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January 27, 2006                                       WWW.KANESTREET.ORG                                                Va’eira   
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Issue 4
19th Century Leaders  

The congregation pays special tribute to the BrooklynEagleOnline ™, Brooklyn Public Library, for introducing us to the details of Jewish social history and Baith Israel leadership in nineteenth century Brooklyn. Computer searches with iterations of the name “Baith Israel”, “Temple Beth Israel” and “Beth Yisroel” led to articles about the Congregation. Most every article yielded other “key words” for additional searches, bringing the Congregation to life. The lives of the leaders and their families emerge through the coverage of weddings, summer holiday announcements, robberies, school events and obituaries. Rev. John D. Lindner officiated at a marriage ceremony in 1865. Baith Israel president Joseph Harris, a pawnbroker, was profiled as one of the “Wealthy Brooklyn Jews” in February, 1880.

The Journal’s first six items highlight Baith Israel Rabbis: Joel Alexander, Louis Pulvermacher, E. M. Meyers, Aaron Wise and Marcus Friedlander. Items 7, 8 and 9 illustrate mid-nineteenth century leaders: Moses Hess, Michael Lamm and Moss Phillips.

In the case of Rev. Dr. Friedlander, we meet a spiritual leader who was excised from the Congregation’s archives. This unusual circumstance piqued my interest and led me to write “Rabbi Marcus Friedlander’s Legacy: A New Chapter in Baith Israel’s History”. The story relates the struggles of Rabbi Friedlander and synagogue leaders as they try to balance tradition and change. This week we read Parsha, Va’iera, which describes G-d’s charge to Moses and Aaron to advocate for Israel’s redemption before Pharaoh. Both leaders show signs of vulnerability, weakness and impatience; the people are frustrated. Eventually, by their faith in G-d’s promise, and openness to the possibility of change, the people are freed, and freed together, irrespective of ideological bent.

Carol Levin, Editor
historicaljournal@kanestreet.org

Contents ...

About the Journal …

The Synagogue Journal” is a one-year online publication at www.kanestreet.org/historical_journal.html, designed to highlight the Kane Street Synagogue congregation’s rich historical record. It will draw primarily on original source material: oral histories, minute books and financial ledgers, souvenir journals, newsletters, and stories of the nineteenth century from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online ™, Brooklyn Public Library.

Each week in 2006, the Journal will explore a specific theme, related to the Congregation’s experience. Articles will illustrate the three historic periods: the first fifty years as Congregation Baith Israel at both the Atlantic Street and Boerum Place sites; the middle years with Rabbi Israel Goldfarb as spiritual leader of the consolidated Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes at the present location, and the last fifty years, as the synagogue evolved to be the Congregation that we know today.

Journal readers who take in the entire series will view the panorama of our special synagogue’s experience in Brooklyn, the City of Churches: the constants, the changes and the cycles. Our intention is to foster greater understanding about synagogue customs and rituals and explore the development of the oldest Conservative congregation during its proud history.

Those of you who have watched the Congregation grow over the last decades and guided its course have a treasured perspective. We welcome your reminiscences, letters and photographs to help shape the BIAE story. Special thanks to Kane Street Synagogue webmaster Dugans for putting the Journal online. 

For further information, please contact us at: historicaljournal@kanestreet.org. 

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Rabbi Marcus Friedlander’s Legacy: A New Chapter in Baith Israel’s History
By Carol Levin

The existing record of leadership at Congregation Baith Israel during the first fifty years consists mostly of the names of lay leaders and rabbis, and a brief biography of the first rabbi, included in "A History of the City of Brooklyn", by Henry Stiles. Stiles wrote about Brooklyn’s four Jewish Synagogues in the 1870 church Index. Under “Beth Israel”, he wrote, “Rabbi Joel Alexander, the first pastor is a native of Posen Prussia; was educated in the Jews Seminary at Munster, graduating with the diploma of teacher and preacher. He was afterwards examined in the Talmud by the chief rabbis of the province of Posen, from whom he received the diploma of rabbi, and has since received a similar one from Dr. Adler, chief rabbi of London, England. Adolph Ressler is the present rabbi.”

In 1927, Rabbi Israel Goldfarb wrote a history for the Congregation’s “Seventieth Anniversary Celebration”, which he adapted in 1937 for Samuel P. Abelow’s classic, "History of Brooklyn Jewry", and again in 1956 for the “Centennial Journal”.  In the articles, Rabbi Goldfarb discusses the years of struggle among the leadership over ritual practice and reforms, but does not identify individuals or their views. Years later, the rabbi related that when he first arrived at Baith Israel in 1905 and asked about his predecessors, he was simply told that there had been a series of ineffectual rabbis, but there had been no one strong enough to lead the diverse membership. Congregation records included a list of twenty-one rabbis or chazzanim prior to Rabbi Goldfarb.    

Recent research of congregational minutes and historical newspapers indicates that this group actually consisted of thirty-nine men, and that one rabbi was very effective. Through computer searches, we have recovered a lost chapter of Baith Israel’s history from 1888 to 1893. Rabbi Marcus Friedlander served as spiritual leader during the tenures of presidents Moss Phillips, Louis Jacobs and Bernard Kalisher.  Rabbi Goldfarb cannot be faulted for omitting Marcus Friedlander’s record from the history. Someone in the congregation had deliberately excised the nineteenth century rabbi from the official record. The trustee minute books from 1889 to 1901 are missing from the otherwise complete set of archives, and a number of pages are cut from the only existing Sunday school teachers minutes book. Marcus Friedlander’s name appears several pages before the section that was removed.

