Missouri, its laws, people and government. May Thy blessing rest upon its soil.

Grant Thy heavenly protection to this city; spread over it the bower of Thy peace and deliver it from every evil. May it obtain gladness and prosperity, increase in godliness and virtue, and may vice and sorrow flee away.

Guard and protect also, O Father, Thy people, the whole house of Israel, throughout their dispersions. May the clouds of oppression and injustice vanish, and the son of freedom and justice break forth in the horizon of mankind. Mayest Thou accelerate the promised time, when TRUTH, PEACE and HAPPINESS will embrace the whole human family in one brotherhood, and when the words of the prophet will be fulfilled, “THEN WILL THE ETERNAL BE KING OVER THE WHOLE EARTH; ON THAT DAY WILL THE ETERNAL BE ONE AND HIS NAME ONE!” AMEN

(from the newspaper report)

At the moment Dr. Gutheim commenced his invocation, the vast congregation rose to their feet and stood in almost breathless silence until the final “Amen” was re-echoed by the sonorous notes of the organ and the voices of the choir. It seemed as if a PRESENCE from above had given an audible answer to the fervent prayers of the concourse below…

The sermon, free from any dogmatism or controversy as it was, might have been heard with edification by every good Christian, and everything, in one word was enacted so beautifully and intelligently that even free-thinkers and philosophers found their aesthetic and speculative expectations perfectly satisfied… A more complete success than this celebration we never witnessed in this city.

It was spring in rural Ohio, one of those days when the sky was a clear blue. I don’t remember seeing any clouds. The fields around the farmhouse were green, the air was comfortable, and I was nervous.

A man whom I was dating, let’s call him Nate, had brought me to a family gathering at an old farmhouse that had been in his family for generations. I had already spent the night there, in an upstairs guest room with a twin bed. Ever mindful of history, I felt the home’s age in the floorboards and walls. I had never been welcomed by someone’s family in such a way before. We had meals together. I was a guest at what I remember as a family reunion.

There were so many people that I felt a bit overwhelmed. I remember being by myself often. Nate may have been giving me space to form my own opinions, or perhaps he was just caught in conversation. At one point I found myself talking with Nate’s father on the porch. I do not remember what we were saying. The night before, unsure what to say and wanting to let him know that I was a decent person, I had told him about being involved with the Sons of the American Legion when I was younger, about Buckeye Boys State, and other topics I hoped might show us common ground. He seemed to approve, but the conversation ended when he asked Nate to look at a tractor that was having some kind of issue.

As we stood talking on the porch that spring day, another family member came over and asked him, in reference to me, “Is this one of yours?”

His father looked at him, then at me, and said, “No, but he may be someday.”

I do not remember his face clearly. I remember the feeling he gave me.

The line was matter-of-fact, but there was tenderness in it, and I think now it was probably the best answer he could have given. It acknowledged what was visible without presuming too much.

At the time, it was almost more kindness than I knew how to absorb.

I was twenty-two, still relatively newly out, and had already been Jewish for several years. I had converted at nineteen, before I ever dated anyone, and I was on the edge of leaving Ohio to work for Hillel International. The chronology matters. Many people, especially in progressive religious spaces, assume that my sexuality led to my religious searching, or that Judaism appealed to me mainly because it seemed a more affirming spiritual home. But I had begun searching long before I ever had a clear idea that I was gay. By the time I met Nate, I was already deeply Jewish, though still learning many other things about myself.

One of the first people I came out to, at eighteen, was a rabbi leading a conversion class I was in. I remember telling him that I did not want a “liberal answer” to the question of homosexuality. I wanted a traditional one. If Judaism could not honestly hold a place for a gay man, I did not want to complete the conversion. I would keep living toward God without becoming Jewish. He took me seriously and gave me things to read. I did not finish my conversion under him; a friend redirected me to a larger, more established conversion class. But he helped shape my spiritual imagination in the brief time he was in my life.

By the time I found myself on that porch in rural Ohio, Judaism had already shaped my world.

And yet what Nate and his family offered me that day also touched a deep nerve. I remain grateful for their kindnesses. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was being treated as someone who could be folded into another family, not as a visitor passing through, but as someone who might someday belong.

Nate grew up in a rural part of Ohio, and there was a steadiness to him that I can still feel when I think of him. He was taller than I was, with an arm-sleeve tattoo in memory of his mother, dark trees and German words written into it that I can no longer remember. I remember only that they mattered to him. He told me that German was part of his family history, and he still spoke it with his roommate. He was a few years older than me, easy to talk to, and from the beginning I felt safe around him. On our first date, I remember him walking toward me in Schiller Park smiling, and before too long we were lying under the trees looking up at the sky together.

He was not especially religious, at least not in the intense way I was. But he knew how important faith was to me, and he knew the vocabulary of it. His family, he told me, had once been affiliated with the United Brethren church, and even the name conjured for me a kind of rootedness. I spoke of faith often, and he listened.

That same weekend, on the drive back to Columbus, I told him that what his father had said was a lot to process. I do not think I was kind about it. I was overwhelmed, trying to make sense of too many things at once. I had just spent the night in his family’s home, in a bedroom all to myself upstairs in that old farmhouse, with plenty of time to think. I had eaten the usual Midwestern barbecue sides at a family gathering under a cloudless sky. I had been treated not simply with politeness, but with a kind of openhandedness I had never quite experienced before.

And yet I knew I had agreed to take a job that would require me to move. Still, I could have backed out. I met Nate during my final semester at Capital University.

Nate had heard me talk about the choice for weeks. Once, not long after the day at the farmhouse, he had seen me cry over it. He gave me space to make my own decision, even as he tried to show me what a life in Ohio might look like. He was trying, in a gentle way, to show me that there was care for me there. Much later, after I had essentially made my choice, he said, with sadness and half as a joke, “That’s what I get for dating undergrads.”

