6
Attractive Synagogues
Bella Unterberg was unhappy with the myopia of New York’s YMHA towards the needs of young Jewish women on several counts. First, for close to its first two decades of operations, the men’s movement was slow in granting females equal access to its facilities. In its first year of 1874, while still downtown, the organization voted against “a motion to admit women to full membership.” A year later, ladies were permitted to join its literary circle, but not until thirteen years later was it agreed “to admit women daily except Saturday and Sunday from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M.” During its brief tenure in late-nineteenth-century Harlem, the neighborhood’s branch association was more forthcoming towards women. When it opened in 1879, a dramatics society for women was part of its program. And a year later, concomitant with—and perhaps due to—the Hebrew Ladies of Harlem’s contribution of $300 to equip the athletic facilities, girls and young women were afforded “free use of the gymnasium and other facilities.” It took the older Y eight more years before it created, in 1888, “auxiliaries” for females both in its uptown branch and in its new Lower East Side operation. Particularly in the downtown outlet, an emphasis was placed on attendees taking part in “cultural” activities and “home circle clubs” under the close supervision of Julia Richman, who had just then earned the singular distinction of becoming the first Jew appointed as a grammar school principal in New York. Unterberg, a child of east European immigrants who “received her education in the public schools,” applauded Richman’s Americanization efforts even if perhaps she, like many others in her community, might have questioned some of the heavy-handedness of this German Jewish matron’s behavior towards her charges. It was alleged that Richman was not opposed to the dragging of youngsters who spoke Yiddish on her premises to the bathrooms to have their mouths washed out with soap. Children of other immigrant groups were disciplined similarly if they uttered their parents’ foreign tongues.1
For Unterberg, the Y’s lack of attention to the residential requirements of young, unchaperoned Jewish women was even more problematic. In the city lures of the street entrapped “Jewish working girls”—as they were then called—that transcended the juvenile delinquency to which boys gravitated. At worst, there were the notorious dancing academies, where unsuspecting young women found themselves ultimately at the tender mercies of “cadets”—a euphemism for pimps. The locations of these schools were no secret; they ran advertisements in the Yiddish press. Other white slavers enticed naïve girls with promises of marriage, actions that led innocent victims not to wedding canopies but to brothels. Clearly there was a need for safe and secure environments for female youngsters. And while on these premises, the residents could be trained in the genteel ways of American women of the time. As late as 1900, the Y movement had not addressed this troubling social and moral problem.2
And then, finally, there was the limited mission of the YMHAs, which in their zeal to Americanize and refine their members, did not sufficiently promote religious values and practice. In Unterberg’s view, there was not enough that was “Hebrew” in the YMHAs. If anything, the existing Y’s educational policies effectively undermined the Jewish identities not only of young women—Unterberg’s prime concern—but young men as well.
Such was among the sentiments that were expressed in February 1902, when Bella Unterberg brought together in her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan some eighteen women to plan for the establishment of an independent Young Women’s Hebrew Association (YWHA). There it was agreed to “establish an institution akin in character to the YMHA but combining therewith features of religious and spiritualizing tendencies.” Accordingly, when the YWHA opened its doors in 1903 in Harlem at Lexington Avenue and 101st Street, residential accommodations were offered to neighborhood girls. As of 1906, 18 young women were boarded on the premises. By the time the Y moved in 1917 to a location north of Central Park, 175 girls lived there. At both its original venue and later in its more commodious setting at 110th Street and Lenox Avenue, all of the recreational, social, and educational features common to a men’s Y were available to the literally thousands of young women who entered its portals on an annual basis. The women’s Y more than fulfilled Unterberg’s original wish to give “hard working girls . . . a chance of bettering their condition and helping them, in many cases, from a condition of want and necessity to a place in the world where they can become independent and self-supporting.” And as far as inculcating the values and practices of Judaism was concerned, a superintendent of the YWHA could assert in 1912 that “back of all that we do, is the thought of preserving the essential Jewishness of our people. As Jews, we want to save our Judaism. As Jews we bring these girls in here that they may find shelter and help and find, too, the God of their fathers.” Creatively, the central focus in this critical area was the YWHA’s building and maintenance of an attractive synagogue that the young women and also the young men of the neighborhood would want to attend.3
Bella Unterberg and her sisters’ congregational initiative closely paralleled the growing “Young People’s Synagogues” movement that emerged both on the Lower East Side and Harlem at precisely the same time. As of the turn of the century, the long-standing problem of the unattractiveness of landsmanshaft synagogues to young people had not been adequately addressed. The next generation of Jews stayed away in droves from services that did not speak to their identities as acculturated Jews. And to make matters worse for young women, if they showed up, they might have had great difficulties hearing the prayers as many of these storefront operations had only a single room for worship, leaving the ladies in the back room.4
There was, as early as the late 1880s, an alternative to the landsmanshaft synagogue that had some appeal to second-generation Jews. As immigrant Jews started to make their way economically in the United States, some who maintained enduring religious values, and were proud of their success in America, built commodious synagogues. There they recited the traditional Orthodox liturgy in their regularly assigned seats that often were bought at a premium price, under the leadership of a melodious cantor who was the pride of those who hired him. In fact, as early as the 1890s, a veritable “chazzan craze” was afoot downtown, as congregations competed with each other to bring over from Europe the best-trained singers whose vocal abilities would attract worshippers to their institutions. Kehal Adath Jeshurun of Eldridge Street was one of those synagogues that were deeply caught up in this performance phenomenon in the years before the struggle began with David Cohen over its institutional integrity. However, that synagogue’s agenda—which interestingly enough did not include much in the way of Jewish education for its members’ boys and girls—failed to engage many young people. The only noticeable greater sensitivity to women at prayer was that those who came to services sat in a comfortable balcony where they could hear the services and watch the cantor at work on the Sabbath and holidays.5
