The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

  Isaac Mayer Wise’s congregation, Bene Yeshurun, which he joined after leaving Albany in 1854, started construction of its synagogue in downtown Cincinnati on Plum Street while the Civil War was still raging. With three arched entrances crowned by minarets and dedicated in 1866, it became the second largest Jewish temple in America, located proudly near city hall and the leading Unitarian and Catholic churches. A prominent Cincinnati architect, James Keys Wilson, designed the building to evoke the Alhambra, the fortress and castle at Granada in Spain, and by implication the Golden Age of Judaism in Spain before the Inquisition. Following the German trend, the edifice was called the Plum Street Temple. Its vaulting interior was lit by gaslight chandeliers and candelabras, and a rose stained-glass window seemed to conjure the atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral, improbably flanked along the walls by Hebrew texts, primarily from Psalms. Other Jewish congregations in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia followed suit with similar ornate and grandiose constructions. Like the new building in Cincinnati, those synagogues included such Christian-inspired innovations as a choir loft, an organ, and mixed seating in pews.

  Wise had joined Bene Yeshurun in Cincinnati only after telling its leadership to ignore what he said were false stories about his alleged “disbelieving in the immortality of the soul, future reward and punishment and the final redemption of Israel.” These allegations, he said, were “positively not true.” Under his leadership, in addition to erecting its new building, Bene Yeshurun set about enforcing decorum, eliminating obscure prayers, and banning the sale of “honors” or mitzvot, such as the honor of making a blessing over the Torah before the Torah reading. A choir was organized, an organ was introduced, and Wise disseminated his first draft of Minhag America, omitting prayers for the return of Palestine and the restoration of the Davidic dynasty. 2

  It was from this Jewish cathedral that Wise would later establish the foundations of modern Reform Judaism: the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873), the Hebrew Union College (1875), and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1889). The tripartite architecture of these institutions came over time to be adopted by all American Judaism branches: seminary, rabbinical conference, and congregational organization.

  Similar reform practices in this post–Civil War period spread throughout many congregations and many parts of the country, including the western frontiers, where Jews began to see themselves as trailblazers far from home. They were not so much bent on Reform but on creating synagogues compatible with their new community consensus, which was not easy when there was diversity of views, whether traditional vs. nontraditional, or Polish vs. German, or Bavarian vs. Bohemian.

  The first Reform congregation in Chicago, established as the Juedische Reformverein (Jewish Reform Society) in 1858, followed the pattern. In 1861 it took the name Chicago Sinai Congregation and recruited Bernhard Felsenthal, a former teacher in Bavaria who had been teaching school and writing for Jewish periodicals, as its rabbi. Felsenthal didn’t think of himself as a rabbi, but the Sinai congregation hardly seemed to care.

  Sinai was one of the early American exponents of the redefinition of the Jewish people as the equivalent of the Messiah. As its preamble put it: “We are deeply convinced that Israel has been called by God to be the Messiah of the nations and to spread truth and virtue on earth. In order to fulfill this high mission, Israel has to undergo a process of purification in its own midst. . . . The special mission of American Israel, therefore, is to place Judaism before the world, purified in doctrine and conduct, and so to become a shining example for Israelites the world over.”

  In accordance with its reform spirit, Sinai reduced the observance of holidays from two days to one, read the Torah in Hebrew in a cycle of three years, and read the Haftarah in English. The congregation called for a solemn service accompanied by choral and organ music, no discrimination against women, no “bombastic words” or “bad taste” and “unnecessary repetition,” and finally a ban on “wailing over oppression and persecution.” The congregation also called for the omission of “prayers for the restoration of the sacrificial cult, for Israel’s return to Palestine, the expression of the hope for a personal Messiah and for a resurrection of the body.”3

  The historian Marc Lee Raphael has discerned at least twenty such reforms that were the most popular. Many were clearly adopted from church practices or with an effort to streamline the service so that it did not try the patience of worshippers. After the Civil War, the organ became increasingly popular; dozens of congregations installed one. The organ at Temple Emanu-El in New York, which moved in 1868 to its newly built and immense Moorish structure with two minaretlike spires on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Third Street, was said to be the biggest in the country except for the one in the Music Hall in Boston.