My Jewish identity, my growing sense of purpose, and a belief that I owed something in return for the good fortune I had been shown as a college student had already set me on a path away from Ohio, away from everything I knew. My family had lived in the same region of Ohio for well over a century.

Columbus was not devoid of promise. Before I had even finished my conversion to Judaism, I had helped restart a Jewish organization on campus and was later honored by the Jewish Federation for that work. I had interned with Ohio Jewish Communities and with the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio, and the president of my university had written me a recommendation letter for the Legislative Fellowship Program at the Statehouse. There were real mentors there and real pathways. But another possibility had opened too. Encouraged by two mentors, one of whom passed suddenly during my senior year, I applied for the Springboard Fellowship and was selected to move to Ithaca, New York, to work for Hillel at Ithaca College. It had been my top campus.

Not everyone thought I should go.

A rabbi I admired, younger and newer to me than the Federation mentors who had been part of my journey since sophomore year, met me for coffee near campus as graduation approached. When I told him of my acceptance into the Springboard Fellowship, he said he thought I needed time “to be a Jew in the pew.” It might be better, he suggested, to remain in Columbus than to move immediately into a Jewish professional role in a new town. I had already been known by some at Capital as the “campus rabbi.” Perhaps it was time simply to be Austin.

I remember being surprised, and I still remember the phrase he used. At the time I resisted it, because I wanted to work with Jewish students and help grow Jewish life as I had at Capital. But over the years I have come to hear more wisdom in that line than I did then. I had spent so many years striving toward Judaism that perhaps I had not yet fully learned how simply to live in it. At thirty, I appreciate far more than I did at twenty-two what it meant to leave Columbus.

Ithaca seemed to have what I needed to live a Jewish life. There were two synagogues in the area, and one was a Conservative synagogue, no less, like the one I had belonged to in Columbus, housed in another handsome building from the 1920s. I remember looking at pictures of Cayuga Lake and being amazed. When I first approached Ithaca from the west and saw the city resting in the valley and Cornell on East Hill, I was impressed. My grandparents made the long drive from Lancaster with me when I moved there, traveling in their truck while I sat alone in my car for one of the longest solo drives I can remember taking.

Shortly after I arrived, my supervisor at Hillel, still the best I have ever had, organized a dinner for me at Moosewood. Members of the Ithaca Area United Jewish Community board came, and I felt welcomed.

And yet Ithaca was not what I had imagined either.

Within a few months I knew the Jewish community there was not like the one I had known in Columbus. There were real acts of kindness, and there were moments of isolation. It was complicated, at times, to be a Jewish professional there. I encountered one college student studying Judaism to convert, and also many Jews off campus who did not seem to believe very deeply in Judaism. The synagogue that had shone so brightly in my imagination went without a rabbi for a sustained period during my time in town. Outside some Ithaca College students, to whom I was no longer really a peer as a Hillel professional, I knew no one my age who was deeply religious and Jewish. Later, during the pandemic years, when I began graduate school at Cornell and so much of life closed down, I found myself writing about vanished Jewish communities partly because Jewish life had, in some real sense, vanished around me too.

The life I chose was meaningful. It was also solitary.

Nate did not become my future. But he let me see another one.

He and his family showed me what staying in Ohio might have looked like. I dated Nate for less than a year, and we will never know what might have followed. Still, I saw a vision of life that might have rooted rather than moved. He gave me that image without trying to trap me inside it.

A little over a year after I moved to Ithaca, in November 2019, I went back to Columbus to see Nate again at a restaurant in his neighborhood, the same area where some of our first dates had been. By then I was worrying aloud about graduate school and where I would go next. He looked at me sadly and said, “You’re still the same person.”

Few times in my life had I felt so seen. I protested, a sure sign he had a point.

He was right: I was still trying to think my way into certainty, still pressing down on the present with concerns for the future. He knew me well enough to recognize the pattern.

I think now that Nate helped me in at least two ways. First, he showed me what deep affection could look like without pressure. In the end, he gave me space to choose. Later, with that sad rebuke over drinks, he helped me remain in Ithaca long enough to weigh more seriously the budding relationship that would eventually become my marriage. My husband and I met there. Our relationship, which began in August 2019, was not the only factor that led me to accept my offer from Cornell; I already had a roommate in the program, and Cornell had given me a generous scholarship. But Jason was growing in importance. Had I left Ithaca in 2020, had I gone to Ohio State or DePaul in Chicago, I would never have built the life we now have.

Some of my deepest memories now are tied to Cayuga Lake, including the spot where Jason proposed to me in 2021. Two years later, my first engagement ring sank to the bottom of the lake during a swim. When I told Jason what had happened, I was distraught, but he was not upset. He simply told me how much he loved me.

When I converted to Judaism, I heard that it was good to date within the community, and I took that seriously. But I never met, in college or during my years in Ithaca, someone who was both available and religious in the way I meant the word. The Jewish population at Capital University was small. Many Jews I met through The Ohio State University Hillel admired my conviction but did not really understand the seriousness of it. Most students I met were not especially religious. I often found a deeper understanding of faith among non-Jews, including Nate and later Jason.

That, too, is part of my Jewish story.

I still think of Nate’s father on that deck in the spring. I wonder how he is. I recall the blue sky, the green fields, the family reunion, the feeling of being young, nervous, and wanting to show that I was a good person, because I assumed my welcome would be conditional. I remember the upstairs guest room in a nineteenth-century farmhouse. I remember the kindness I was given, and the sentence that made room for me before I knew how to receive it.

“No, but he may be someday.”

For a moment, I saw that my life might have taken root there.

I left anyway.

