Lay and Rabbinic Conflict in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Jewry

Bruce L. Ruben

In 1984 the Board of Trustees of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (later renamed Union for Reform Judaism) and the Executive Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted “Guidelines for Rabbinical- Congregational Relationships.” These two Reform bodies, respectively repre- senting the movement’s lay and rabbinic leadership, asserted: “A congregation is best served when its lay and rabbinic leadership consider themselves part- ners in carrying on the sacred functions of the Synagogue.”1 This set of guidelines, the latest in a series of attempts to set this important relationship’s terms, highlights an issue that has long been a challenge in the American synagogue. The history of lay/rabbinic relations in America in its nineteenth-century beginnings reveals that a long, rocky journey preceded this mutually respectful formulation. In the late 1840s and early 1850s almost every rabbi who arrived in America lost a pulpit in a power struggle with his synagogue board. Given the early American Jewish norm of lay control, any rabbinic assertion of authority created conflict. Rabbis and lay leadership resolved these conflicts only after a long process that led to the creation of a professional American rabbinate.

1 Background

It is easy to forget that until the 1840s, no rabbis served in the United States. The Sephardim, the first Jews to arrive, set up small synagogue-communities following the model of the Western European communities in Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London. These communities assumed responsibilities for all aspects of Jewish religious life. As the only Jewish institution in a given city, the synagogue oversaw worship, life cycle events, kashrut, education, charity, the cemetery, and the ritual bath. It also represented the Jews in the broader community.2

1 “Guidelines for Rabbinical-Congregational Relationships,” as adopted and recommended by the uahc Board of Trustees and the ccar, Fall 1984. 2 Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 12ff.

In the colonial and postrevolutionary period, Jews had no yeshivas or schol- ars to instruct them in Jewish law. Those who knew a little more led the others. Early American Jews set up institutions that allowed their tiny communities to keep their identity as they adapted to American society. They established synagogue boards and officers who were deeply committed to these goals. The president (parnas) was in charge. Isaac Mayer Wise later recalled the situation as it still existed in the 1840s in his colorful Reminiscences:

At that time the parnass [sic] was an autocrat in the congregation. He was the president, shamash, chazzan, rabbi. He ruled the quick and the dead. He was the law and the revelation, the lord and the glory, the majesty and the spiritual guardian of the congregation. He suffered no rival; all were subject to him.3

Still, the parnas’s power was not quite absolute: the board and, ultimately, the voting membership limited his authority.4 Services were led by ḥazzanim, who were not the well-trained profession- als of today, but rather poorly educated functionaries who served at the lay leadership’s will. Though they came to be called “ministers” in keeping with American institutions and law, ḥazzanim lacked real power or stature in the synagogue-community. Isaac Leeser, ḥazzan at Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia and editor of the Jewish monthly, the Occident, frankly described the situation:

He may be reminded to his cost that he has no rights as a minister, that he can be treated at the pleasure of the congregation like a servant, like one employed to perform certain duties merely, and that he can be brow- beaten by all who please to arrogate the mastery over him in quality of their being electors of the congregation, not to mention that he is under the absolute control of the ruling elders, without any redress.5

Though an occasional ḥazzan gained prominence, power remained in the hands of the laity during the colonial and early antebellum period. Already in 1799, the majority of the three thousand American Jews were of German origin. The first German Jewish immigrants integrated easily into

3 Isaac M. Wise, Reminiscences (New York: Leo Wise, 1901), 51. 4 Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776–1985, vol. 1 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 249, and Hyman B. Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York, 1654–1860 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947), 74. 5 Occident 3 (January 1848), 578.