  In addition to the organ, and the increasingly widespread use of the word temple, many synagogues continued to embrace such rules of decorum as making sure that prayers be chanted in unison, and that sitting and standing be done together. The motives for such changes was complex, but historians agree that one purpose was overriding. “They generally liked the idea that their houses of worship resemble those of their Christian neighbors,” writes Hasia Diner. “They wanted to give the synagogue all the dignity of an American religious institution.”4

  Some synagogues went further, demanding “orderly dress” and others imposing fines on those who talked loudly out of turn, cracked jokes, wandered in and out, or even engaged in “loud kissing” of their tzitzit, or fringes on their prayer shawls. There were even disagreements about who was supposed to impose the sense of dignity and correctness that the new Jews aspired to. “Apparently one source of disorder was the cacophony of loud calls for order,” comments the historian Leon Jick.5

  In addition to halting the bidding wars for blessings over the Torah, the congregations moved in this period to eliminate special blessings recited by the kohanim, i.e., descendants of the Jewish priestly caste, typically those named Cohen. They also trimmed the number of verses read in each service and moved to the three-year cycle of reading the Torah. Another widespread practice, eliminating the second day of Jewish holidays, was a recognition of modern communications in the world Jews were living in. The practice of celebrating such holidays for two days began in ancient times, dictated by Judaism’s lunisolar calendar. The rationale was that people living some distance from Jerusalem could never be sure when the new month had been officially proclaimed. Because of this uncertainty, it became customary to sanctify the new month as well as the start of any festival occurring in that month two days outside the land of Israel. In later times, although the Hebrew calendar came to be systematized and the uncertainty disappeared, the two-day observance of holy days and festivals was continued nonetheless. To reformers, the second day was no longer justified. Another popular reform came with the introduction of choirs that included men and women singing together. Some also included non-Jews. More than a few congregations substituted a cornet or trumpet for a shofar (ram’s horn) in celebrating the Jewish new year. Insisting on prayer shawls and yarmulkes was also left by the wayside, even on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when wearing a shawl is intended to remind male worshippers of a shroud, evoking their mortality.

  Another increasingly popular step was moving the hazan to the front of the sanctuary facing the congregation rather than in the midst of the congregation facing the ark. (The ark was traditionally placed to the east, so that worshippers would be facing Jerusalem, but this practice also was adjusted for practical or architectural reasons.) This step continued the earlier trend of making the service into more of a theatrical experience and reinforcing the feeling that worshippers were in an audience rather than in a participatory exercise. Some congregations went further, eliminating outright the singing or chanting of prayers by the congregation in favor of leaving the music entirely to the choir and an organist. Though some critics worried that Jewish services were emulating church services, many congregations carried the steps
out precisely for that reason.

  The broad impetus for these changes was both high-minded and cynical. On the one hand, they were aimed at attracting younger, Americanized Jews, but they also sought to make Jewish ritual more acceptable and comfortable to non-Jewish friends and Gentile visitors. Yet in subtle ways the changes had a profound impact on the nature of Jewish worship. In exchange for the participatory and familiar cacophony of tradition, they bought into a more docile and even submissive experience. The old rowdy atmosphere gave way to services that came to resemble a distant spectacle, in which worshippers were instructed on what to read, when to sing—and of course when to stand and when to sit. Welcome as the changes were to many Jews, going to the synagogue lost a great deal of its endearing boisterousness.