My commitment to Judaism took me to Ithaca. In Ithaca I found joy, vocation, loneliness, graduate school, writing, and most importantly love. But I do not think the gift offered on that deck was canceled by the fact that I did not stay. Some people enter your life not to become your permanent home, but to show you what home might feel like. Sometimes, by showing you that, they help prepare you for the home you will later be given.

That, too, is a blessing.

In an April 1871 newspaper from Marshall, Missouri, a reader posed a question: Could someone share the recipe for what their “Israelitish friends” called “saltwater cucumbers”?

The answer was simple. Whole cucumbers, placed in salt water with fennel and pepper. After a few days, they were taken out and eaten “as you would eat celery.” To the unaccustomed palate, the writer admitted, they were “not particularly pleasant.” But, the piece continued, they soon became “almost indispensable.”

Many readers today will recognize the food being described. These were pickled cucumbers, preserved not in vinegar but in brine, likely an early version of what would later become associated with Jewish pickle culture. The language, however, belongs to an earlier moment, before the food had a settled place in American life.

“Saltwater cucumbers” is not a term that lasted. Neither, for that matter, did “Israelitish friends.” But both phrases capture a moment when a now-familiar food was still being described from the outside, not yet fully absorbed into the country’s everyday vocabulary.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in larger numbers, pickles would become fixtures of urban life, especially in New York. The pickle barrel would come to stand as one of the most recognizable images of the city’s street food: cucumbers in brine, pulled out by hand and eaten on the spot.

In southeastern Ohio, I did not grow up liking pickles. It was only later, while living in Ithaca, New York, that I came to appreciate them and their different varieties. It was also in Ithaca that I was introduced to the deli pickle. The clipping caught my attention because it described a food I had come to appreciate, but in language I had never encountered before.

I have spent much of the past year writing about Jewish histories in both southern and northern states. Here, in a Missouri newspaper, is an early glimpse of the pickle that would later become one of America’s most recognizable Jewish foods.

The writer who answered the question offered one more small judgment. These “saltwater cucumbers,” he wrote, were valued for their “refrigerating qualities in those glowing August days,” even more than iced watermelon. The remark turns a recipe into a glimpse of everyday life.

Before becoming an icon, the pickle appeared in newsprint as something local, shared, and only partly understood. The name “saltwater cucumber” did not last. The food did.

One man whose memory I have come to carry is Rabbi Julius Baker, the longest-serving rabbi in the history of Lancaster, Ohio’s Jewish community.

In October 1940, The Ohio Jewish Chronicle reported that Lancaster’s Jewish community had completed a campaign to retire the remaining mortgage on its Chestnut Street synagogue. The synagogue was dedicated in 1927 before an interfaith congregation that included the town mayor and a Presbyterian minister.

The report on the mortgage’s retirement went on:

“It is interesting to note that Rabbi Julius Baker is formerly of Columbus and during his eight years in Lancaster has enjoyed the love and respect of his worshippers. It was thru [sic] his efforts that the Jewish children there were given a thorough Jewish education along the same lines as that received by youth of large communities.”

Someone believed that Jewish children in Fairfield County deserved the same education as Jewish children anywhere else. Lancaster’s Jewish community was never larger than 100 people.

While Baker had moved to Columbus by the late 1930s, he continued to teach and lead in Lancaster. Year after year, notices in the local newspaper announced his name as the service leader for the High Holidays.

The surviving notices mention other duties as well. He acted as the congregation’s shochet, ensuring that kosher meat remained available locally. He authored a volume of sermons entitled Pri Yehudah. He would later edit Sefer Yedwabne, preserving the memory of the Jewish community in which he himself had been raised.

In 1962 The Ohio Jewish Chronicle announced that Baker had been elected rabbi of Congregation Ahavas Sholom in Columbus. Decades later, while a student at Capital University, I would attend this congregation from time to time.

The article spoke of his background and qualifications:

“Rabbi Baker was born in Yedwobne (Jedwabne), Poland, a well-known community located near the famous city of Lomza. He studied in most of the major Yeshivos of Poland, including Radin, Grodno, Kletsk, Mir and Novogrudok.”

Sol Rising, president of Congregation Ahavas Sholom, continued:

“In these schools he was trained by the most distinguished Talmudic scholars of Eastern Europe, achieving a thorough mastery of all the fields of rabbinic learning.”

His ordination came from members of the Chief Rabbinate of Lomza.

“In their smichos (certificates of ordination) they speak with great enthusiasm and respect of Rabbi Baker’s scholarship, of his superb mastery of the Talmud and the Codes, and they recommend him warmly to even the largest Jewish communities.”

The newspaper also emphasized that his rabbinic credentials went beyond the level typically conferred in America at the time.

“Unlike the typical American smicha, which is limited to the degree of Yoreh Yoreh, Rabbi Baker received, in each of his three smichas, the advanced degree of Yoreh Yoreh Yadin Yadin. This qualifies him to render decisions in every area of Jewish law, without exception.”

And yet this scholar spent roughly a quarter century serving the Jewish community of Lancaster, Ohio.

The same article noted:

“For 25 years he served as the Rabbi of the Jewish community of Lancaster, Ohio. During that same period he also served as a Shochet in the city of Columbus.”

He was praised not only for his learning but his character.

“In these posts he exhibited the deep learning, the dedicated piety, and the human warmth which have won for him the affection and respect of Columbus Jewry.”

There was one more detail.

A later oral history from a family member says Rabbi Baker served Ahavas Sholom without salary.

That fact appears only briefly in the historical record. Like many details, it is easy to miss.

But it belongs beside the other fragments: the children taught, the kosher meat provided, the holiday services led, the sermons written, the martyred community remembered.

Generations later, those fragments still tell a story.

They tell us what it can mean to live Ahavat Yisrael.