Harlem’s Congregation Ohab Zedek likewise put its faith in the talents and reputation of its cantor to attract members and worshippers to its sanctuary on 116th Street. But wisely, it also engaged an English-preaching rabbi who it hoped could relate to younger people. This “First Hungarian Congregation” began basically as a landsmanshaft synagogue when in 1873 it “rented a small room on Ridge Street” in what was still Kleindeutschland and then moved on to “a small room of a frame building at Avenue A and Houston Street.” In time, as finances permitted—and after an additional move downtown—the congregation in 1886 purchased a large building on Norfolk Street from Congregation Ansche Chesed, which was moving uptown, following its worshippers as part of the intra-city migration of central European Jews of that era. In 1890, Ohab Zedek was fortunate and proud enough to engage Rabbi Dr. Philip Hillel Klein as its spiritual leader. Following the path of synagogue and population movements, the congregation peacefully located to Harlem in 1906. But it did maintain a presence for “many years on Norfolk Street.”6
However, early on in its tenure in Harlem, the congregation was stung by newspaper criticism. The Hebrew Standard asserted quite strongly that “a synagogue has something more to do than to engage a chazzan with a beautiful voice.” And it wondered rhetorically: “Where is the rabbi? Where is the Hebrew and Religious School? What is the New Hungarian Synagogue doing for the community? Was there a need for another synagogue in Harlem for the purpose of giving concerts on Saturday and holidays? The Jewish community expects something more than that.”7
The alleged scandal that precipitated this harsh upbraiding was a report that “a number of young men attempted to enter the synagogue when the person in charge asked for tickets.” Ordinarily, many congregations, then—and now—charged for attendance at services on the High Holidays as a major fundraising device. But this request for tickets seemingly took place one Sabbath morning because the people wanted to hear the melodious recitations of Cantor Shaaye (Samuel) Meisels, who had followed the congregation uptown. “Being told that they had no tickets,” the complaint continued, “they were told to go across the street to the millenary or cigar store, where tickets could be purchased.” It is not known whether the coveted tickets were “scalped,” but there clearly was an assertion that a desecration of the Sabbath was taking place. For future congressman Isaac Siegel—who made one of his first public Jewish communal appearances at this moment—the leaders of the congregation were “hypocrites.” An editorialist agreed totally and suggested that “the menorah over the entrance of the synagogue be removed and the Sign of the Dollar over the broken tablets of the Ten Commandments be substituted.”8
The congregation’s apologia was that tickets were made available during the week at a store near 116th Street for crowd-control purposes—“to preserve order and decency during the services.” And, in fact, the tickets were “the first and only experiment in this direction.” The problem, as Ohab Zedek’s board secretary publicly unburdened himself, was “the mob of men struggling to enter and the young dandies who came in merely to ogle the women in the balcony with their pinces nez.”9
This public embarrassment clearly was not the sort of attention the synagogue wanted. To restore its reputation and to make Ohab Zedek a synagogue that young people might want to attend for the best of reasons, it extended an invitation to Rabbi Bernard Drachman to complement their revered incumbent religious leader, Philip Hillel Klein. The Hungarian-born Rabbi Klein was modern in many respects. But he was modern in a European way. He had received ordination from Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer’s Orthodox seminary in Germany, where he was exposed to a Jewish curriculum far more diverse than that of a traditional yeshiva. And he had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin. But he could not preach in English. His language of discourse was German and a “most convoluted High German” to boot. In fact, early on in his career at Ohab Zedek, a committee of congregants asked him to “simplify” his addresses because, frankly, his sermons were boring. Reportedly, when Klein rose to speak, “there was a rush to the door like from a fire.” The grown men who made it outside “would gather on the street chatting and the boys would play handball until the signal emanated from inside that the sermon was over.” Clearly, Klein had no cachet with young people. But hopefully the American-born Drachman would.10
Drachman was arguably the first modern Orthodox rabbi in twentieth-century America. A graduate of Columbia University, he went off eventually to Breslau to receive advanced rabbinical training at that city’s Judische Theologische Seminar. He could also boast of a doctorate in Semitic languages from the University of Heidelberg. His problem was that when he returned to America in 1885—with all of his training, degrees, and orientation as an Orthodox rabbi—he was unable to immediately secure employment. He would later recall that “it seemed for a time that I had mistaken my vocation, that there was no room, no demand in America for an American-born, English-speaking rabbi who insisted on maintaining the laws and usages of Traditional Judaism.” In his view, “Reform Judaism . . . had conquered almost the entire field of Jewish life.” And while “there were a few Orthodox congregations whose members were American-born or Americanized immigrants and whose pulpits were occupied by English-speaking rabbis . . . there were no vacancies.” And as far as the “eastern European, Polish and Russian . . . Jews in the East side of Ghetto districts who adhered to the Orthodox traditions of their native lands” were concerned, “they were Yiddish speaking and wanted rabbis of that type. They were strange to me and I was stranger to them.” Fortunately for him, four years later, due in great measure to the financial backing he received from his father-in law, he was able to establish his own congregation, Congregation Zichron Ephraim, on 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues in Yorkville. His members were among the first affluent and Americanized east European Jews who very early on followed their central European brethren out of downtown. To supplement his pulpit income, Drachman taught many courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He would subsequently characterize his own role at the school as “a sort of rabbinic general utility man.”
