Urban Origins of American Judaism

CHAPTER 1. SYNAGOGUES

8 Synagogues announced a Jewish presence in a city. While they represent the most visible manifestation of Judaism, their changing architecture articulates shifting visions of Jewish religious practice and Jewish understandings of American urbanism. American cities left their imprint on Jews that registered in the very structure of their synagogues as well as the scope of activities associated with them. Synagogues came to re- flect varied versions of Judaism, both in their exterior presence and, even more, in their interiors. Looking at synagogues across three centuries provides a window into Jewish religious life, as congregations became the fundamental voluntary unit of Judaism in America. But synagogues also implicitly comment on American urbanism’s aspirations and politics , since Jews desired to secure a place for Judaism in American society. Jews did not need a synagogue for community prayer. Both private prayer and collective prayer could and did occur within a home, at the back of a store, or even in lodge meeting rooms. A decision not only to establish a congregation but also to house it within a synagogue represented a serious commitment on the part of Jews to participate as Jews in urban life. While not all congregations possessed synagogues, many did. Without a formal, legally recognized Jewish community and a nationally established chief rabbinate, or even a chief rabbi for individual cities and towns as existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, American Jews made do with congregational forms of religious organization that lodged authority in prosperous male lay leaders who possessed the power to hire—and fire—rabbis and other religious functionaries, such as cantors.1 c h a p t e r 1 SYNAGOGUES synagogues 9 Small numbers of Jews settled in five Atlantic seaports during the colonial era: New York, Charleston, Newport, Savannah, and Philadelphia . In each of these cities lived only a few hundred Jews; most engaged in trade, either local or overseas, as merchants or worked in crafts. The most prosperous Jews participated in an Atlantic commercial network that connected London and Amsterdam with Surinam, Curaçao, Jamaica , and other ports in the West Indies.2 Despite their small numbers, colonial Jews all built synagogues during the eighteenth century as expressions of their urban prosperity and willingness to establish roots. Since Jews need only a quorum of ten men (a minyan) to conduct regular worship three times a day, establishing a congregation indicated Jews’ desires for community as well as prayer. As a formally organized religious unit, a Jewish congregation stood for more than the sum of its members; it represented another link in the long chain of autonomous Jewish community (the kehillah) history. Furthermore , since communal prayer occurred in private homes, especially once a congregation possessed a Torah scroll, embarking on a project to construct a special synagogue building or purchasing a building to be used primarily as a synagogue and sanctifying its space reflected commitment and security as well as pride and permanence on the part of Jews. Colonial synagogues revealed Jewish identification with the American city externally and reserved their sense of difference from Christian Americans for the inside. The buildings themselves implied the multireligious character of these towns. Synagogues acknowledged a Jewish urban presence and invited Christians to reflect on their own faith and willingness to accommodate non-Christian believers. Indeed, colonial seaports unwilling to welcome non-Christians (such as Boston) did not house synagogues and their few Jewish residents worshipped in private.3 Although only one of these colonial synagogues survives today—in Newport, Rhode Island, now a city with relatively few Jews—its architecture exemplifies an eighteenth-century Jewish way of being both urban and American. Ironically, its preservation derives in part from its abandonment in the early nineteenth century, which stimulated Judah Touro, a prosperous and generous New Orleans Jewish philanthropist, to save it. Renamed the Touro Synagogue in his honor, it captures a mo- chapter one 10 ment in American Judaism when Jews lived as a miniscule non-Christian minority integrated into colonial urban society. It reminds us, too, that abandonment as much as construction of synagogues characterized Jewish city experiences. Impulses for preservation and restoration similarly appear very early in American Jewish history. Transformation of a synagogue into a museum or a National Historic Site, as is the case with Touro Synagogue, invites outsiders to enter and temporarily become insiders , instructed in Jewish religious practices. Designed by...