Author’s Note

A friend I will call M. recently bought me a beer and gave me space to tell some of my story. He made room for me to speak about the weight of my work as a fundraiser for neurology research, where I so often walk beside individuals who have known loss. I also spoke of the years I spent preparing bodies for Jewish burial as part of chevra kadisha organizations in three cities. He, too, has known that sacred work, something I have rarely discussed outside those who have done it themselves. He heard that I first moved to New York in 2018 to work for Hillel, one stop along a much longer journey. He listened as I described the long thread of partial belonging that has run through my religious life, from Catholic school until today. He also listened as I spoke with pride about Rabbi Baker’s life.

In stories like Baker’s I find my place in Am Yisrael. People often need context for a Jew from Lancaster, Ohio named Austin. Julius Baker reminds me that such stories are not new. As I told M., when people wonder what a nice Jewish boy is doing in Lancaster, I have long answered with a simple reminder: “Nice Jewish boys have lived in Lancaster since the 1850s.”

Rabbi Baker and I are very different, and yet each of us, in our own way, makir kvar et darki—has come to know the path before us.

His life helps demonstrate that the American Jewish experience never belonged only to large cities, famous institutions, or the people whose names appear most often in communal histories. Sometimes it was embodied by a rabbi serving a small congregation in southeastern Ohio.

Not long after that conversation, M. sat with me in shul. Earlier, over the beer at Sheffield’s, I had told him that whenever I visit a synagogue, I am usually one of the first people to arrive. The space fills in around me. Since moving to Rochester, it has been rare for someone to come over and sit with me in shul. Rarer still has been finding someone in this same community who asks and hears what moves me in Judaism. Few people invite that kind of conversation.

During the service, a teaching was shared about how a single good deed can ripple outward and create more good deeds. In such ways, it was said, palaces to be seen on Judgment Day are built, sometimes without the person ever knowing that their good deed had been witnessed.

This essay is one of those ripples. In remembering Rabbi Baker’s merit, I am also giving thanks for the acts of kindness I’ve been shown. May his memory continue to be a blessing to those who hold it, and may we benefit from carrying it.

Shortly before publishing this essay, I spoke with Eli Zaffirini on the Kinda Religious podcast about memory, belonging, and the role the practice of documenting history plays in my spiritual life. Among the topics we discussed was the 1919 Jewish relief campaign, a largely forgotten episode that has become increasingly important to my work. Part of my historical writing is an attempt to recover such moments, not only because they happened, but because they continue to shape how I think about Jewish history, civic responsibility, and what it means to find oneself within a tradition.

In October 1919, Monsignor Thomas Vincent Shannon of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Chicago lent his name, his voice and a portion of his income to an unusual cause: a Jewish relief campaign for millions facing starvation overseas.

He was not alone.

Nearly 170 miles west in Rock Island, newspapers reported that “ministers of all denominations” were preparing to launch the campaign at once. Another report noted, “Gentiles all over the state are lending their assistance,” framing the effort not as sectarian, but as humanitarian.

The need was urgent. In the aftermath of World War I, Jewish communities across Eastern Europe had been devastated. Newspapers estimated that six million Jews faced starvation. The American Jewish Relief Committee organized a national campaign to raise $35 million. It was widely understood that American Jews could not meet the need alone.

For what was described at the time as a first, Jews turned to their non-Jewish neighbors.

Across Illinois, the response took on a distinctly local character.

In Rock Island, Boy Scouts who had recently passed their service examinations were among the first to volunteer, distributing posters for the campaign. They had developed that skill during the war years, helping to promote Liberty Loan drives.

Nearly 200 miles to the southeast, in Paxton, preparations took on the form of community life. A field meet and football game with a nearby town were planned to coincide with the campaign. Women’s clubs organized tag days to raise funds.

Even in places without Jews, the campaign moved forward. “In some counties where there are no Jews,” one Illinois paper reported, “non-Jews have expressed their willingness to go ahead with the work.”

Religious leaders were among the most visible advocates.

In Champaign, the Rev. George P. Hoster of Emanuel Episcopal Church made the case even more directly. “It is about time the non-Jew did something for the Jew,” he wrote, reminding readers that Jewish communities had long supported broader humanitarian causes. Now, he argued, the responsibility could not remain one-sided.

In Bloomington, the message was echoed across the city. The relief campaign was mentioned “from most of the pulpits,” with one newspaper printing remarks in support from eight churches.

The appeal reached the highest levels of state government.

Gov. Frank O. Lowden issued a proclamation designating a week in late October as Jewish Relief Week in Illinois. He called on “all organizations” to assist. The scale of the crisis, he argued, was simply too great for any one community to bear alone. “The burden is too great,” he wrote. “Humanity at large must take it up.”

What emerges from these accounts is not a single moment, but a pattern.

In town after town, Illinoisans were asked whether suffering beyond their borders was their concern. The answer heard in both small towns and large cities was yes.

Newspapers encouraged participation. Clergy spoke of shared obligation. Community groups treated participation as a natural extension of civic life. The lines between religious communities, however real, did not define the limits of responsibility.

More than a century later, this episode is scarcely remembered.

The 20th century is, for good reason, defined in part by later failures, including the inability of nations such as the United States to offer refuge to Jews facing persecution and death during the Holocaust. Those failures remain essential to confront.

But 1919 preserves a different inheritance.

In Illinois, ministers preached. Scouts volunteered. Women’s clubs organized. The governor issued a call to action.

And in towns where there were no Jews at all, people still gave.

That, too, is part of the state’s history. It should be remembered.

The story quickly spread through newspapers across the United States, including in Atlanta, San Francisco, Nashville, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Selma, and smaller cities across the Midwest and South. One Indiana paper complained that the event had already reached the public “in a garbled condition,” creating “an injustice to the parties concerned.”