Twenty years later, with Jewish Harlem, in Drachman’s view, on the rise and “Yorkville no longer the important center of Jewish residence that it had been,” having “sunk into a position of relative unimportance,” the ambitious rabbi began to look northward to extend his influence. His first foray into the neighborhood proved unsuccessful. The organizers of Congregation Shomre Emunah at 121st Street and Madison Avenue promised services conducted according to the “Orthodox ritual in an impressive, decorous manner,” free of the unseeingly noise and commotion of the landsmanshaft synagogue. But the synagogue’s momentum stalled during the economic panic of 1908. A year later, however, Drachman accepted a call to Ohab Zedek. From 1909 to 1922, he would ride an unusual circuit between two neighborhoods—commuting on the El on Friday afternoons before sundown—as he preached “on alternate Sabbaths in each synagogue.” For the Harlem congregation, it had imported a man who might be able to speak to young people within and without the sermon slot on Sabbath and holidays. And if some congregational leaders had any concerns about how Rabbi Klein would react to Drachman sitting beside him at the front of the sanctuary, there was a model in Yorkville that they could hope to emulate. In the first decade of the twentieth century, The Ramaz had shared the Kehilath Jeshurun pulpit with Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who had been a student of Drachman’s at the Jewish Theological Seminary. And from all reports, the senior and junior rabbis worked well together.11
However, in 1912, just three years later, the leaders of Ohab Zedek—at least in Drachman’s opinion—showed that they had not divorced themselves from “the pronounced ghetto Jewishness of these Hungarian brethren” when they hired one of the greatest cantors of his day, Yossele Rosenblatt, to conduct services. Predictably, Rosenblatt, whose fame as a performer of Jewish liturgy in Muncacz, western Ukraine; Pressburg, Hungary; and Hamburg, Germany, preceded his arrival in Harlem, packed the sanctuary whenever he led the prayers. His devotees included both the devout and the dandies. One young man who sat with his father downstairs would recall that his grandmother, who was seated in the balcony, would swoon and shed copious tears when the cantor beseeched the Almighty for a “life of sustenance” as he recited the prayer for the new month, a signature piece of music. However, Drachman was not one of Rosenblatt’s fans. He objected to “the exaggerated role assigned to chazzanuth [the art of the professional cantor] in the East European synagogues.” For the rabbi, with the cantor repeating “words and whole passages . . . endlessly, the service is unduly prolonged and the entire effect is wearisome in the extreme. . . . Worse of all, this manner of rendition tends to deprive the service of its religious character.” Drachman much preferred “the musical part . . . not only in accordance with the traditional Jewish methods, but also in harmony with modern Occidental taste.” In his sermons, he “did not hesitate to condemn” Ohab Zedek’s continuation of the chazzan craze. Yossele Rosenblatt returned the less than complimentary appreciation of his art. For him, “what attracted the multitude to the Ohab Zedek synagogue . . . was, by the admission of all, its cantor. . . . As for American-born Dr. Bernard Drachman, despite his Shakespearean diction, he was not the most effective speaker.” Rabbi Klein did not render a public opinion on the abilities of his colleagues.12
But whether the worshippers came to hear Drachman preach in the King’s English or, more likely, to listen to Rosenblatt’s performance, Ohab Zedek, like the city’s other large established synagogues, did not attract many who were not interested in religious life. Neither a homiletic well struck nor a chant supremely sung was meaningful to those young people who lacked an existing allegiance to their parents’ synagogues. While the Drachman rabbinic model was emulated elsewhere in the neighborhood—for example, in 1910 at Congregation Ansche Chesed, the synagogue where Elias A. Cohen prayed, Jewish Theological Seminary graduate Jacob Kohn replaced German-born Gustav Hausman, who was dismissed for not “possessing the spiritual uplift which a spiritual leader and religious teacher must have”—much work needed to be done to reach out beyond congregational families.13
Rather than boast of its cantor or speak loudly of its preacher, the synagogue at Unterberg’s women’s Y attempted to attract young people to its sanctuary as a natural outgrowth of its regular nonreligious activities. The youthful residents and members were there on the premises six days a week as the institution served their social, cultural, and recreational needs. And on holy days, the young women sat decorously next to their male friends and relatives at services. There the English-language sermon had its place. But perhaps even more noteworthy and attractive was its offering of choral music.14
Even greater congregational participation was the hallmark of Congregation Mikveh Israel, which was founded just two years after the women’s Y synagogue. There what its leadership called “the rising generation in Israel”—that frequent terminology of the day—was offered a service that emphasized the importance of congregational singing. Both Rabbis Henry S. Morais, the son of one of the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Jacob Dolgenas, a student at the seminary who had already interned in comparable forms of synagogue work on the Lower East Side, recognized that many young people were uncomfortable in synagogues where even the best of cantors droned on in solo recitations of the prayers. Thus, they instructed the men who led the services to be true “representatives of the community” through the singing of simple melodious prayers that worshippers could follow easily. Lay people were encouraged to join in singing along with the cantor, thereby making traditional forms of prayers more meaningful for all drawn to the synagogue. This style of participatory worship also helped synagogue leaders maintain decorum during services. Those actively engaged in the devotions had little time for idle gossip.15