  Along with mixed seating, many synagogues joined the trend of eliminating the requirement that male worshippers cover their heads, usually with yarmulkes (kippas). (Congregation Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia prohibited head coverings outright.) Bar mitzvahs (the ceremony of reading from the Torah for boys turning the age of thirteen) were often replaced by a confirmation ceremony, usually associated with older teenagers, as conducted by churches. Aside from eliminating many of the ancient prayers composed by anonymous sages many centuries earlier, congregations took another significant step: discarding prayers and passages deemed offensive to cosmopolitan sensibilities, such as the chapter in the Book of Esther (invoked during the Purim holiday) reporting that the Jews in Persian times had avenged the threats against them by killing 75,000 of their enemies. Torah readings on the Sabbath were in many cases spoken rather than chanted. The Haftarah was read in English or omitted altogether, and more English was introduced for prayers in general. To counter the declining attendance at Shabbat services on Saturday morning, often because of work demands on congregation members, many synagogues promoted Friday evening services at a fixed hour, though not as a substitute for morning services the next day. Friday services welcoming the Sabbath (Kabbalat Shabbat) had long been customary, but were first introduced by Temple Emanu-El in New York in 1861 as a possible alternative to Jews unable to attend services the next day. The practice spread after by Isaac Mayer Wise adopted it in Cincinnati in 1866, when he set the services at a fixed time rather than sunset. Today these services are a common occurrence in more traditional congregations as well.

  The sermon was also becoming an increasingly standard feature of the service, not only in reform-oriented but also more traditional congregations, which had no problem with the practice that had been reintroduced in America by Leeser decades earlier. Sermons had long existed throughout Jewish history, but in the newly revised worship services, rabbis found that sermons were an especially effective way to communicate and establish bonds with their congregants. The earliest sermons in many congregations were in German, the native language of the new wave of immigrants. English gradually replaced German starting in the late 1840s. In 1850, Wise printed a sermon “on the theology of Moses” that was highly publicized, helping to popularize the use of English in sermons. Jews realized that sermons had served as a popular drawing card and social occasions for churches, and a practice that if emulated could draw in more worshippers. Speechifying had become increasingly popular on the American scene generally, with politicians, professional lecturers, and preachers entertaining sizable crowds with their rhetorical skills. Sermons for many thus became the centerpiece of the service, an educational experience that attracted Jews and persuaded them to bring their Gentile friends so that they could experience the meaning of Judaism. Once synagogues saw that sermons would attract members, they began to seek out rabbis for their ability to speak eloquently from the pulpit. Orating became an essential qualification for aspiring rabbis, and for recruiting them.6

  Along with these changes came the important cultural shift then under way throughout the United States, in non-Jewish as well as Jewish circles—the elevation of the status of women. Segregation of the sexes in synagogues had been a feature that non-Jews found curious for some time. In 1744, a visitor to Shearith Israel in New York City deplored the balcony seating area for women as a “hen coop.” The spectacle had not changed more than a century later when James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, visited Shearith Israel on Yom Kippur in 1836 and spoke of the “degradation” of women as “the great error of the Jews.” Bennett deplored what he said were women “separated and huddled into a gallery like beautiful crockery ware, while the men perform the ceremonies below.” He added that the Hebrew prayer “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not a woman” ought to be superseded by the Christian prayer “I praise thee, Lord, that I and my wife are immortal.”

  Segregating men and women in synagogues, which remains the rule in Orthodox services today, has long been an emotional issue, pitting the goal of strengthening family unity against the relegation of women to a partitioned-off place to prevent contact, including eye contact, between the sexes. The lower status of women in Judaism is reinforced by their being barred from official roles in the religious service. (In the modern world, the ancient principle of segregating men and women can be seen on airline flights in which ultra-Orthodox Jews demand to be separated from women.)7

  The actual binding nature of this rule is not clear. Traditional Judaism held that the mixing of men and women was a violation of Jewish law, and an unacceptable concession to assimilation and loss of Jewish identity, as well as a step intended to make Judaism more like Christianity. In fact, Christian churches often had the same practice in medieval and later times—usually men and women sat on opposite sides of the central aisle. But many churches abolished segregation of the sexes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As they did so, pressure accelerated on Jewish congregations, whose members were becoming increasingly acquainted with practices outside their Jewish milieu. Though Temple Emanu-El in New York started mixed seating. Rabbi Wise maintained in his memoirs that he popularized the practice in Albany, at the Ansche Emeth synagogue, where he served after being ousted at Beth El. In part, the move was a necessity because the second congregation moved into a church where there was no balcony or upstairs where women could sit separately.