The source below, reprinted from the Indianapolis Sentinel, preserves the ceremony in remarkable detail. Grube was asked whether he had been persuaded or forced, whether he expected any worldly advantage, and what principle stood at the heart of Judaism. His answers remain striking.

As Shavuot begins, I have continued thinking about the ways converts to Judaism are often interpreted, narrated, or explained by others before they are fully heard in their own words.

I have kept the framing light and the source largely intact. The tensions within it remain part of the point.

A Novel Religious Event

From the Indianapolis Sentinel

The readers of the Sentinel will remember an item in the daily papers of a few weeks ago hinting at the elopement of a Jewish young lady of this city with a Christian gentleman, and the consequent consternation of the young lady’s family.

The upshot of the matter was that the young couple quietly wended their way to the residence of the Rev. Mr. Bradley and were made one by marriage.

Shortly after the marriage the young husband (Mr. John Grube) signified his intention of adopting the faith of Judaism. He not only expressed a willingness, but a steadfast determination, to join the Jewish Church, which could only be done by undergoing the Abrahamic rite of circumcision.

He accordingly approached the Rev. Mr. Meyer Messing, rabbi, of the Indianapolis Hebrew congregation, with a view of his admission to Judaism, although against the earnest protestations of his wife, herself a Jewess. But, he still persisting, she finally gave her reluctant consent.

A conversion to Judaism by a male member of society being such a great rarity, more especially as the Jewish Church never holds out any inducements for proselytes, Mr. Messing at first would have nothing to do with the matter; but the young man persisted, and called upon Mr. Messing so often in order to be taught the more important tenets of the Jewish religion, that Mr. Messing finally became convinced that the young man was in earnest, and he agreed to perform the ceremony of circumcision upon him.

Accordingly, on the 30th day of May, in the presence of Dr. Gabriel Kaiser, the ceremony was performed, and the young man informed that, although circumcised, he still had eleven days in which to reconsider his determination of uniting himself with the Jewish Church.

At the end of the specified eleven days the young man appeared with his wife, nee Sarah Bohme, and requested to be married over again, according to the ancient and solemn rites of Judaism. -- The first marriage had taken place on the 4th of April.

Mr. Messing appointed yesterday as the time, and his own residence as the place, for the celebration of the Jewish marriage rites.

The ceremony was celebrated last evening at Mr. Messing’s residence, 360 East New York Street. A large crowd assembled.

The high contracting parties stood under a canopy, upheld by four posts, under which were also Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Lang, who stood up with the bridal couple.

Among the many questions asked by Mr. Messing, and answered by Mr. Grube, the following were noted. After a solemn oath upon the Holy Bible and been administered to Mr. Grube by Mr. Messing, Mr. Grube answered before the assembled congregation to the first question, to-wit:

“Have you been persuaded or forced to this important step, or is it of your own free will and accord?”

“No; neither persuaded nor forced, for no one could force me to such an important step. I am actuated by a solemn conviction of duty to my Maker.”

“It is, perhaps some worldly purpose that you expect to reach by this step?”

“No. It would, perhaps, have been a worldly purpose had I not been married to my wife several months.”

“Do you know the chief and first principle underlying our holy religion?”

“Yes. Hear, O, Israel, the Lord our God is but one, and love thy neighbor as thyself embraces enough religion to fraternize all the nations of the earth.”

After some more lengthy questions and answers he was asked to choose a Biblical name, and choosing the name of Jacob, was blessed as such, and will henceforth be known in the Jewish community as Jacob Grube.

The company assembled was made up of the elite of the Jewish society of the city, and the tables, to which all present sat down, were fairly groaning with all the delicacies of the season.

Among the happiest of the happy (always excepting the bride and groom) were the bride’s parents, who seemed to be perfectly happy, when, pointing at their son-in-law, exclaiming, “that’s our Jew boy.”

This is the first time that an instance of this kind has ever taken place in this city, and one of the few that have ever occurred in the United States, and consequently Jewish circles are considerably elated over it.

All will unite in wishing Mr. and Mrs. Grube a long life of happiness and contentment, and thus ends in joy and festivity what at first everybody supposed to have been a misfortune.

P.S. Earlier this year I wrote about another American convert to Judaism, Rufus L. Perry, who entered Jewish life in Brooklyn in 1912 and took the name Raphael:

The newspaper account that preserved the ceremony could not quite decide how to interpret what it witnessed. The reporter suggested that love, rather than conviction, must have been the true cause of her conversion.

And yet Nellie Burke’s own words were also preserved.

As Shavuot approaches, I have been thinking about the ways converts to Judaism are often spoken about, interpreted, or explained by others, even when they speak clearly for themselves.

I have kept the framing light and the source largely intact. The tensions within it remain part of the point.

From Christianity to Judaism

A Young Lady of Louisville Embraces the Jewish Faith

Her Reception into that Fold — Who the Fair Convert Is and How She Looked — A Novel Ceremony

From the Louisville Courier-Journal, January 16, 1875

Early last evening a large crowd began to assemble at the Jewish Temple, corner of Sixth and Broadway streets, and when the usual Friday evening service commenced the church was crowded to its utmost.

It was an occasion of unusual interest to people of all denominations. An event is to take place that has seldom occurred in this city, and indeed is a rare occurrence elsewhere.

It had been previously announced that a young lady, who had hitherto worshiped and believed in the tenets of the Catholic faith, had renounced her faith and determined to become a convert to the Jewish religion.

The Jewish religion does not advocate proselytism; it does not seek for converts to its fold; but, while it urges no one to abandon his or her religion for the purpose of becoming a member of the house of Israel, it nevertheless receives with open arms those who may voluntarily and freely express a desire to worship according to its teachings.

The instances are few in which persons of Protestant and Catholic belief become Israelites, and the same can be said of Israelites renouncing their faith. Consequently, when one expresses such a determination, there is generally some strong predominant reason causing the act.