Congregation Mikveh Israel was also ahead of its time in the admission of two women to its original twelve-member board of directors. Most established congregations across a wide denominational spectrum barred concerned women from synagogue office, relegating them to the leadership of a women’s auxiliary or sisterhood. Though services were conducted according to Orthodox ritual—and unlike at the women’s Y, the genders did not sit together during prayers—Mikveh Israel’s women had an important voice in all other synagogue affairs. This was also the emerging policy within the youth synagogue movement downtown, where young women and men served on the boards and women taught Hebrew classes. Contemporary observers applauded Morais’s efforts both here and as head of the Young Folks League of the Uptown Talmud Torah. One writer declared him to be the “only rabbi in Harlem who stands for principle” and his young supporters to be “Harlem’s only hope for the future.”16
Yet despite this enthusiastic endorsement, Morais and Dolgenas did not succeed in their endeavor. Persistent financial woes plagued Mikveh Israel, arising in part from the lack of economic strength of its followers, who were young and just starting out on their career paths. The 1908 economic downturn that undid Drachman’s first offer in Harlem also did not help. Consequently, the synagogue was never able to raise sufficient funds to move out of its temporary rented quarters. As of the beginning of the 1910s, the uptown youth synagogue movement was represented only by the synagogue of the women’s Y. Due to its well-heeled funders and panoply of activities, it not only survived but advanced. In 1912 it embarked on a major fundraising campaign that netted $200,000 for a “new dormitory and headquarters at Lenox Avenue at 110th Street.” In the spirit of its multiuse facilities and agenda, the auditorium that was used for plays and recitals during the week became sacred space on Sabbath and holidays. Still, there was much room for additional efforts to reach those whom one Christian observer described “as the ones who, finding themselves unwilling to maintain the forms of Judaism and having a sort of instinctive dread of other religions are going without any religious expression or experience whatsoever.”17
With much retrieval labors still to be undertaken, in April 1915 the founders of the Harlem Young Men’s Hebrew Orthodox League identified an additional source of concern in the community about the religious values of its young people. Apparently, even the beneficiaries of a Talmud Torah education—who were projected as the leaders of the next generation—were drifting away from the faith’s practices. Ten members of the Harry Fischel West Side Annex of the Uptown Talmud Torah wanted an “institution which would create an Orthodox environment and teach the great principles of Orthodoxy” to those who “upon entering academic, professional or business careers” needed “during their spare time . . . a circle that reminds him of his obligations to his faith and people.” The leaders of the League were confident that they had the intellectual acumen to convince their fellow second-generation Jews “that by study Orthodox Judaism will be found to be entirely compatible with modern ideas.”18
The League made itself known on the uptown scene in the fall of 1915 when it established a youth synagogue at the Fischel Annex emphasizing decorum and congregational singing. It quickly liaised with the Kehillah, as it was designated to be a “provisional synagogue.” These religious outlets were organized throughout the city to combat the abuses of the so-called “mushroom synagogues.” During the High Holiday season, private entrepreneurs rented public halls and saloons to provide a place for unaffiliated Jews to congregate. Many of those in the business of Judaism were unscrupulous individuals who hired imposters as rabbis and generally exploited the public for commercial purposes. The cry for reform of this blot on Jewish neighborhood life dated back to the turn of century, when it was observed that “the self-styled ‘Holy-day Rabbi’ is generally nothing more than a speculator pure and simple” whose practice “degrades Judaism in the eyes of those of our brethren who are compelled to attend the temporary places of worship.” Most critically, “it estranges Jews from their religion. This is particularly true with the younger generation.” The selection of the Harlem Young Men’s Hebrew Orthodox League to serve the Lenox Avenue district represented an early recognition among communal authorities of its utility to the uptown community. The League promised to provide places for worship at reasonable rates under reputable leadership to serve the High Holiday overflow crowd.19
Now possessed of cachet within the community, the League soon inaugurated numerous social and cultural activities and put forward plans to maintain its own clubrooms, library, and gymnasium and to hold classes on Jewish topics. Among the lecturers in its early years were Jacob Dolgenas, now a Jewish Theological Seminary–trained rabbi, Bernard Drachman, who stepped outside his pulpit to encourage the young men at a neighboring institution, and perhaps the League’s most important supporter, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein. Then an assistant rabbi at Yorkville’s Kehilath Jeshurun—where he followed Kaplan and worked too in harmony with The Ramaz in the congregation—Goldstein was elected honorary president of the League in recognition of his constant backing of its activities.20