Rabbi Friedlander’s five years at Baith Israel are well documented in the Brooklyn Eagle.  Upcoming issues of “The Synagogue Journal” will include several articles about the congregation during his years. Rabbi Friedlander seemed to be a popular community leader, but suddenly departed.

"In Many Local Pulpits". Brooklyn Eagle, March 13, 1893, Page 2. “The Rev. M. Friedlander, who… was for five years the rabbi of the synagogue Baith Israel … and who was among the best known of the rabbis of the city has taken up his work as rabbi of the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, California, having arrived there early in the present month. No mention of his going was made in Brooklyn, so quietly was his resignation made and accepted. As stated, Dr. Friedlander was quite prominent here and he also took an active interest in the work of the Excise Enforcement League.”

Details on Rabbi Friedlander’s successor, “Rev Joseph Taubenhaus, the brother of the rabbi of the congregation Beth Elohim” appear in A New Rabbi for Baith Israel. Brooklyn Eagle, May 1, 1893, Page 10. The article states, “Dr. Friedlander goes to California where he has accepted a more lucrative charge.”

I wanted to get to the bottom of Rabbi Friedlander’s sudden departure and what made him so controversial. It did not seem likely that his political entanglements of 1890, surrounding the suppression of a Socialist meeting, would cause him to leave in 1893. (see No Threat in It. Brooklyn Eagle, September 25, 1890, Page 6; Mr. Chapin’s Mistake. Brooklyn Eagle, September 25, 1890, Page 4; Dr. Friedlander Scored. Brooklyn Eagle October 6, 1890, Page 4). What exactly happened to cause leadership to delete this period from the congregation’s history? Was it possible that the rabbi’s views were too radical for the traditional-minded leaders? Friedlander had formed a Hebrew progressive society at Baith Israel. One article excerpts from his lecture to the society, The Hebrew Family – A Migratory People on the Road to Progress.  Brooklyn Eagle, April 27, 1891, Page 1.  Another article about the lecture on page 4 notes, “While the conservatives of the old faith are strong the liberals are growing in force in Brooklyn.” 

"A New York Times article, Dinner to Friedlander". New York Times, May 22, 1928, outlined the rabbi’s career after leaving Baith Israel and identified the names of the synagogues he served: “Temple Sinai” in Oakland and Temple B’nai Sholaum, on Ninth Street in Brooklyn. "Rabbi Friedlander Obituary", New York Times, January 11, 1944, noted that the rabbi was born in Germany in 1866, emigrated to New York at age eighteen and attended both Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Rabbi Friedlander had both liberal and traditional roots.

I phoned Temple Sinai to ask about Marcus Friedlander.  Paul Tedulti, Sinai’s Executive Director, seemed interested and immediately located their centennial book of 1975 to search for the Brooklyn rabbi. "The First Hundred Years" is a rich source of information on Marcus Friedlander’s philosophy at the onset of his twenty-three year tenure at the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, as the temple was then called.

Excerpts describe Rabbi Friedlander as, “a firm voice on behalf of change, the German-born rabbi wrote that upon assuming his post he, ‘discovered among many of the congregation a spirit of religion, a degree of influence, and a taste of culture, which would not be attracted and influenced by antiquated practices, unappealing monies and unmodernized teachings… (I) found the old Machzor failed to inspire devotion among the younger generation… expounded a Judaism in pulpit (sic) more compatible to the modern spirit and introduced changes in the ritual more, active to the younger generation.” It seems that these words may reflect the rabbi’s frustration with the more traditional members that he had been up against in Brooklyn.  Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing without the Baith Israel minute books.

In 1898, Friedlander declared in the weekly journal, “Emanu-El”, “(I)n the career of the human struggle after religious truth and moral perfection, every change in the expression of religion…signifies a change in the growth and development of the social organism, which we call civilization, and a step nearer to the great end of the human conflict … We saved Judaism from decay and stagnation.” The rabbi often, “stressed the ethical and universalist dimensions of Judaism, downplaying the Talmud, ‘with its endless entanglements’.”

In 1912, First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland rejected the Union prayerbook as too radical and mandated Rabbi Friedlander and synagogue president Abraham Jonas to revise it. Rabbi Friedlander felt that we “must give our children that knowledge that will impress them with a reverence for those parts in our prayers which embody Israel’s watchword, and Israel’s distinctiveness, which parts we must retain in the original Hebrew.”  The Jonas-Friedlander edition was “approved by the newly founded Central Conference of American Rabbis” and used by the Congregation for about a decade,” until they turned to the classical Reform service.

The story of Rabbi Marcus Friedlander is a story of the conflicts within American congregations from New York to California to make rituals and customs more relevant to the lives of the members. I am delighted to reinstate Rabbi Marcus Friedlander as a BIAE rabbi. Let his story remind us of the diverse personalities and voices that shaped the Kane Street Synagogue congregation during its first150 years.   

Carol Levin is Editor of
“The Synagogue Journal”

Credits: Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online ™, Brooklyn Public Library; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times;
Brooklyn Historical Society; Temple Sinai, Oakland, CA

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