Of the instances of such conversion that now and then occur, we nearly always find the converts to be a female; consequently the question arises, whether the prime reason which induced her to take such a course is not entirely outside the bounds of religious opinion.

It is undoubtedly the result of a determination arising in their minds above religious belief, and like Pope they argue:

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight.
He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.

In short, the all pervading idea of love is the source and cause of these extreme conversions. It demonstrates that love not only laughs at lock-smiths but also at religious faiths, and conquers all prejudices which may arise from religious belief.

The strong influence of the man generally overcomes the gentile spirit of the woman and she becomes a convert to his faith, whether it be that of a Jew or Gentile.

There have occurred one of two instances in this city in which persons of the Protestant faith have embraced the Jewish religion, but we believe the conversion last night was the first instance of a believer in Catholicism becoming a convert to Judaism.

People, therefore, as we have said, of all creeds assembled last night to witness the ceremonies incident to the conversion.

The assemblance represented intelligence and education; and we regret to say, also, some were there who manifested considerable ill-breeding. Some people, when they go to church, no matter of what denomination, are unable to appreciate the fact that they are in the house of God.

The convert who was received into the house of Israel was a young lady named Nellie Burke, whose parents reside at present in Cincinnati, and who has resided during her lifetime in this city.

She is about twenty-one years of age, is quite handsome, and has a countenance indicative of refinement and gentleness.

In conversation with a reporter of the Courier-Journal, they stated that she had been mingling among the Jewish people since she was eleven years of age, and that she had been educated at and had attended the Cathedral.

From her constant connection with Jewish people, she became imbued with much of the spirit of their customs and opinions.

Some three months ago she expressed a final resolution to enter into the Jewish church, and, therefore, put herself under the instruction of Rev. Dr. Kleeberg, under whose guidance she has been for the past two months.

She had always admired the Jewish religion, and her intention of marrying one of its believers caused her not to hesitate to take the step which she put into execution.

The young man, whose wife she is to become, she has known for the past five years, but only intimately of late. Mr. Hilp, the gentleman who is to become her husband, is about twenty-three years of age.

The parents of Miss Burke acceded to her wishes, and the ceremony, therefore, took place last night.

The usual service were held, beginning at seven o’clock, and when the customary time arrived, Rev. Dr. Kleeberg delivered a very impressive one on the subject of difference of religious opinions, and upon the ideas of temporal and spiritual salvations, at the conclusion of which he addressed the convert, who stood before the pulpit in a calm attitude, with the following remarks:

“And now let me address a few remarks to you, my sister.

You have appeared here tonight to attach yourself to the ancient and venerable religion of Israel.

By this step you are not only accepted among the fellowship of Israel, but you will become henceforth a child of God — that is, to commune with the Heavenly Father without the intervention of a mediator.

For this is the privilege of Israelites only, that they can approach immediately the Most High, and without any intercession exclaim, ‘Thou art our Father!’

You are not perplexed by any theological subtlety that will make you believe that the Holy God can not, without a mediator, receive a human being as his child.

Who will dare to limit or fetter God in his kindness!

Does he not declare (Exod. 33, 19) ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy!’

Does a father’s mercy depend on any condition except the heart of the child!

Thus the religion of Israel, that will henceforth be to you as a nourishing mother, points you always to your Heavenly Father, who you must love with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.

When every Israelite must be, and ought to be, well-prepared to defend his religion, you are the more called upon to grow in the knowledge of the Lord and to glorify your Heavenly Father, so that you may become more and more able to refuse with the powerful weapons of intelligence and reason all attacks that may be produced against you to unsettle your heart in the religion that you now voluntarily embrace.

What a satisfaction must it afford you to know that, in your confessing the venerable religion of Israel, you do not stand solitary and alone, for you know that the growing denial of the religion which you now abandon by many a bright mind and noble heart of the present age is either a direct or indirect recognition of the Israelitish religion.

O, I see already with my mind’s eye the time drawing near of which the Prophet Zachariah (chap. 8) speaks:

‘In those days ten men out of all the languages of the nations shall take hold, yea, they shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’”

Let me now, before admitting you to the fellowship of Israel, lay before you some of the most important questions, which you will distinctly answer in the presence of this congregation and in the presence of him who searchest the deepest recesses of the heart.

The Rev. Doctor then propounded the following questions to her in a solemn voice, to each of which she answered in a slow, tremulous tone:

Do you believe that Jehovah is the only God, in whose glory no other shares?
I do.

Do you believe that He, the inscrutable Spirit of all spirits, has never assumed and will never assume the form of any being that is in heaven or on the earth?
I do.

Do you believe that the intimate communion between God and men is brought about by no other mediation than that of the imperishable spirit indwelling in us, and is chiefly prompted by strict obedience to the word of God; and that even the sinner can find atonement and redemption, and that exclusively through sincere repentance and actual return to the Most Holy?
I do.

Do you believe that God has chosen Israel to be His priest people, and ordained him to propagate the doctrine of the Only One and all the principles growing out from this sublime doctrine?
I do.

Do you believe that every member of the Israelitish community is specially bound to honor and exalt God by a faithful observance of the divine word by a pure life in light, truth and virtue, and thus to contribute with all his power to the bringing about of the promised time of the kingdom of the Messiah?
I do.

Is it your solemn and firm determination to adhere from now to this faith with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might, and as a true Israelite not to deviate from its precepts, either towards the right or towards the left; and to seal it even on the threshold of death with that Israelitish declaration: Hear, O Israel, God our Lord is the only God?
It is.

Having answered these questions, the young lady uttered the following prayer, the ark in which the holy laws of Moses are placed having previously been opened to her view:

“Blessed art Thou the God of Israel from eternity to eternity!