Indeed, Rabbi Goldstein was completely simpatico with the goals of the League and actually, two months after the group was created, offered himself as an ideal mentor to its young activists. In June 1915, he declared that the salvation of “the Judaism of the future” lay solely in the hands of the “young university-trained Orthodox rabbis” like himself. This 1913 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary contended that only men like him and his classmates could communicate, for example, with the “scientifically-trained, skeptical young Jew, reconcile what he learned in public school and college with the ancient doctrines of his faith.” Goldstein believed that only those “reared on American soil, who have breathed the ideals of American democracy, who have been born and bred like other Americans who have received a systematic scientific education, and who are at the same time deeply saturated with a knowledge and desire of practicing the tenets of our faith” could understand the needs and desires of those eager “to break down ghetto walls . . . to live as their neighbors, their fellow citizens—the Americans.” They alone “who have gone through this kind of youth” and remained true to Judaism could meet American Jewish men and women on their own level. Goldstein believed strongly in what he called “Jewish missionary work” among those “who have gone astray, to bring back to Orthodox Judaism and keep and sustain those who are in the fold.”21
Accordingly, Goldstein was also quick to lend his backing to a comparable Harlem-based religious institution that, like the Orthodox League, was dedicated to attracting Jewish young adults back to faith and practice. The Harlem Hebrew League was created in September 1915 to “make known the ideals of Judaism” to uptown youths. League organizers established a headquarters for “Jewish men under Jewish refining influences on Lenox Avenue where social and educational programs were held every week-day evening and on the Sabbath.” The organization offered its members lectures and debates in addition to dignified modern Orthodox services. Here again, Goldstein and Morais headed the list of speakers. And Drachman too stepped beyond Oheb Zedek to influence the participating youngsters as their association began to gain support in the local community.22
However, early on in their tenure, the two leagues absorbed some criticism—namely that, for all of their efforts, as self-designated Orthodox institutions, they served only a small minority of the neighborhood’s young adults. Critics argued that there were thousands of young people who, for example, the modern Talmud Torahs had never reached “who never enter a synagogue and for them there must be some kind of training school” in Judaism. In other words, the leagues were perceived as being out only to stop those with some affinity for the faith from losing touch with their backgrounds, while so many others had no feeling at all for Judaism. Such was the vision of the founders of the new Harlem YMHA, which was organized at a meeting held at Temple Mount Zion in 1915. At that meeting and in subsequent discussions it was determined, first of all, that the YMHA at 92nd Street—the flagship of the movement, whose programs they wished to emulate—though geographically accessible, was not attracting a large share of uptown residents. The Yorkville Y’s leaders, for their part, were unwilling to expand their own activities to Harlem. A special meeting of the 92nd Street organization’s social, finance, membership, and neighborhood committees, also in 1915, declared it to be an exclusively Yorkville institution, even if some East Harlem boys did attend its programs. However, the established Y was willing to help its Harlem colleagues set up comparable programs at 119th Street, east of Fifth Avenue. There social, cultural, and recreational activities were emphasized, while Jewish religious classes and worship were offered on a limited, nondenominational basis. Although the Harlem men’s group—like most Ys nationally, but in contrast to the Harlem women’s Y—worked primarily “to provide the Jewish youth with a Jewish center of activities of such a nature that he shall find it unnecessary to go beyond the doors of [the] building for amusement [and] entertainment” rather than to provide comprehensive religious programming, Rabbis Klein and Drachman and future congressman Isaac Siegel supported the initiative.23
But Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein was totally unenthusiastic about the prospects for the new Harlem Y. Sounding very much like Unterberg and her sisters at the women’s Y, for him there was all too little that was Hebrew in this new branch’s mission. He deemed its efforts in the Jewish social field as “partial” because “it only takes the boy off the streets and does not give him the education of a Jewish religious environment.” His conclusion was that the Harlem Y’s work would prove to be “negative” because it “failed to impart positive religion in the minds of the youth. It does not stand for positive religious conviction.”24
Goldstein argued in a public letter to New York Jewry in September 1916 that beyond what he saw as the highly problematic men’s Y movement, existing Jewish institutions were not up to the challenge of influencing young people towards greater observance. In reviewing what he perceived as a failed state of affairs, he began by picking up on the critique that the “Youth Synagogue” movement had been articulating for more than a decade and a half. He justly characterized the landsmanshaft synagogue that expressed “local European mannerism” as “unAmerican, antiquated and largely responsible for the great gap which now exists between the sons of the founders of the synagogue and the founders.” Old-timers might possess some “engrained Jewish consciousness,” but their children were becoming “more and more indifferent.”
