The still-standing structures - Cleveland's old synagogues

A list with photographs and short summaries of all of the still-standing structures in Cleveland that have been as soon as property to a Jewish congregation.

The earliest congregations

We will endeavor to give specific focus to a few of Cleveland oldest and biggest congregations. They incorporate:

Eagle Street Synagogue Cleveland's initially synagogue constructing (1846) and In Pursuit from the Eagle Street Synagogue Plaque

The Temple at University Circle

Euclid Avenue Temple, and its Tiffany Windows, a treasure we think is not readily available elsewhere on the net.

In the early 1840s several religious organizations were offered land for constructing buildings. Amazingly, the Israelitic Society (Anshe Chesed) was 1 of them. The story in the gift is inspiring. In a new Great Present page we inform it.

The initial two congregations, Anshe Chesed (now Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple) and Tifereth Israel (now The Temple - Tifereth Israel) started Orthodox but inside a generation had moved solidly to Reform. Soon after a stormy start off, they would each get pleasure from an amazingly long year period (97 years, 1851-1948) of quiet growth becoming, with greater than two,000 families each, two of our nation's largest congregations. Presently they both report memberships of 1,300 households. For a list of congregations right now, check out CJN's "The Source".

The rabbis on the two Reform congregations had such lengthy service - Barnett Bricker at Anshe Chesed for 33 years (1925-1958) and Abba Hillel Silver at Tifereth Israel for 46 years (1917-1963) - that quite a few called these congregations Brickner's Temple and Silver's Temple. One Cleveland Jew upon meeting a further he believed to become Reform could possibly ask "Do you visit Silver's or Brickner's?"

Few Clevelanders might have identified that Silver and Brickner - distinguished and quite American rabbis, - were both immigrants who had grown up in New York's Yiddish-speaking Decrease East Side. They had gone for the very same yeshiva and as teenagers each had been within the Herzl Zion Club whose advisor was Rabbi Moses Silver, the father of Abe (later Abba Hillel) Silver. It must also be noted that regardless of a shared boyhood, they did not possess a superior working connection.

For continuing congregations we supply a hyperlink for the History page of their internet site. We also propose the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History as as a fantastic source and the new web-site by Jeffrey Morris: Haymarket towards the Heights, with amazing detail.

A virtual tour of old Jewish Cleveland, or Nate Arnold's Tour, mentions many congregations.

Professor Alan Levenson's essay on Congregation Brith Emeth and Rabbi Philip Horowitz is really a careful study of an revolutionary but short-lived (1959-1986) Reform congregation plus the rabbi who founded and led it.