I profess this before Thee, O, omnipotent God.

Thou art henceforth my only hope and refuge; and to the end of my life I will never abandon this profession, and never tire in the fulfillment of the duties which it imposes upon me in regard to Thee, to Israel, and to all my fellow-men.

O God, who enlightenest me with understanding, receive graciously this my vow, which springs from the depths of my heart and soul, and aid me constantly to keep my faith to Thee, so that I may always bear this ancient and yet eternally new covenant as a seal on my heart, and may even with my last breath exclaim in the blissful consciousness of a priceless acquisition:

‘Hear, O Israel, the Eternal, our God is one God!’”

Rev. Dr. Kleeberg concluded the ceremonies with the following remarks:

“After having made your confession, let me now bestow upon you a new name, that shall perpetually remind you of the ancient mothers of Israel, whose hearts clung to their Heavenly Father.

Your name shall henceforth be called Leah; and may the Lord bless you as He blessed Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah.

And as the Prophet Eli dismissed the pious Hannah with many blessings, so do I now dismiss you from the house of God:

‘Go in peace; and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.’

May the Lord bless thee, and keep thee, may the Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; may the Lord lift His face upon thee and give thee peace. Amen.”

The entire ceremony was impressive in the greatest degree, but, on account of the pressing crowd, a great many were unable to hear with any degree of satisfaction.

The young lady stood the ordeal with remarkable firmness, and after the services were over received the congratulation of her friends.

Her marriage with Mr. Hilp will take place within a short time.

P.S. Earlier this year I wrote about another 19th-century convert, Ada Walker, who said she wished to live and die in the Jewish faith.

I have been thinking about that image in recent weeks.

I recently published my first essay in a Muslim outlet, writing about a woman who found Islam in a San Francisco linen shop. That piece now sits alongside other recent work I have placed in Christian and interfaith publications. The movement between these spaces is part of the same story, the same desire to understand. I have found, again and again, that religious life is best encountered through other people, through small, ordinary acts, through practices that make a life of faith imaginable.

Sonneschein’s image of an unfinished work feels close to my own understanding of Judaism. My faith is a source of comfort. It also remains unfinished. There is always more to understand, more to ask, more to learn. I have not always found, within my own faith, the kind of peer with whom I can speak freely about matters of the spirit. I have turned to other spaces and met people from whom I am learning a great deal. I do not experience that as drift. I know myself, and I recognize in many people a kinship of spirit.

The past few years have brought their share of difficulty. In that time, Judaism has given me not only language for hope, but a frame for living, one that holds together doubt, seriousness, and the possibility of still deeper understanding.

I have kept the framing here light and made minor stylistic edits for clarity. The argument speaks in its own terms.

Rabbi Sonneschein’s Lecture at the Temple Yesterday

Reprinted from the St. Paul Daily Globe, November 29, 1880

An intellectual, as well as oratorical treat, was given to the Mount Zion congregation in their temple yesterday afternoon, by Rev. S. H. Sonneschein, rabbi of Shaare Emeth (Gates of Truth) temple, at St. Louis.

It is impossible to convey, in cold type, the warmth and fervor which characterized the lecturer’s delivery, and without that a bare outline of the lecture will be as satisfactory to the reader as if the whole address was given.

The rabbi opened by remarking that among the great number of lectures annually delivered in this city only a very few were on religious topics, but that, although his effort would not be strictly doctrinal, he should endeavor to give it a religious tone and tendency.

He said he should not attempt to make an elaborate argument, but convey his thought through the medium of parables, and illustrate his medium by metaphor instead of elaborate explanation.

The Parable of the Paintings

Speaking without notes, he then compared the three great creeds of the world, the Catholic, the Protestant, and Israelitish, by likening them to three families, each devotees of the art of painting, who filled their homes with works of art, and particularly with paintings.

In one you were invited to admire a seeming picture in a magnificently carved, polished, and richly gilded frame, the picture being concealed from sight by a curtain. You were asked to admire the costly frame, and it was really gorgeous enough to extort admiration from any beholder; but if you approached to lift the veil and view the picture itself you were ordered to stop; that the frame alone was to be looked upon by common eyes.

Finding little satisfaction here, you next visited another of the three families, where you found a large collection of elegant pictures in bright colors, with hue and tint carefully blended, which the owners would assure the observer were by the old masters, but close inspection by a connoisseur would show them to be only copies.

Next and last you visited the family of an artist, and were shown into his studio, where he was found in the midst of his work, surrounded by the various specimens of his skill.

After admiring these sufficiently, the artist took you into another room, where he said was kept the only work of his hands with which he felt satisfied. He had labored on it for many years, and at last had brought it as near to perfection as could be done in one brief lifetime.

Upon examining this wonderful production you found it to be simply an outline sketch in pencil, no coloring, no fine, artistic touches; simply the bare, rough outlines of an unfinished work.

The Widow’s Oil

The speaker related the story of the widow in the IV chapter of II Kings, how that she went unto Elisha with complaint that his servant, her husband, was dead, and that now the creditor was come to take unto him for bondsmen her two sons; how Elisha bade her tell him what he could do for her, and she replied: “Thy handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil.”

Then Elisha commanded her to return, and to borrow vessels of all her neighbors, “even empty vessels; borrow not a few.”

And the prophet further commanded her that when she was come into her own house, she should shut the door upon herself, and upon her sons, and pour the oil from the vessel which was full into those that were empty, which she did until all were full. Then the prophet directed her to sell the oil and pay her creditor.

Then the orator, turning to his congregation, said:

“Go you and borrow all the vessels that you can, and from the vessel of truth you now possess fill all the others.”

The lesson intended to be conveyed being that to enlarge its usefulness, the synagogue should not confine itself too exclusively to the manners and formal costumes of a far away past, but adopt in their stead the more modern usages now in vogue among enlightened nations.