Needless to say, he harshly critiqued the cheder system as a complete failure for its inability “to impart to students the true meaning of the Jewish religion, [to] inspire in them, the proper love of their faith.” For him, even the modern Talmud Torah movement, with which his father-in-law Harry Fischel and some of his own closest associates were intimately involved, suffered some important defects. First, its programs reached at most 15 percent of youngsters and these pupils more often than not were the children of “paupers.” Sounding much like Fischel—though he did not acknowledge the existence of the philanthropist’s Annex initiative—he noted that these schools generally did not attract families who could afford to pay tuition. And perhaps as important, the educational system’s approach to Jewish youths was itself not ideal because “it is fractional in its work and divorces the child from the synagogue.”25
Goldstein placed his faith in and directed his ambition towards creation of an Institutional Synagogue that he tendered as representing Jewry’s best chance to rescue young men and women from voluntarily surrendering their Jewish identity. In his vision, “the synagogue of old was the center for prayer, study and the social life of the community all in one.” He suggested that with the proper program, it could once again assume that traditional role. He envisioned a new, multifaceted synagogue that would be “a place for study for adults in the evenings and for children in the afternoons.” It would be a social and recreational center for young adults where, “after plying their daily cares, they could spend a social hour in an Orthodox environment and in a truly Jewish atmosphere.” This synagogue also would offer decorous modern Orthodox religious services designed specifically for an American congregation, while “keeping intact the Jewish ceremonies of our people.” Goldstein was convinced that “if we desire to perpetuate the ideal Judaism of the past we must so shape Jewish spiritual activity that [it] will all find expression in one institution.” He presented the Institutional Synagogue as that ideal Jewish cultural, social, and, above all, religious organization that would embrace the synagogue, the Talmud Torah, and the Y.
Finally, Goldstein submitted that he had both history and practicality on his side. From a purely financial standpoint it would be cheaper for each Jewish community to build one large institution combining all activities than to support a separate shul, school, and social center. He also reasoned that the individual Jew could, for a little higher membership fee at a multiuse operation, derive the benefits of three Jewish spaces. Implicit here was the understanding that the new organization would reach out primarily to those who could pay for membership, thus removing from the Institutional Synagogue the possible stigma of pauperism. So positioned, the three-in-one synagogue center would possess the additional advantage of making it possible for all members of a family to participate in their own age group activities within the same religious institution and thereby “bring back to family life that religious unity and enthusiasm which is sorely lacking today.”26
It is not known how aware Goldstein was of developments at the Harlem women’s Y, which resembled and, in fact, preceded albeit on a less grand scale the Institutional Synagogue initiative. As early as 1914, the 110th Street Y synagogue and auditorium had on premises a library, rooms for lectures, and a gymnasium. Although Unterberg and her colleagues never described what they had built as a synagogue center, effectively it did most of the jobs that Goldstein wanted for men and women just six blocks way on 116th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. And in October 1916—seven months before the Institutional Synagogue opened its doors—the women’s Y added to its panoply of activities a swimming pool. Goldstein would follow suit and included a pool in his shul.27
However, it is abundantly clear that Goldstein put into action and built upon ideas that Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan was constructing in the early 1910s. Later in both men’s careers, they would become angry antagonists when Kaplan began to publicly articulate his Reconstructionist philosophies. Goldstein was among the first Orthodox leaders to oppose his heretical views. Nonetheless, while Goldstein was still a Jewish Theological Seminary student, he was caught up—as all rabbinical students were—with the professor’s criticism of American Jewish life. And many of these rabbis in training were captivated by Kaplan’s proposed solutions. Most notably here, Kaplan was well aware of the weaknesses of the men’s Y movement as he served for a period, starting in 1913, as chair of the 92nd Street Y’s Committee on Religious Work. From that position, he clamored unsuccessfully for the institution to “seek to stimulate” in its members “a positive enthusiasm for Judaism.” Seemingly as always, the Y was content to make sure its young men stayed away from “worse places,” like the gambling dens on Yorkville’s streets. When the Harlem Y was created, Kaplan was once again sure to remonstrate that there was little that was “distinctly Jewish in the content of the movement which would set it off from non-sectarian settlement houses.” In his most uncharitable statement, he characterized the Ys as “secular organizations” financed by Jewish money and called upon the national movement either to drop the name “Hebrew” from its title and openly declare itself a nonreligious organization or immediately reconstitute itself as a “distinctly Jewish organization” and commit itself wholeheartedly to the battle against “disaffection from faith and its practices.”28
In 1915, Kaplan, the great thinker, and Goldstein, the dynamic worker, established a prototype of a multifunctional and deeply religious synagogue center as an alternative to the Y when they collaborated in the establishment of the Central Jewish Institute (CJI) next door to Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. Kaplan had maintained personal ties with the synagogue’s leaders and Goldstein had followed him into the position of English-speaking rabbi. And the Yorkville community was a fine testing ground for their approach to attracting young people to a modern synagogue. Many of Kehilath Jeshurun’s senior members were drawn from among the most affluent elements in east European immigrant society. They had succeeded in less than a generation in achieving a degree of economic advancement comparable to that of Lenox Avenue’s Jews. Religiously, they were depicted by one of the social work professionals who was part of the team at the CJI as “orthodox, which implies adherence to Jewish ceremonies and customs and an allegiance to Jewish life.” This older generation was described as descendants of “families which were respected in the social life of the eastern European ghetto where learning was the distinguishing class mark.”