  Traditionalists felt so strongly—there was also a genuine belief that mixed seating would promote sexual promiscuity—that they sometimes tried to block the changes in court, as they had done in opposing the installation of an organ in South Carolina. That is what happened in New York, where B’nai Jeshurun—the second oldest congregation in the city—had long hewed to the conservative side.

  The congregation, located at Thirty-Fourth Street (the current site of Macy’s), was going through travails as it navigated the pressures of tradition and change. B’nai Jeshurun’s founding Ashkenazi members had adopted less formal practices of Jewish services when it left the Sephardic-oriented Shearith Israel in 1825. But it remained relatively traditional, having played a role in 1859 in establishing the Board of Directors of American Israelites, a conservative group uneasy with changes instituted by reformers. B’nai Jeshurun had earlier introduced reforms in the category of “decorum,” including the chanting of prayers in unison. It moved the hazan’s desk to the front of the synagogue, introduced special robes for the rabbi and cantor, and initiated a confirmation ceremony while abolishing obscurantist prayers. The issue of family seating had been much discussed in the 1860s under the reign of Rabbi Raphall, the staunch traditionalist who had denounced Wise over the issue of the Messiah and defended slavery during the Civil War. But Raphall, who opposed such a step, died in 1868. His death paved the way for internal soul searching over adapting to modern times. Finally, after many years of disputing the issue, each time amid resignation threats, a majority elected to conform with “modern taste and culture” in 1874. They voted 55 to 30 not only to introduce an organ into the service but also to adopt the practice of men and women sitting together, hoping to satisfy its younger members.

  Dissenters, feeling betrayed, turned for help to Israel Salomon, son of Jona
s Salomon, a longtime member of the congregation. Young Salomon had once been antiestablishment himself, having led the battle for more voting rights for the congregation. He had withdrawn in protest from B’nai Jeshurun and formed a new breakaway congregation, only to return and serve as B’nai Jeshurun’s president (parnas). To block the change to mixed seating, Salomon did what traditionalist Jews in South Carolina had done before: he went to court.

  At issue in the case of Israel Solomon [sic] v. The Congregation B’nai Jeshurun was the prerogative of the synagogue to make rules against the wishes of a pew “owner.” But in his complaint, Salomon said men and women sitting together was “immodest” and “unchaste,” and that adopting mixed seating had unlawfully deprived him of the seats he had purchased. He filed affidavits from several Orthodox community leaders and rabbis at other synagogues attesting to the practice as “promiscuous” in a divine setting and in violation of German-Polish traditions.

  The congregation countered that its changes were well within its prerogative and that mixed seating was a practice recognized “throughout the civilized world”—and that bringing households together in prayer would strengthen ties of each family to God and Judaism. Among those brought in by change advocates to file affidavits were Einhorn and Wise, all of whom assured the judge that family seating “is not antagonistic to the teachings of the Holy Scripture and the Talmud.” The judge in the matter sided with the congregation, saying—as the judge in the organ case in South Carolina had—that the decision was for the synagogue itself to make.

  Once again, the ruling dealt a blow to the Orthodox claim that they could use the government’s judicial branch to enforce tradition, as had been the practice in the days of ghettos in Europe. Unhappy with the decision, more than thirty congregation members resigned in protest. They were quickly replaced by new members. Under a new rabbi, Henry Jacobs, hired in 1877, B’nai Jeshurun later adhered to a middle ground and remained a conservative-leaning congregation in a sea of reformers in New York. The advocates of family togetherness and women’s equality had won. For the traditionalists, the victory represented not only the rejection of tradition and law, but also “Christianization” of the service and the encouragement of sexual license.8