The following article appeared in the New York Jewish Week on June 4, 2004.
Shul Life, Circa 1850 Newly recovered records provide rare glimpse of early days of Brooklyn’s Kane Street synagogue.
Adam Dickter - Staff Writer
On Jan. 22, 1856, a group of Jewish Brooklyn residents gathered at a private home to discuss their “earnest desire [to] effect the incorporation of a synagogue and congregation for divine service.”
When the meeting ended, they had founded Congregation Baith Israel, one of the first Conservative congregations in New York.
Almost 150 years later, the minutes from that meeting were in an oversized, waterlogged ledger book on a coffee table in the Brooklyn Heights home of Carol Levin, a member of what is today known as the Kane Street Synagogue who has taken a keen interest in the history of the oldest continuously operating shul in Brooklyn.
The ledger containing the original minutes had not been seen by anyone since the early 1950s, when it was locked in a safe along with seven other large volumes.
Together they provide a rare glimpse into the daily life of a synagogue in the middle years of the 19th century — the sweet moments, and the petty ones, chronicled in painstaking detail.
The ledgers include everything from financial records to membership lists, seating charts and Sunday school attendance lists from the early years of Baith Israel. In 1906 it merged with Congregation Anshei Emes, and two years later moved to Harrison Street, later renamed Kane Street, in the Cobble Hill section of downtown Brooklyn.
Today the synagogue officially is called Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes but is widely known by its more colloquial street-name moniker.
Construction workers who are renovating the synagogue and its community center pried open the safe last week, revealing the books as well as silver Torah ornaments, prayerbooks, tefillin and other ritual objects.
“This is a significant find for Brooklyn as well as for Jewish history,” said Levin as she carefully leafed through the volumes Friday. She noted that Baith Israel members and their descendants have migrated around the borough to form seedling congregations.
After they are carefully analyzed, the volumes eventually will take their place with others that are housed in the archives of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The seminary’s Joseph and Miriam Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Jewry already houses thousands of documents chronicling the movement’s growth.
“Kane Street is one of the first synagogues in Brooklyn,” said Dr. Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the seminary in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan. “That does take one back to the early years of New York Jewry. This is the expansion of Jewish life from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I would be very interested in looking at the ethnic makeup of the congregation when it was founded.”
Levin and other members of the congregation hope the new volumes will fill in blanks in the institutional memory.
For example, she said, little was known about Marcus Friedlander, who served as the congregation rabbi from 1887 to 1892, and seemed to have fallen through the cracks of synagogue history. Levin only stumbled across his name in editions of the old Brooklyn Eagle newspaper recently posted on the Internet.
In the recovered records, she has already found an 1885 memo giving Rabbi Friedlander “full power to procure the necessary implements for Hebrew instruction” prior to his appointment.
“This is proof that he existed,” she said. “[Previous] record books don’t make much mention of him.”
From what she has learned so far, Rabbi Friedlander spearheaded efforts to reach out to single people and make the congregation “a more happening place,” said Levin.
More than 50 rabbis or cantors have guided the congregation since its founding. Rabbi Samuel Weintraub has served since 1996.
Although the leather covers of the recovered books are in poor condition due to water damage from rain leakage, the inner pages are in remarkably good shape, and the ancient handwriting in most cases is easily legible, although the language seems overly formal today.
Minutes from the congregation’s first Purim play on March 5, 1882, note that “after the rendition of the various parts the children repaired to the school room and were there regaled with refreshments which were kindly provided and served to them by the committee, Messers. Jacobs, Seidenberg and Norman.”
Financial records indicate that synagogue membership in the late 19th century was $11, generous donations ranged from $1 to $5, and the compensation for the financial secretary, David D’Anconia, was “$25 per annum” and a free seat.
A receipt notes the purchase of catechisms, or instructional books, for children at $1.50 per dozen.
Other documents include seating charts and records of a special request for financial help on Aug. 3, 1856, from a struggling, unnamed cantor who had been forced to sell his tallit and other articles. The synagogue leaders decided to forward the request to the members for their individual consideration.
Another 1850s dilemma: Whether to accept a donation from a “stranger” of $10 for the burial society, although the stranger’s relative ultimately was not interred in the society’s plot. The decision was to keep the cash, since the stranger’s family “used our utensils” for the burial.
Some burial expenses at the time: $25 for a casket, $8 for a horse and carriage, $1.50 to dig a grave.
A 1916 bill for expenses for a party includes costs of $11.93 for confectionary cream and nuts. Another receipt notes a $10 expenditure for the charter of two railroad cars from City Hall to Bayview Park in Jersey City, N.J.
A list of 1890s bylaws refers exclusively to male members, but otherwise lists some articles that seem timeless: “Any member who is not permanently in town cannot be elected to office”; “Any man who applies to become a member can be elected by 2/3 majority”; “At any election, no member is entitled to vote if his dues are not paid in full.”
But there are also rules that seem anachronistic: “Any man who is summoned to the sefer [Torah] shall be fined $1 if not there at the time specified”; “Any members having a wife and children belonging to a different persuasion have no right to the burying ground belonging to the congregation.”
Levin said she is looking forward to studying seating charts to learn where notable figures worshiped and matching them with contemporary occupants. “To be able to say that’s where Aaron Copland sat — it’s fun,” she said, referring to the legendary composer who grew up as a congregant.
His father, Harris, was elected president of Baith Israel in 1902 and presided over the merger with Anshei Emes.
One book is comprised almost entirely of uneventful log entries of the Hebrew school, noting that the school opened at “nine and a half o’clock,” which teachers were present and how many scholars, or students, were in attendance. (Numbers ranged from 67 to 91.)
Levin has dreamed of opening the safe for years. When an elderly congregant, Joseph Goldfarb, the son of a late rabbi, Israel Goldfarb, mentioned last year that he believed the combination was written on the inside cover of one of the ledgers archived at JTS, Levin dashed over to the seminary. But when she found the volume in question, it had been re-bound and the covers replaced.
As the congregation prepares to celebrate its 150th anniversary, Levin said she hopes the publicity from the new discovery will lead distant families with roots at Kane Street to establish contact.
“We’re looking to reach out to the families who started to leave in the 1920s,” she said. “There are so many other synagogues that emanate from this congregation.”