But their own children’s religious values were hardly in line with the faith’s traditions. These young people were observed by this same professional as a “half-baked second generation who knew little of Jewish life, tending to associate it merely with the ceremonies and especially with the prohibitions observed in the home. They are generally indifferent to, if not ashamed of Jewish life.” What was needed was an “agency to bridge the gap between the generations, to interpret the old traditions in terms of the new.” The CJI, with Goldstein as director—Kaplan, a self-described “stationary director” was on the search committee that appointed his erstwhile student—promised to address this pressing inter-generational dilemma.29
Clearly, Kaplan spoke both for himself and for Goldstein when, at the CJI building’s ground-breaking ceremony, he prayed that the new institution would “not merely be [an ordinary Hebrew school], but also a Jewish Social Centre, wherein there are provided a gymnasium, room for club work, kindergarten classes, and a kosher kitchen; in short a centre where the ideas of traditional Judaism will be fostered and encouraged in the minds of American youth.”30
This first major attempt at amalgamating Jewish social, cultural, and recreational programs with a heavy dose of religious influence and education proved almost immediately to be less than the truly complete synagogue center that Kaplan envisioned and which Goldstein was eager to develop. The major defect in its multifaceted program was, ironically, the synagogue itself. Although leaders of Kehilath Jeshurun supported the endeavor, the CJI had almost no practical relationship with the congregation next door. The synagogue failed to coordinate or update its religious practices and rituals with the social and educational activities of the CJI. One critic of the Yorkville initiative claimed that it possessed all the elements of a synagogue center “but only externally so. The three departments have no close contact because the synagogue element is not bold enough. The synagogue has not developed its full capacity and its influence is small.” By the spring of 1917, Goldstein was ready to move on and further uptown. In a solicitation letter to Jacob Schiff, he declared that he was “prepared to dedicate my life for . . . a revival movement everywhere in our City, beginning with Harlem.” Towards that end, he was “prepared to give at least one year of services gratis for the sake of the Cause.” He let Schiff know that his salary in Yorkville “for the last year was $3,000.”31
Goldstein’s proposal for “bringing the message of Jewish Religious Revival to our youth; to enlist”—as he told Schiff—“the thousands of our young men and young women who are unattached to any Synagogue work and who have drifted to Christian Science and every other kind of Science except Jewish Science” was very well received by the leaders of the still-fledgling Harlem Young Men’s Hebrew Orthodox League. Its thirty-five members, taken by Goldstein’s concepts, decided to reconstitute the organization and to “push with vigor its campaign for the establishment of a real Jewish center in Harlem.” The League, which previously sponsored only religious and cultural activities, announced its intention to construct a gymnasium and to build a library to attract a larger segment of uptown Jewry to its organization. More impressive was the new Harlem Y’s decision in April 1917 under the leadership of its new president, Isaac Siegel, to join the Harlem League in inviting Goldstein, who had previously pilloried its work, to coordinate uptown neighborhood youth efforts. The rabbi, whom Siegel described as “fearless, staunch [and] loyal in the cause of Traditional Judaism,” was called upon to lead “a revival movement to revive the faith of our Fathers in the hearts of their children.” The two youth organizations were reconstituted as the Institutional Synagogue.32
Rabbi Goldstein accepted the call of uptown Jewry as an exciting challenge and made only two major requests of Harlem leaders: that he be granted life tenure as rabbi and that the synagogue’s constitution provide that “no innovation in traditional Judaism may be inaugurated” into its rituals “if there be one dissenting vote at a meeting of the corporation.” His position thus secured, Goldstein immediately made plans for creating his “Jewish revival movement in Harlem.”33
Fittingly, the synagogue’s first meetings were held at the women’s Y on 110th Street. And the accommodating host, in fact, published in its bulletin that “regular Friday evening and Saturday morning services would be conducted” on its premises. Perhaps leaders of the two institutions compared notes on how those who habitually came to play could be convinced to stay and pray. Meanwhile, Goldstein made himself better known within the women’s Y community by teaching a Hebrew class for the girls, a sure way also to recruit members for his organization.34
By June 1917, the Institutional Synagogue was able to strike out on its own into what Goldstein called the “heart of the most distressing Jewish conditions in the United States.” An anonymous donor—very likely his own father-in-law, Harry Fischel—stepped up and financed the purchase of a suitable building at 116th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues that would house a synagogue, club and social rooms, library, pool, and gymnasium. And even as remodeling began on the new center, Goldstein, anxious to get his work going, announced plans for “monster rallies” throughout Harlem to attract thousands of young people to his movement. He proposed the leasing of local theaters on Sunday mornings for services and lectures to reach “the large mass of young men and women who cannot be reached on the Sabbath.” At that time it was almost axiomatic that most immigrants and their children worked six days a week and thus would be at their jobs or shops when even the most modern of services were conducted. Sunday had to be the day where these folks could be engaged. In a closely related move, Goldstein suggested that his congregation’s leaders approach observant Jewish merchants in the neighborhood to solicit jobs for Jewish young people who themselves wished to keep the Sabbath.35
Goldstein’s Sunday revival meetings and diversified program of youth activities quickly attracted the support of neighborhood people. By September 1917, after only several months of activity, the Institutional Synagogue brought some twelve hundred worshippers to its Rosh ha-Shanah services held at a public hall in Central Harlem. In January 1918, the synagogue reported that it had built a constituency of two thousand dues-paying members who were attending thirty-one clubs and eight religious classes conducted at the 116th Street building. A month later the Institutional Synagogue opened, in conjunction with the Jewish Sabbath Association, a Harlem branch of the association’s employment bureau. And subsequently Goldstein attempted to convince all Jewish shopkeepers in Harlem to close their stores on Saturday to “arose a Jewish spirit in the neighborhood.”36