The ancient custom of the Jews of separating the men from the women in the synagogue by a curtain had been abandoned, and so might other mere forms, and with profit.

Hebrew churches had borrowed from the opponents of their creed the modern method of arranging and seating their houses of worship. Borrow from them more of things that have merit, more vessels to fill with the oil of sacred truth from your own, which is as inexhaustible as that widow’s in the Bible story, and your church will grow more and more prosperous, and finally fill the earth with true religion.

The eloquent speaker here alluded to the narration in Maccabees of the sacred jars of oil kept in the sanctuary, and which were carefully guarded to keep them from the profanation or any but anointed hands, and how, when all were exhausted but one that one supplied enough oil to keep the lamps burning brightly for eight days.

Thus might the Israelitish church, from its sacred flask, yet illuminate the world.

Referring again to the widow’s cruse, he said the Jewish church was the widow, and the creditor was the materialism of this driving, crushing age, which threatened to rob her of her sons.

Save your children from this iron monster by following the advice of Elisha.

Real religion was always filled with doubt, while that which was not a true religion, was always sure of itself, always ready to battle for its dogmas without questioning whether they are right or wrong.

Real religion was the reverse of this.

Never so certain of the truth of its convictions as to deny the right of others to differ from it; never sure of its infallibility as not to continue its search after divorce truths.

The speaker closed with an impassioned appeal to his hearers to heed the lessons he had endeavored to inculcate and to act upon to build up their faith and extend it throughout the earth.

After the Lecture

Rabbi Judah Wechsler then arose and, on behalf of Mount Zion congregation, thanked Mr. Sonneschein in feeling terms for his eloquent and powerful address.

Speaking in relation to the subscription now being raised for the building of a new temple, he alluded, in terms of warm acknowledgement and gratitude, to the liberality with which the people of St. Paul, not members of the Jewish church had contributed to this object.

After a few closing remarks upon the lecture to which they had just listened the congregation was dismissed.

This was the laying of the cornerstone for what would become Temple Israel, the first purpose-built synagogue in Columbus. This month, the congregation, which traces its roots to 1846, marks its 180th anniversary.

Columbus was my first Jewish community. When I was in high school, my family drove me from Lancaster to Temple Israel for a service. They waited in the car while I attended. I still remember the white Jerusalem stone.

Today that building houses a Hindu temple, and Temple Israel is in a new location. The first synagogue building no longer stands.

I have kept the framing here light and made minor stylistic edits for clarity. The argument speaks in its own terms.

Human Dignity

“Lo, only this did I find, God hath made man upright, but they have sought many reckonings.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

The idea expressed in the words, that man came forth from the Creator’s hand with all the capacities and energies to become a perfect human being, and that human “reckonings” deprive him of his dignity, was the leading idea suggested by this solemn occasion.

The corner-stone being laid to this new structure suggests the events of centuries, from the day when Father Abraham erected the first altar on the soil of Canaan, to this moment, when his children are assembled to erect another altar to the same God, in the same faith, and to the same purpose, to proclaim the majesty and dominion of the One and Sole God.

But this is not all that distinguishes the temple of Israel.

The dignity of man is the second, though not secondary, grand principle by which the house and faith of Israel are distinguished.

“God hath made man upright,” is the grand principle by which this temple will be distinguished.

The idea of universal depravity, original sin, inherited wickedness, is preposterous, unreasonable and unbiblical.

The Bible bases neither law nor precept upon Adam’s sin. On the contrary, we are told that God made man in His image. This divine image was not lost by any act of his, but went down unimpaired from sire to son, the distinction of the human being.

The Bible maintains “God hath made man upright,” for it teaches the justice of our Maker.

Where is the justice of that imaginary deity who inflicts punishment on all unborn generations who could not have been guilty of any crime?

The Bible maintains “God hath made man upright,” because it teaches the responsibility of man to his Maker.

In order to be responsible man must be a free moral agent.

Man only is responsible for his doings and omissions, because he alone is free.

Where is the moral freedom of those who are born under the curse of sin?

If one is wicked, it is Adam’s fault and not his. The thief steals, the assassin slays, because Eve ate the forbidden fruit.

But all this is the direct opposite of that which the Bible teaches.

If there is such dissonance in the harmony of creation as original sin and universal depravity, how could it come to pass that the human family steadily progressed in all that is good, noble and beneficial?

Who made all these conquests for the human family?

Man has done it.

Therefore he is not and cannot be universally depraved.

We know him by his works.

Words and dogmas prove nothing contrary to the facts of history.

It is the dignity of man which Judaism, in all ages of history, has maintained and defended.

When the heathen knelt before idols, it was the son of Israel who maintained that man is the image and child of God.

When priests degraded human nature, it was the son of Israel who protested in the name of God and man.

And to-day and forever the son of Israel rises and protests against the degradation of human nature.

It is not God’s fault if you are wicked; it is your own.

It is not Adam’s or Eve’s sin by which you may excuse your errors and follies; they are yours, and yours exclusively.

God is just, and you are free.

God is love supreme, and man is His image.

By your own exertion you may conquer sin and rise to moral freedom, wisdom and holiness.

You know that the right is right, the good is good, the wrong is wrong.

Therefore you are free moral agents, responsible to your God and your country.

This is Jewish doctrine.
This is truth.
This is the idea of human dignity.

The house of worship which you erect will be distinguished from all churches around you.

It will be the fortress of defense to the holiest and highest treasure of the human family, the divine acknowledgment of human dignity.

“God hath made man upright, but they have sought many reckonings.”

P.S. Moments like this were not isolated. In 1871, residents of Aurora, Indiana came together to ensure a Jewish mayor was buried in the town and to establish a Jewish cemetery. I wrote about this story for The Forward.