The Institutional Synagogue’s most ambitious program remained its so-called Jewish “missionary work,” expressed through those frequent “monster rallies.” Mount Morris Theatre, situated only one-half block away from the synagogue center, was the usual location for these gatherings, which often featured lectures by politicians and well-known local and national Jewish figures. Rabbi Goldstein explained the underlying methodology and purpose of these well-publicized events when he declared that “every community needs an occasional soul-stirring re-awakening and a revival of a religious interest from time to time. At our regular religious services we attract only those who are habitual synagogue-goers, but we must reach the wavering as well. This can only be done through revival meetings.”37
Nonetheless, the Institutional Synagogue absorbed more than its share of criticism during its early years. The most frequently heard charge was that this Orthodox synagogue was ultimately parochial in nature and simply a recast, improved Harlem Young Men’s Hebrew Orthodox League of use only to those of that particularly religious orientation. The presence of the members of the Harlem Y on the board of the 116th Street center apparently made little impression upon those who opposed Goldstein’s efforts. Critics echoed the long-standing national YMHA contention that “inasmuch in a community there are young men of various religious beliefs and some of no religion at all, the problem cannot be solved by a temple or synagogue.” Some dissenters were quick to observe that certain people were not inspired by synagogue activities, no matter how diversified they might be. “Shall they come under no influence at all?”38
Critics also noted that the Institutional Synagogue’s three-in-one membership fee was proof of its elitist nature. One spokesman representing the Harlem YMHA described Goldstein’s organization quite critically as “a private institution for the children coming from parents not necessarily wealthy, but those who can afford to pay for instruction.” Membership rates at the Institutional Synagogue, it was contended, were prohibitive to ordinary wage earners.39
Finally, there were those who felt that the mass-oriented revival movement was not within the true spirit of Judaism, preferring rabbis who played a less activist—certainly less histrionic—role in community life. Opponents deplored Goldstein’s decision to “resign as a minister of an established congregation to donate his entire time and energy to Billy Sundayism.” Goldstein was advised to “concentrate on religious education” and leave “sensationalism” to Christian ministers. Billy Sunday was a widely popular fire-and-brimstone evangelist who in 1917—the same year that Goldstein came to Harlem—staged a ten-week campaign in the city that attracted some hundred thousand people to his sermons.40
Goldstein responded by asserting that his movement was essentially traditional, dedicated towards bringing the unaffiliated into the synagogue and leading those ignorant of the faith towards the house of study. He also argued that there was nothing novel or radical about the concept of “Jewish revivalism.” In his view, the prophets of antiquity and the itinerant preachers of the Old World as well as those who preached about returning the masses to religiosity in the downtown east European settlement were all “revivalists” and all operated within the confines of Jewish tradition. Goldstein asserted that he had both Jewish history and modern ministerial techniques on his side.41
Of all the efforts of Jewish activists during Harlem’s east European heyday between 1900 and the end of World War I to recapture wavering or disengaged youths back towards Jewish identification, it was the Institutional Synagogue that most strongly influenced later communal developments, both near and far. To begin with, in 1918, one year after Goldstein brought his initiative to his neighborhood, Kaplan concretized his vision of an all-embracing synagogue on the West Side of Manhattan. The Jewish Center on 86th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenue had all the elements of the Institutional Synagogue. Goldstein got his head start with the encouragement of Harry Fischel. Kaplan was assisted by a few well-heeled former members of Kehilath Jeshurun in building a home that “would bring Jews together . . . for social, cultural and recreational purposes in addition to worship.” In the inter-war period, the models that Goldstein and Kaplan created were emulated and duplicated both in new Jewish neighborhoods in New York and indeed in communities all over the country. However, the “magic”—as Kaplan disciple Rabbi Israel Levinthal once described the process—whereby those who came to play eventually stayed to pray very frequently did not work. One of the many critics of the initiative that began in Harlem and spread to West Side Manhattan contended that a member has “only a certain amount of energy at his command and when, during the week, one attends a card party”—or for that matter the gymnasium or pool—“one feels that one’s duty towards the Congregation is fully performed and the Friday night and Saturday morning services are of necessity neglected.” As important, while rabbis like Goldstein, Kaplan, and Levinthal were indeed pulpit eminences, those who interacted with the young people in the clubs, art rooms, libraries, and gyms often did not direct their charges to the sanctuary. Brooklyn Rabbi Harry Weiss argued, for example, that he had “yet to hear an athletic director say we have enjoyed the gymnasium of the Synagogue for so long. We have served the cause of play, now come boys, next Friday night let us all turn out and hear something about our ancient Faith and about the ideals of our people.”42
These communities—and ones to this day, as well—ultimately had to come to grips with the same challenges that had long concerned Jews in Harlem. Back in 1904, it was observed that “the younger generation, in most cases, left the old behind. . . . American customs, institutions and the like surround them and the Hebrews of Harlem became day by day more American.” More often than not, Jews remained in touch not so much with their religious traditions but with one another, the rich and the poor, the devout and the secular, as together they walked on a daily basis the streets of uptown during Harlem’s Jewish heyday.
